Amichai Lau-Lavie, now 55, first made headlines in 1993, when as the nephew of Israel’s Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi, he was outed by an Israeli journalist as gay. It would not be the last time he made the news.
Lau-Lavie is a man of many identities: He is the soft-spoken son of a Holocaust survivor, a drag queen named Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross who delivers Jewish wisdom from under a bouffant blonde wig, the heir to 38 generations of Orthodox Rabbis, a gay man, a feminist, a father, a Radical Faery, the founder of the progressive community Lab/Shul, an Israeli, a rabbi and a peace activist.
“Sabbath Queen,” a 2024 documentary from director Sandi DuBowski (of “Trembling Before G-d” acclaim), follows Amichai for more than 20 years as his profound and complicated relationship to Judaism morphs and transfigures.
Aided by an intimacy that can only develop between director and subject over decades, we watch Lau-Lavie navigate the joy of the birth of his children (he is a very involved donor father to three kids), the heartbreak of his father’s death (which is the catalyst to his becoming a Rabbi), his acceptance to the rabbinate and his resignation shortly thereafter for officiating an interfaith marriage in his community. At times, Lau-Lavie is perturbed by the intrusion of the camera; in the height of the debate around his decision to perform said wedding, he cuts the interview short. He is tired and in a bad mood, and perhaps the appeal of a life in the spotlight is wearing thin.
As the documentary moves back and forth in time, we see Lau-Lavie’s perspective towards his place in Judaism change, though his commitment never waivers. In an early interview, he tells the camera that “artists are the new rabbis” and it’s clear he believes his role is to bring back life to Judaism. In this vein, Lau-Lavie founded Storahtelling in 1998, a non-profit that tells Jewish stories through theater, complete with props (think fake blood spurted onto marital sheets). Through Storahtelling came Lab/Shul, a vibrantly open, God-Optional experimental Jewish community, which Lau-Lavie helmed long before he became a rabbi.
Lau-Lavie’s attitude to his Judaism is the reason the documentary exists in the first place: DuBowski first interviewed Lau-Lavie for his film “Trembling Before G-d” on LGBTQ+ Jews struggling to find a place in the Orthodox world. But Amichai was very clear that he didn’t want a place in that world. He wanted a better one — and needed his own stage.
At the surface, “Sabbath Queen” wrestles with questions about modern day Judaism, and who even has the right to ask those questions. But fundamentally, the documentary is an extended conversation about identity and what it means to be part of a family: the immediate Orthodox family that Lau-Lavie was born into, the larger Jewish family, and, one could argue, the wider human family as Lau-Lavie advocates for the rights of all people, especially in the land of Israel. What does it mean to be a member of a family that never could have imagined your existence? The answer, according to the film, is constant dialogue and compromise.
Throughout the film, Lau-Lavie’s family narrative looms large. His rabbi grandfather, whose picture hung in his childhood home and who went to the gas chamber with his congregation, was childhood Amichai’s envisioning of God. His father, as told in the documentary with gut-wrenching clips of the ravaged bodies of survivors, when taken by officers from Buchenwald, escaped and returned to the camp to be with his younger brother. The next day, Americans liberated the camp. Once in Israel, his father and uncle served the new state in their own ways, his father as civil servant and later ambassador, and his uncle as Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi. At Lau-Lavie’s father’s funeral, his uncle explains that he does not just feel like he has lost a brother, but been orphaned once again.
Lau-Lavie’s brother, Rabbi Dr. Benny Lau, himself a prominent Israeli rabbi, frequently expresses his discomfort with things Amichai does, and yet here too, we see compromise. Rabbi Lau attended his younger brother’s rabbinical ordination, despite his ideological disagreements. He has also pushed for LGBTQ+ integration in Modern Orthodox life, and been at the forefront of the inclusion of women clergy in Modern Orthodox services. His parents, although uncomfortable with much of his identity, listen over the phone from Israel as his child is welcomed into his New York Jewish community, a child created by two lesbians and a gay man.
By some, Lau-Lavie is portrayed as a “renegade,” someone who pushes boundaries to see how far they will stretch. In “Sabbath Queen” his own brother says that he is “playing a game with Judaism.” And, I can admit, I came to the film for the drama of the “Drag Queen Rabbi” — but the camera shows a far more complex man, a man deeply respectful of Judaism and his heritage. When he chooses to become a rabbi, partially to be more able to engage with his antagonists, he does so at the Jewish Theological Seminary, a Conservative organization, because he sees it as the middle ground between his familial Orthodoxy and a Judaism that holds space for people like him and everyone in between. He believes that “not everything is worthy of being passed on” and yet, at times, in his progressive community, he is the upholder of halacha, explaining it as an ecosystem that protects the community. His decision to marry interfaith couples was an agonizing one, one he made with his community’s best interests in mind.
To me, Amichai Lau-Lavie’s approach to Judaism is the only thing that makes sense for a man who came-of-age sandwiched between the enormity of his father’s Holocaust survival and the AIDS epidemic. It is a radical Judaism that celebrates life, love and inclusion, while also trying to honor what came before.
His grandfather’s last wish was for the family to remain Jewish and keep the rabbinic dynasty going. Lau-Lavie lives this wish in his own way.
