SABBATH QUEEN, a feature documentary filmed over 21 years, follows Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie’s epic journey as the dynastic heir of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis including the Chief Rabbis of Israel. He is torn between rejecting and embracing his destiny and becomes a drag-queen rebel, a queer bio-dad and the founder of Lab/Shul—an everybody-friendly, God-optional, artist-driven, pop-up experimental congregation. SABBATH QUEEN joins Amichai on a lifelong quest to creatively and radically reinvent religion and ritual, challenge patriarchy and supremacy, champion interfaith love, and stand up for peace. The film interrogates what Jewish survival means in a difficult rapidly changing 21st century.
Sabbath Queen is now in 65 film festivals, 50 cinemas, received a New York Times Critic’s Pick and was named one of the New York Times’ favorite films of the 21st century, and has won 8 awards including Boston Jewish Film Festival’s Audience Award for Best Documentary and UK Jewish Film Festival’s Best Documentary.
The screening will be followed by a talkback with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and Sandi DuBowski.
Social activist and storyteller, writer and community leader, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie (he/him) is the Co-Founding Spiritual Leader of the Lab/Shul community in NYC and the creator of the ritual theater company Storahtelling, Inc. Israeli born, he’s been living in New York since 1998. He received his rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 2016, the 39th generation of rabbis in his family — the first one to be openly queer. Rabbi Amichai is the star of Sabbath Queen, Sandi DuBowski’s award-winning documentary film, 21 years in the making, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2024. Rabbi Amichai serves on the Executive Board of Rabbis for Human Rights, is a co-founding member of the Jewish Emergent Network, a founding faculty member of the Reboot Network, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Sulha Peace Project for Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers, the Leadership Council of the New York Jewish Agenda, the Advisory Council for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and as an advisor to Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance. He’s been named “an iconoclastic mystic” by Time Out New York, “a calm voice for peace” by NPR, a “rock star” by the New York Times, a “Judaic Pied Piper” by the Denver Westword, a “maverick spiritual leader” by The Times of Israel and “one of the most interesting thinkers in the Jewish world” by the Jewish Week. In 2017 he was named one of America’s Top 50 rabbis by The Forward. In June 2017 Rabbi Amichai published The JOY Proposal with a radical response to the reality of Intermarriage and taking on a personal position on this issue, including his resignation from the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement. In 2022 Rabbi Amichai began publishing Below the Bible Belt a daily digital project extended over 42 months, critically queering and re-reading all 929 chapters of the Hebrew Bible.
Sandi DuBowski is the Director/Producer of Sabbath Queen, Director/Producer of Trembling Before G-d, Producer of A Jihad for Love, and Co-Producer of Budrus. His award-winning work has screened at Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca and Toronto, theatrically released in 150 cities, and broadcast on ZDF/Arte, BBC, Channel 4, PBS. In 2020, he was invited to become a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. DuBowski spearheaded a groundbreaking impact campaign with the award-winning Trembling Before G-d, personally conducting 850 live events, for over 250,000 people, which changed the lives of countless individuals, their families, religious leaders, and communities around the world. Feature stories on the project appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NPR, The Globe and Mail, and BBC News. From 2009-2016, DuBowski worked with over 125 of the world’s best social justice documentaries as the Outreach Director of Doc Society’s Good Pitch. He is Co-Founder of The Creative Resistance, a collective of media makers who create award-winning political ads and design. In the mid-1990’s he began his media and activism work at Planned Parenthood Federation of America focused on the Christian right and the anti-abortion movement. Three generations of DuBowski’s family made chocolate syrup in Deep Coastal Brooklyn.