Tim Murphy in Harvard Magazine:
Sabbath Queen, the 2025 documentary produced and directed by Sandi DuBowski ’93, opens tensely: in the courtyard of a Manhattan home, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie prepares to flout the doctrine of the Conservative Judaism movement in which he was ordained by officiating the marriage of two men, Koshin and Chodo. The problem isn’t that they’re gay—Conservatism allows same-sex unions. It’s that Koshin is Jewish and Chodo is not, and the movement forbids interfaith marriage. That opening is intended “to establish a frame,” says DuBowski. “It says to the audience, ‘This is a burning question that the film will return to, and also here are the larger stakes around these two versions of Judaism—one traditional and fundamentalist, and the other progressive and open.’”
That tension is at the heart of Sabbath Queen’s very intense subject, Lau-Lavie, 56, the Israeli-born descendant of one of Judaism’s most prominent dynasties of rabbis. His quest to forge a community of Judaism more in tune with modern life and pluralistic values led him down several paths.
More here.
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