September 9, 2025
Temple Beth Hatfiloh & Olympia Film Society present: Sabbath Queen
Post-Film Q&A w/ Director Sandi DuBowski and Rabbi Seth Goldstein
6pm doors & 7pm film
$13 GA & $10 OFS
From director Sandi DuBowski comes Sabbath Queen. Shot over 21 years, it 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 accepting his ancestral destiny or following his heart to become a drag queen rebel, a queer father, and the founder of Lab/Shul – an everybody-friendly, experimental congregation.
As Sabbath Queen opens, Lau-Lavie is newly arrived in New York in the late 1990s, a young gay man declaring “Artists are the new rabbis” and appearing around the city in drag as Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross, the widow of six Hasidic rabbis (all from the same extended family).
As the years pass, Lau-Lavie embraces a range of creative spiritual endeavors including Storahtelling and Lab/Shul – until he shocks everyone with his decision to become a rabbi himself, studying in the Conservative tradition of Judaism.
Sabbath Queen joins Amichai on a lifelong quest to creatively and radically reinvent religion and ritual, challenge patriarchy and supremacy, champion interfaith love. The film interrogates what Jewish survival means in a difficult rapidly changing 21st century.
Dir. Sandi DuBowski / 2024 / US / 105 min
“This fast-paced, well-shot doc does place its finger on the quickening pulse of an ever-wider gap between liberalizing Western social values and the Orthodox sphere that believes they are antithetical to Judaism.” – Dennis Harvey, Variety
“Sabbath Queen shrewdly asks hard questions about what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century.” – Ryan Lattanzio, indieWire
SCREENING: TUE 9/9 7PM
$13 GA & $10 OFS. Tickets are available at the box office 60 minutes before showtime.
You may also like the following events from Olympia Film Society:
- This Tuesday, 12th August, 08:00 pm, Animation Tuesdays: Fantastic Planet in Olympia
- This Wednesday, 13th August, 07:00 pm, Reel Oddities: Sorcerer in Olympia
- This Thursday, 14th August, 04:00 pm, It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley in Olympia
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