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NEW YORK – He comes from a very long line of rabbis, is the first cousin of Israel's Ashkenazi chief rabbi, but runs a synagogue that is "God optional. "
Proudly gay, he has fathered three children while moonlighting as a drag queen.
He attended a prominent West Bank yeshiva but is a regular fixture at the weekly New York protests demanding an end to the Israeli occupation and a cease-fire in Gaza.
His reimagining of Judaism has included live theater performances at Shabbat services, Jewish-Zen Buddhist same-sex weddings officiated under a chuppah, and interfaith sing-alongs at Yom Kippur services.
Is it any surprise that the phrase "pushing boundaries" keeps popping up in the brand-new documentary tribute to Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie?
It is perhaps the understatement of the year, but this is how Lau-Lavie sums up on screen his iconoclastic approach to Judaism: "Not everything we've inherited is worthy of passing down. "
Twenty-one years in the making, "Sabbath Queen" had its world premiere last Sunday at New York's Tribeca Film Festival.
"Some of you wondered whether you'd live to see me finish this film," joked director Sandi DuBowski in his introductory remarks at the opening night screening.
The feature-length documentary follows its protagonist from his early years in New York, where he was active in the gay counterculture movement, through his surprising decision to attend rabbinical school, to his eventual break with the Conservative movement (which ordained him) and his dabbling with more inclusive and innovative forms of Judaism.
This culminated with the creation of LabShul ("Lab" being short for laboratory), his "artist-driven, everybody-friendly, God-optional, pop-up, experimental community" in New York.
The film moves back and forth between Jerusalem, where Lau-Lavie was born and raised, and New York, where he moved...