Sabbath Queen During the making of his 2001 movie about lesbian and homosexual Orthodox Jews, Trembling before G-d, documentary filmmaker Sandi DuBowski met one potential topic, rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, a “queer bio-dad” who additionally based Lab/Shul, the “everybody-friendly, God-optional” congregation. But, as Dubowski relays beneath, except for probably not becoming the movie’s particular temporary, Lau-Levine “was too much of a diva and wanted his own movie.” With his most up-to-date image, Sabbath Queen, DuBowski has greater than obliged, following the dissident rabbi for over 21 years, turning what might have been a simple biographical portrait right into a wealthy and complicated saga that units its vibrant, iconoclastic topic — descended from 39 generations of Orthodox rabbis — throughout many years of change inside the Jewish group, each in Israel and overseas. Premiering eventually 12 months’s Tribeca Film Festival, the movie is at present taking part in festivals and limited theatrical engagements by 8Above, and DuBowski, true to the spirit of his topic, dubs these occasions “expanded cinema” as they use the viewing expertise to create bigger communities of celebration and ritual.
Interviewing DuBowski for Filmmaker is artist and filmmaker Danielle Durchslag, whose newest undertaking is coincidentally additionally known as Sabbath Queen. (She writes on her website, “The Sabbath Queen is my latest costume undertaking contending with Jewish id and ritual. It took me a full 12 months to create and remodel myself into this satirical, wearable, vital illustration of proper wing Jewish political energy, impressed by the reign and painted portraits of Queen Elizabeth I of England.) Below, they speak concerning the movie’s lengthy journey, the movie’s incorporation of vital commentary from Lau-Levine’s brother (and fellow rabbi) Benny, intermarriage and mainstream Judaism, and the movie’s remaining scenes, wherein, after October 7, Lau-Levine protests for a ceasefire in Gaza. — Scott Macaulay
Filmmaker: Sandi, I’m so excited to get to speak to you about this exceptional film that I completely love. I wished to start out as filmmakers enthusiastic about the method. Making this movie was a 21-year expedition. Could you give some knowledge or ideas about how a filmmaker sustains ardour and focus for that period of time on one undertaking?
Dubowski: I don’t suppose I knew that Sabbath Queen can be a life work. I had met Amichai within the late ‘90s in Jerusalem when I was looking for people to be in Trembling Before G-d, which was my film about Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are lesbian or gay. Everyone kept saying, “The Chief Rabbi of Israel’s nephew is homosexual. You ought to meet him.” So, after I met Amichai, I requested him to be in Trembling, and he refused as a result of he was an excessive amount of of a diva, and he wished his personal film.
Filmmaker: Well, he actually received it.
Dubowski: Yeah. He mentioned, “I don’t do collage.” I imply, in all equity, Trembling was a lot about belonging inside the bounds of Orthodoxy, and he was already post-denominational and smashing the field, so it wasn’t a match.
Filmmaker: He was proper.
Dubowski: He did deserve his personal film, and we turned associates. Even earlier than we started filming 5 years later in 2003, we deepened a good friend relationship. We constructed an intimacy, a belief collectively, and this movie, Sabbath Queen, actually sprang out of that. In the start, I used to be simply very entranced with Amichai’s drag character, Rebbetzin Hadassah, a Hasidic rabbi’s spouse, with counterculture storytelling, ritual and efficiency. I used to be documenting performances and exhibits, and the movie didn’t have the burden but of a life journey. When I began to movie the whole Jewish High Holidays, which was on the fortieth ground of Seven World Trade Center overlooking the pit within the aughts, and after I went with the household on his dad’s final journey to Poland for the anniversary of his Bar Mitzvah again to the place of all that trauma and Holocaust, the movie simply received deeper and deeper and extra sudden. If documentary means deep listening, I used to be there for the deepest of listening over time.
Filmmaker: What does it imply to actually inform a life journey, a narrative of change and transformation?
Dubowski: It means you simply must let go of any type of outdoors parameters and simply be within the witnessing, nevertheless lengthy that takes. But that’s my understanding now looking back, as a result of on daily basis throughout [the making of] Sabbath Queen, I might simply make the movie. And solely now when folks at Q&A’s ask me how I had the endurance does it daybreak on me that I simply spent 21 years filming. It was so pure.
Filmmaker: But there’s a complete different facet to that, which is that 21 years of filmmaking results in a pile of footage so monumental that it’s virtually arduous to ponder.
Dubowski: I had 1,800 hours of authentic materials, 1,100 hours of archival movie and video, and tons of and tons of of images.
Filmmaker: So, you had 3,000 hours of footage. How do you even take into consideration starting?
Dubowski: You watch every little thing. Look, I did six years of modifying. It was an enormously lengthy course of to attempt to sift by and categorize and suppose by narrative. And I had two units of editors. It’s actually after I labored with Francisco Bello and Jeremy Stulberg, who’re the author/editors of the movie, the movie took on a dramatic form and kind. In the very starting, with my first editor, Phillip Shane, we did improv workout routines across the movie on a sofa. He mentioned, “Imagine what the dream last scene would be.” “Let’s brainstorm all these adjectives that associate with this movie.” They known as us the sofa philosophers in our coworking area. And then there are all these parts that got here by within the modifying course of. We would watch a Friday evening Sabbath Queen ritual, which embraces the Feminine Divine to welcome Shabbat on Friday evening. It’s like a musical, performative counterculture, feminist, queer ritual that’s God- non-compulsory. My editor mentioned to me, “This is ritual. It doesn’t have narrative consequence. And it’s filmed as a ritual. I don’t think it really needs to be in the film.” And I mentioned, “Well, actually, no, this is core. This is why I’m doing this. I want to transmit what it means to immerse in Amichai’s Lab/Shul, his part laboratory, part synagogue. It doesn’t have plot, but it has consequence and deep meaning.” And, , to their credit score, we tried so many alternative methods to strategy the query, what does it imply to translate spirituality into cinema? What does it imply to translate ritual into narrative?
Filmmaker: It’s very arduous to do, by the way in which.
Dubowski: Very arduous to do. What was a tremendous discovery and turning level was the animation. I’d by no means labored with animation in documentary earlier than. But Francisco and Kyle have, and it allowed us to herald a brand new language of visuality to the touch the sacred. And then we had been capable of weave the verite of a Sabbath Queen Friday Night ritual with this actually wild animated drag character of Rebbetzin Hadassah, who’s type of the Female Divine, and that actually create a really advanced attractive scene. The animation helped us contact the historic, the epic, the traditional and the magical all through the movie.
Filmmaker: And, additionally, the playful. You know, this movie has such a love affair with playfulness, which, frankly, I believe Judaism might use. And I assumed the animated sequences had been this burst of permission for playfulness, even in moments which might be actually fraught on this movie. Making the animation type of a sepia-toned world, that’s an attention-grabbing selection.
Dubowski: Well, the inspiration for the animation was illuminated medieval manuscripts. It got here out of the Book — we’re the People of the Book, proper? I began to have a look at these historic Persian and Sarajevo Passover Hagaddahs and all of those different books, just like the Scroll of Esther for Purim, they usually turned the springboard for our creativeness round visualizing the animation.
There’s a flat 2D high quality to the artwork, and there’s a situating of the animation in one other world, in an historic world. We had been taking part in with hearth and area. If you learn the Torah, they are saying the letters are black hearth on the paper of white hearth. So that turned the colour palette, and it additionally helped distinguish it from the verite. It felt like we had been getting into one other imaginary area. It was such an ideal collaboration with our animator, Yaron Shin.
Filmmaker: Let’s get Jewy. I believe Amichai is such a really perfect container for this stress in Jewish life that nearly each Jew I do know feels round definitions of Jewish allegiance. What counts as allegiant habits, and who will get to say [what that is]? Amichai completely encapsulates this as a result of as we all know on the one hand, he’s really from Israeli rabbinical royalty.
Dubowski: Yeah. 38 generations, a thousand years. Like the Kennedy’s of Judaism.
Filmmaker: Exactly. We’ll name them the Kennewitzes, however sure, that’s who we’re speaking about. Simultaneously, he’s a radical queer rabbi who’s instantly pushing in opposition to patriarchal norms and a number of the traditions that he was raised in. Here we’ve got somebody who chooses to tackle the mantle of studying to develop into a rabbi and becoming a member of the rabbinate, somebody who very passionately leads a group and who additionally has Jewish youngsters with a lesbian couple. Who would deem him an allegiant Jew is determined by who you ask. I wished to ask you, as a result of this stress is so alive proper now in Jewish life, how do you suppose the movie Sabbath Queen defines and understands Jewish allegiance?
Dubowski: Well, it’s so attention-grabbing as a result of Amichai is a consummate insider/outsider. Because he’s received the DNA, he’s in it. He comes from the facility construction and but that makes him one of the crucial essential voices of critique and resistance to that. He’s not critiquing from the spindly little department of a tree. He’s critiquing from the trunk. We simply did a Jerusalem and Tel Aviv premiere and Amichai’s brother, Rabbi Benny Lau, who’s a serious famend Orthodox rabbi who agreed to be within the movie —
Filmmaker: —I believe he’s the unsung hero of the movie.
Dubowski: Lots of people do actually reply to him, some who actually establish with Rabbi Benny’s critique of Amichai. He permits that extra conservative viewer to enter the movie. But when it comes to allegiance, energy, I simply noticed what it meant, not only for Rabbi Benny to take this monumental step to be within the movie, however to do the premiere with us in Jerusalem and do a post-screening panel. Amichai is queer; he’s ex-Orthodox. He could be very vital of Israeli Jewish supremacy. He’s calling for ceasefire. He’s pro-peace. And there was Benny who confirmed up with love, with respect, with discomfort, and with disagreement.
Filmmaker: So, do you suppose that’s Jewish allegiance, exhibiting up for the dialog with curiosity and openness?
Dubowski: I consider that we come from a practice of adverse dialogue. Our entire rabbinic lineage is about disagreement with each other and respectful disagreement. The Talmud is filled with it. Some of it’s extra playful and jokey, and a few of it’s extra critical, and a few of it’s actually head-to-head. And so, for me, the function fashions of those two brothers couldn’t be extra biblical. We’re speaking Cain and Abel, and there they’re, in the identical movie, in the identical area and in a second of historical past that is filled with toxicity and polarization, the place folks have stopped talking to one another. I can not let you know what number of viewers members over the previous six months have instructed me, “I’m not speaking to my cousin, my sibling, my friend anymore.” Politically and ideologically, within the US and Israel, Palestine.
Audiences are discovering such hope and even amazement in Amichai difficult all of those allegiances. And but it’s a profound allegiance between these members of the family, who aren’t on the identical web page, however actually have a lot love and and are actually within the dedication to at least one one other regardless of the variations. After I left, they did a household assembly with Amichai and his cousins, nephews, nieces, siblings, mother, all who got here to the screenings. They’re all Orthodox.
Filmmaker: How did it go?
Dubowski: It was a personal household assembly, however they talked concerning the movie and actually processed Amichai’s journey over the previous 30 years – his gayness, his leaving Orthodoxy, his leaving Israel for America, turning into a rabbi, and many others. Deep, powerful, and profound.
Filmmaker: This is a movie that holds room for really loving discord in a method that I believe is fairly singular. As a secular Jewish viewers member there have been moments that really felt type of therapeutic to see Benny, this Orthodox rabbi, at one level discuss how Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross, the drag character, is insupportable to the household. And afterward within the movie, we get to see him have a look at the digicam and say, “the closet is death.” And that leads me to one thing I need to speak to you about. Sabbath Queen is such a vivid, dynamic, unbelievable portrait of Amichai, however I additionally suppose in some ways, Amichai is a portal on this movie to a portrait of our present tribe. Think how the Jewish group is true now. You might most likely paper Manhattan with the quantity of movie that has been used to depict Jewish struggling, proper? There are so many movies that solely cowl that subject. This movie completely honors and makes area for Jewish ache, however you even have scenes the place Jews are bigoted, illiberal and merciless based mostly on political distinction. Why was it essential so that you can present each? We’re so accustomed to solely seeing one aspect of that equation. It’s uncommon in cinema to actually witness not solely the trauma of Jewish historical past, however how these traumas have created confusions and dangerous habits in modern life.
Dubowski: I screened at Rome Film Festival and instantly received an e mail from a girl who’s Roman, not Jewish, and who mentioned, “I thought all Jews were fundamentalists. Here you are, this Jewish director bringing this progressive Jewish vision, and you upended all my categories. You broke my polarization, and thank you.” So, there’s this sort of narrative of Jewish victimhood on the expense of anybody else which is simply insupportable proper now. Amichai in some way touches each situation — he touches Holocaust, he touches Israel, he touches progressive politics, he touches Orthodoxy. Gender, sexuality, drag, interfaith — what main situation confronting our folks does he not embody in his personal story? It actually is like the total 360 of our previous, current and future id. From the ache to the bigotry and cruelty. I believe that that’s why persons are discovering that the movie simply feels so pressing and essential to our twenty first century time and to actually interrogating and grappling with who we’re.
I took Sabbath Queen to Germany, to DOK Leipzig, and I wound up assembly all these tremendous attention-grabbing Jews and those that love us, just like the man on the Leipzig airport who tapped me on the shoulder and mentioned, “I’m German, I’m married to an Israeli. We do Shabbat every week. We rotate homes between this queer German couple — one of them is Jewish and the other is not — and another family with kids, both parents are Jews.And, next time you come to Leipzig, come to our Shabbat.” Or this man who’s Jewish and comes from an excellent countercultural, squat, DJ, efficiency, interfaith British Jewish household. His spouse is German however not Jewish, they usually each educate artwork within the shadow of a focus camp in Germany. This is 2025. In the movie Amichai calls it “Jew Joy.” It’s not a Jew / non-Jew couple, it’s Jew pleasure. Everywhere I’m going, I’m realizing that the story of who we’ve been instructed we’re is just not who we’re at the moment.
Filmmaker: That comes by so strongly.
Dubowski: We are about sacred hybridity.
Filmmaker: As you and I each know, however non-Jews might not be conscious of till they see this movie, which they need to, the problem of intermarriage is handled like a death-level risk in mainstream Jewish life. On this watch of the movie, I used to be actually struck by the language that was utilized by folks to the precise of Amichai in Jewish life to actually push in opposition to this concept that intermarriage is suitable. They mentioned issues like, “Judaism is not a game. You can’t play the way you want to play. It’s not a flavor of ice cream.” And what I saved pondering was, who doesn’t like video games and ice cream? There’s an concept behind that selection of language that if it’s not extreme and dolorous and bathed in disappointment and tragedy, in some way it’s not genuine, together with, oddly, marriage, proper?
As , I’m a part of a Jewish Muslim couple. I’m fortunately married to a beautiful Muslim man. I’ve by no means seen us on display earlier than. And I’ve actually by no means seen an outline of interfaith Jewish marriage that’s as enjoyable and loving and wealthy because the {couples} I do know who’re experiencing that. But this movie does that. You’re married to a non-Jew, proper? Was it essential to you to provide a radically completely different illustration of this factor that’s so typically handled like a risk? Was that a part of the mandate for you for making this piece?
Dubowski: Yes. I believe it displays our world. It’s actuality. It displays who we’re. 72% of American Jews who’re liberal, not Orthodox, are in loving relationships with non-Jews. It is just not as if we don’t have a second the place Amichai says, “Look, we don’t know. What my version of rabbinic is, we’re not going to know in a 100 years if this is like a mistake.” There is a second of humility the place Amichai actually does ponder and query, however in a lot of the movie there may be actual celebration. The wedding ceremony on the finish of the movie is between Jew Joy Zen Buddhist homosexual monks.
Filmmaker: I like that scene.
Dubowski: The movie continuously strikes in this sort of emotional rollercoaster between celebratory, between vital, between harsh. There are so many alternative shifting tones of this sort of kaleidoscopic prismatic Jewish id that we live in. In some methods you may say the movie on the finish, in act three, is concerning the battle between interfaith marriage and the conservative Jewish world.
If anybody ever requested me, “Do I want to see a film on that?”, I might simply say, “It just seems so narrow, so no,” however what we do is we steep it with all these huge political stakes, the stakes of ethno-nationalism and Jewish supremacy — actual struggles round energy and management.
Filmmaker: And, additionally, the way in which ancestral weight enters all these points, proper? Amichai is such a illustration of that.
Dubowski: Yes, he’s received his father and his useless martyred grandfather and all these 38 generations of rabbis on his shoulders, pushing him, urgent him, visibly and invisibly. So interfaith marriage turned a microcosm, a narrative in itself, but in addition a microcosm of all these bigger forces.
Filmmaker: I’ve to say, I’m undecided these forces are seen except you’re inside these dynamics. And simply as a viewer and a Jew and a filmmaker, I’m actually grateful that you just selected that method in as a result of it’s so accessible and so heat as an entry level.
I do know that you just had been already within the modifying course of when October seventh occurred. And I do know that altered the trajectory of the ending of this movie. The remaining minutes now embody footage of Amichai protesting for a ceasefire in New York City. We see him in Israel holding an indication that claims, “End the Occupation.” Now that you just’ve toured this around the globe, what sort of responses are you attending to the previous few minutes of this piece?
Dubowski: There are fairly quite a few Jewish movie festivals which have rejected the movie. There are a couple of individuals who stroll out on the ending.
Filmmaker: Specifically at that second?
Dubowski: Yeah. Just occurred in Miami. Look, some folks say, “I am so thankful. That ending really reflects my progressive, pro-peace, pro-ceasefire political beliefs.” There are different individuals who say, “I love the film, I hate those last two minutes, why did you have to talk about Gaza? You know, why aren’t you talking about Hamas?” Then I’ve a girl who simply noticed it in Vermont and mentioned, “I love the film, I hate the last two minutes, but I’m still recommending it to all my friends.” And that I assumed was an actual victory as a result of it’s about sitting with discomfort. And for her, sitting with complexity. And meaning lots. You know, these are the folks I can transfer.
Filmmaker: Especially on this second, Sandi, when in Jewish life, disagreement has taken on a weight that’s simply inconceivable. When I do slideshows of my work for Jewish audiences now, my first slide says in large letters, “Disagree with me.” And then in parentheses, it says, “When it’s over, we’ll both still be alive.” Because I actually really feel just like the stakes really feel virtually life and demise to disagree on a few of these subjects. But this movie holds area for disagreement in such a singular and loving method.
Dubowski: And let me simply add that we’re actually getting a really large spectrum of individuals coming to see it from left to center-right, and quite a few Palestinian peace activists coming to see it in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, in London and New York. It’s been actually unbelievable to listen to their reactions of the movie and the way a lot it actually simply touches them,
Filmmaker: So now that this course of has created a wonderful movie and it’s completed, I need to ask you about how these 21 years have impacted your dynamic with Amichai. You know, after I take into consideration how aggravating filmmaking will be, it appears mildly miraculous to me that you just two nonetheless love one another and need to speak after this period of time centered on each other. What do you discover about how being on this work course of collectively has shifted or deepened or how has it modified the 2 of you as a unit?
Dubowski: Well, there’s a brother-to-brother high quality with Amichai and I.
Filmmaker: And does that imply you can too struggle and nonetheless love one another?
Dubowski: Yes. You know, he’s nonetheless a diva. But, when we’ve got been taking the movie round collectively and he’s rabbi-ing, he’s writing a e book, he’s engaged on a podcast, he can’t come in every single place. How can we make when he does come on tour treasured and significant? Lots of it’s making an attempt to think about how we create kind of an expanded cinema as we transfer the movie — how can we infuse ritual into the expertise of Sabbath Queen on the planet?
For instance, in Boston, we had this unbelievable premiere on the Boston Jewish Film Festival, and it offered out immediately — we’ve got to return to Boston for theatrical. We had a Friday evening Sabbath Queen feast at this Jewish occasion area known as Mamaleh’s Kibitz Corner, which was deep. It was proper after the election. It was so tender and uncooked — folks actually wished to be collectively. And we had such a tremendous group of intergenerational queer, straight, Jewish, and never Jewish people. Gorgeous meals, dialog, singing. And then the movie screened on the Brattle, folks bouncing off the partitions, superb Q&A. And then we had a Jewish drag and burlesque post-screening present at this implausible Jewish tavern known as Lehrhaus. It was such a beautiful weekend of group constructing and cinema and ritual. And we did the identical factor at Woodstock Film Festival. We partnered with a Woodstock synagogue for an occasion within the Sukkah, which is the normal harvest tent that’s open on all 4 sides and persons are welcome from each course. So, we used the Sukkah to speak about how we’ve got troublesome conversations. Grief, demise, disagreement. Filmmakers got here and group members too.
When we opened Los Angeles on the Laemmle theaters in December earlier than the fires, we rented an artwork gallery, the place we created this Saturday afternoon area of contemplation sharing and ritual that Amichai led. It was everybody-friendly and God-optional. Amichai calls it a SoulSpa. I believe that is what we’re additionally doing — reimagining what it means to take a movie into the world. And, so, I believe all of that is actually feeding Amichai — feeding his function and feeding the large sacrifice that he made to simply naked his life on display in service of a much bigger story, in service of the time that we’re in, in service of the necessity that folks have proper now, which is so traumatic and so pressing. Amichai has given a present by his story, but in addition we can provide that present in some ways to audiences as we tour.
Filmmaker: Along with being your expensive good friend, Amichai is your rabbi. He leads the providers you go to, and he officiated your wedding ceremony fairly gorgeously.
Dubowski: And he buried my father.
Filmmaker: And he buried your father.
Dubowski: I’m about to gentle the yahrzeit candle for my Dad’s demise anniversary. Eight years in the past, I needed to fly residence from Sundance to the hospital. Amichai buried my father and comforted my household by a 12 months of mourning.
Filmmaker: That’s proper. I’ve watched all of the methods over time that his rabbinical strategy has actually benefited your life. And what simply occurred to me as you had been answering the final query is thru the movie and the occasions and exquisite dynamics you’re creating round it, you’re giving the chance for Amichai to be everyone’s rabbi. It’s virtually like a sharing of that have, however with a lot honesty about who he’s and about who we’re as a folks.
Danielle Durchslag is a filmmaker and visible artist making work throughout mediums about among the most fraught and essential points of latest Jewish life. She has shared her items at movie festivals, galleries, and museums around the globe. In September of 2025 she can have a solo exhibition at Atelier Jolie, with the assist of the Invisible Dog Art Center. Her most up-to-date costume / efficiency artwork piece, additionally titled Sabbath Queen, can be viewed here.
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