The heat of the spotlight and chill of exile. Generational trauma and patriarchal pressure. Sibling rivalry and reconciliation. Parenthood. Exhaustion, endurance. 

Sabbath Queen. The Woman in Me.

I don’t necessarily recommend watching Sandi DuBowski’s critically acclaimed documentary and listening to Britney Spears’ audiobook on the same day, but that’s the kind of week I’ve had.

In 2007, facing inescapable paparazzi and a losing battle for custody of her children, Spears picked up electric clippers and shaved her head. In New York — a world away from his prominent Orthodox Israeli family and their 38 generations of rabbis — Amichai Lau-Lavie donned a blonde wig to become Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross.

The Woman in Me came out after Spears’ repressive 13-year conservatorship ended in 2021. Sabbath Queen follows Lau-Lavie for 21 years as he navigates religious power structures and alternative spaces amid debates about Jewish heritage, law, identity and continuity. 

Someone else can write the rest of the dissertation comparing Britney Spears and Amichai Lau-Lavie. (Spears makes a passing reference to Madonna introducing her to Kaballah, but who among us can say they didn’t dabble in Kabbalah with Madonna in the aughts?) Unlike Britney’s book, which altogether quelled my curiosity about her life, Sandi’s documentary made me want to know everything about Amichai’s ongoing journey. Sabbath Queen follows Lau-Lavie back and forth between New York and Israel with an early declaration:

“The patriarchal orthodoxy of my father's legacy in its intact form — I left it for a reason. I stand behind my ethical and aesthetic and philosophical and poetic feminist humane rejection of that strand of Judaism.”

After founding Storahtelling and Lab/Shul, his desire to challenge the gendered, heteronormative strictures of Orthodox Judaism bring him uptown to the Jewish Theological Seminary. There he wrestles with the Conservative movement’s policies toward intermarriage — encountering among others, Dean Rabbi Danny Nevins, formerly of Adat Shalom — on his path to ordination.

Ultimately, Rabbi Lau-Lavie makes the same decision as his grandfather, who led the Kaddish and Shema prayers en route to the gas chamber at Treblinka:

“A rabbi doesn’t leave his congregation.”

Highly recommend attending the screening of Sabbath Queen, followed by Q&A with Director Sandi DuBowski, at the Detroit Film Theatre Sunday afternoon. Stuck streaming? Try Trembling before G-d.