In the premiere episode of Detours and Destinations, Rabbi David Ingber talks with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, the visionary spiritual leader and founder of LabShul, and the subject of the documentary Sabbath Queen about the journey from a lineage of a 38-generation esteemed rabbinic dynasty, to becoming a drag performer, radical storyteller, and groundbreaking rabbi. Amichai’s life has been a bold negotiation between tradition and transformation. His journey is one of self-discovery, rebellion, and ultimately, reinvention. Through humor and heartbreak, Amichai reflects on the detours that shaped him and the power of storytelling as spiritual activism, humanism and empathy in times of crisis, and reimagining tradition.
In the premiere episode of Detours and Destinations, Rabbi David Ingber talks with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, the visionary spiritual leader and founder of LabShul, and the subject of the documentary Sabbath Queen about the journey from a lineage of a 38-generation esteemed rabbinic dynasty, to becoming a drag performer, radical storyteller, and groundbreaking rabbi. Amichai’s life has been a bold negotiation between tradition and transformation. His journey is one of self-discovery, rebellion, and ultimately, reinvention.
This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.
I just want to begin with a שהחיינו, which is a blessing for having arrived at an auspicious moment. And this blessing is blessed as the source of life that brought us to this moment. And this is a big moment for me because I've been thinking about doing a podcast for quite some time. And this is possibly our first podcast that will drop. And there's no better way to honor that than to honor also the verse in Psalms, our sacred poetry that says, it is good when brothers sit together. And certainly today's an auspicious moment because I'm sitting with a brother.
I'm sitting with the remarkable Rabbi Amichai Lau Lavie, who is an activist and a spiritual leader of the lab/shul community in New York City. He's the focus of a remarkable documentary movie that is titled Sabbath Queen, that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this past January 2025. It was filmed over the course of 21 years and directed by another friend, Sandy Dubowski. And it captures Amichai's journey as the heir of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis. And Amichai is being torn between accepting his ancestral destiny or becoming a drag queen rebel. Amichai is a remarkable human being and a really deep friend of mine. And so it's an honor to sit for this inaugural, potentially inaugural, but either way to sit together for detours and destinations.
Welcome Amichai.
Rabbi Amichai (01:37)
Thank you David for inviting me for this detour. Whatever is the destination, we've been in so many conversations together over the years in so many locations. So it's an honor to be with you on this one and congratulations on this new series of deep, deep space into where we meet.
Rabbi David (01:48)
Thank you.
Rabbi Amichai (01:58)
I love that you started with a verse from the Psalms. know, the Hebrew is, how good it is when siblings sit also together. And that also has been such a fertile ground for what does it mean for siblings and people to find common ground, even if we're not exactly on the same page. So you and I probably agree on 90%,
Rabbi David (02:22)
True
Rabbi Amichai (02:28)
98 % on everything. It's that little in between where we see things a little differently which I think is so beautifully rich and what does it mean to be alive at this moment with same and different perspectives.
Rabbi David (02:44)
Yeah, I can't wait to get there and what we do share in the whole 99 % is that both of us are seekers and both of us have been on, I think, journeys is a really powerful image of the journey that is a listening, you have a place you're going, but how you get there is really complicated and ways that app that allows you to reconfigure and readjust and to re, based on the coordinates and reset is really a remarkable image for Detour.
destinations and so I just wanted to start our conversation. For those of you who are going to get to the point where we talk about that you know the documentary about Sabbath Queen but I just my question to you as we start this conversation is
What was the first time that you had a sense that your life had a particular destination? Was that ever something that was resonant for you? Were you someone that understood from an early age that you had a daemon, as some would call it, like a place to go? And do you ever remember thinking about something in your life at a very young age that was like, this is a hiccup, this is a detour, this is something that I have to readjust myself to?
Rabbi Amichai (03:53)
What a great question.
I just want to frame before we get into the sure the entrails of this question that we are sitting today as we're recording this in between two full moons the full moon of shot which is the new year of trees is just behind us the full moon of masks which is the next transformation on our calendar is a few weeks away we are on the five hundred and second day since october seventh
in the middle of this ongoing heartbreak and sorrow for so many. And as an Israeli-American, as a rabbi, as a father, as a humanist, as a human, sitting at this moment and talking with you about destinations and...
and detours, knowing that both you and I are in the service of this big story, in the middle of one of the most profound paradigm shifts for our people in recent centuries. That's the background with which I address your question and our conversation. We're in the middle of something that we don't know. Is this a detour or is this the big story?
Rabbi David (04:49)
Yeah.
Rabbi Amichai (05:11)
Don't relate to your question as a child, but I will say that in my late 20s, which is in the 1990s, living in Israel, impacted by the political...
Shifts impacted by my own coming out and my curiosity about Jewish life that isn't the Orthodox life I grew up with I started getting curious and my curiosity got me to Come to New York City. where our beloved mentors and friends were by Rolly Mattel on and by Marcelo Bronstein at B'nai Jeshur on the Upper West I invited me with a lot of chutzpah to be an artist in residence
And I had this idea of, there's more than Israel. There is the American Jewish story. How they live. Like, what do they do? And how does it feel like to actually be maybe Jewish first and Israeli, not in the forefront? What matters in my toolkit?
And I will say what started off as a Deer Tour, I said yes to a six month residency back in 97, is almost 30 years later. So, Deetour, life's destiny.
Rabbi David (06:23)
Right, that's great, because I think that what we're exploring here in this series is going to be that detours and destinations is very complicated. Like, knowing if it's a detour obviously takes tremendous retrospect, and knowing if it's a destination and how we frame those things. But certainly for our listeners, if we could go a little bit further back, then I really want to come back to that moment when you came to New York on that.
destination that became a detour that was also a destination as a kid growing up. You grew up in an Orthodox home as you reference, so people who will see the movie will know this, but you came from a very traditional Jewish and I would say royal family. Your family has a regal quality to it. Your ancestry, as I mentioned, 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis, but also your uncle was the chief rabbi of Israel, the chief Ashkenazi rabbi of European descent, and your father
also was extremely well known politician. You came from a family with pedigree and you have a special name, your name, if you might say a little bit about your name and your birth and your connection to that. then, cause I'm so curious about then again, how you found your own path in amongst a very, I don't know, I would say like in a community that has visions for its young people that are a little bit different than the vision that you.
I tuned yourself to for yourself. Maybe say a little bit about that.
Rabbi Amichai (07:47)
There are so many stories. Yes, my biography is such that my father of blessed memory, it's been 10 years since he passed, was a Holocaust survivor who was the son of a great rabbi and my father made sure that his younger brother survived alongside with him in Buchenwald and the promise my father made to his father was that somebody will continue the rabbinic lineage, which is...
my uncle is the thirtieth generation i'm thirty nine they're already generation forty men and one woman who's starting to be a rabbi my niece well so generation forty is got a lot of surprises
and i grew up in israel and i was born on israeli independence day which is why my parents named me amichai my nation lives i'm the youngest of four siblings sort of joke that by the time i was born they ran out of immediate relatives to name so i got everybody but seriously i think for my parents nineteen sixty seven
The Six-Day War was both a terrible fright and a huge relief and a religious messianic moment. saying those words very carefully in 2025. But I know that for my parents, my mother who immigrated to Israel as an Olaf from England, as an art Zionist and an idealist who wanted to help build a healthy country, and my father who came in 1945 as a Holocaust survivor who helped build the country,
I in all the ideals that I still believe in and currently it's heartbreaking to see how Israel is struggling to live up to its ideals as this place of refuge and humanity for all. But I grew up with this religious Zionist zeal with the virtue of Torah and the Hezret, so like the Jewish way and the human way. And alongside my journeys I started questioning.
rewrote my Bar Mitzvah sermon. My Bar Mitzvah was in New York in 1982.
Rabbi David (09:56)
Why were you in New York at night?
Rabbi Amichai (09:57)
My father was the Israeli Consul General in New York. in 1981, while my older brothers were in the Israeli army fighting in Lebanon, my parents and my sister and I showed up in the Upper West Side. It's like the Jeffersons. Moving on up. suddenly there was this whole new reality and I went to Jewish day schools in Manhattan and I had my B'mitzvah in a prominent Orthodox synagogue and my B'mitzvah portion was in the middle of the Book of Leviticus.
both the beautiful reminder love everybody as you want to be loved and if a man has sex with another man they have to be executed and at 13 I knew what I was into and I remember standing there I knew that I'm attracted to boys and it didn't seem minor
Rabbi David (10:41)
at 13 you already knew that you would get it.
Rabbi Amichai (10:46)
and standing there on stage on the Bima on my Bommets Vidae in a horrific polyester light brown suit. This is the 80s. I remember thinking like, wow, this is going to get complicated. When I turned 40.
Rabbi David (10:56)
know those well,
Rabbi Amichai (11:04)
I wrote my coming out speech as my bat mitzvah sermon, like visiting my 13 year old and saying, it's gonna be okay. So at 13 did I know? Maybe. When I joined the army at 18, maybe. That was a big eye opening about some of the myths I grew up with and the realities I'm facing. I'll tell you a detour story. When I was about 20,
Rabbi David (11:11)
Amazing.
Rabbi Amichai (11:27)
I did a five year army program where you are in the army for three years and you're studying in a Shiva in a Jewish study center for two years and I was studying in Jerusalem at the Hartman Institute David Hartman of blessed memory and it was a
Rabbi David (11:42)
For those who don't know, the Hartman Institute is like a major educational institution, know, think tank, academics and so on. Also has a high school, has a lot of different elements to it. Named after Shalom Hartman, run by Rabbi Daniel Hartman.
Rabbi Amichai (11:53)
So at the time, David Hartman just ran a very small institute. I was the first year of the high school. wow. I'm graduate of that first experiment. And for only one cycle, they had this sort of like army learning program, which I was in. And there was longer story, but David Hartman and I got into a debate about Jewish law. And I questioned a decision he made about the...
severity of Jewish law and that night he and I sat in his library on a Chelymeno 22 in Jerusalem and we got into a serious debate about Jewish law and He said to me you need to make a choice You're either staying on the highway Or you're taking an exit off the highway and you're taking a detour. Hmm, but if you're getting off the highway You're not gonna be the first you're not gonna be the last to say no to Jewish law as is You'll be lonely. You won't be alone
but you can't stay here. And I remember listening to him and thinking, my journey with orthodoxy, which literally means the one path, is over. I'm gonna take an exit off the highway, because I think Halachad Jewish law has to quote Rabbi Kaplan, a vote, not a veto, and somebody who's...
Rabbi David (12:58)
Yeah.
Rabbi Amichai (13:10)
about to be openly gay and who's a feminist and who's questioning some of the old assumptions of Jewish law, it must evolve. And so I left that night and I took my kippah and I took it off. It's an action I've done so many times since. Now it's back on, mostly. But I remember walking out of the Machon Institute that night and saying, okay, first step out of here. Let's see what's next.
and in retrospect i just want to say years years afterwards at the shiva condolence call for by david hartman i sat with his children with the new yorkman with the non-white high school with and i told them the story and they said you caught him on a bad year when he was much more steer of course he would have said stay here he was into multiple lanes on the highway
Rabbi David (14:01)
I mean, it's you know, heart, you know, many rooms.
Rabbi Amichai (14:06)
Right, but that year
his mother died and he got much more from, got much more pie. He did me a great favor.
Rabbi David (14:10)
It was all about the highway.
Yeah, that's itself like people who set us off on our detours, right, who actually help us get off the highway, because let's say we think that we need to stay on the highway. So here you are with an elder and he's telling you that what you're about to do, which is to be true to yourself and be true to your own conscience, is going to be a detour or it's going to be in some way, know, separating you from kind of the straight way. That's a remarkable detour story. When did you know that also that you were a theater person, that you had a gift?
for drama, for storytelling, because that's also part of your, know, leaving orthodoxy is one thing, embracing your gay identity is one thing, but also that you're not, at this, at one point, we're gonna now pivot back to New York, you're not a rabbi in the classic mold, meaning you're drawn to, at least in your early part of your career and your life, your muse is drama, story, is that whole theater piece of being, you
transformation through stage. When did that emerge for you? At what age? Do you remember?
Rabbi Amichai (15:19)
So I think one would blame Purim. think my first drag in dressing up was for sure, once a year we have this holiday, which is the dress up upside down permission. When I was three years old, I got dressed up as my cousin Rachel, and she was me. And we cross dressed, and today she's a grandmother with great grandchildren in Bnei Brak, ultra-orthodox.
I think the flair for make-belief started then. And then over the years I was interested in writing. I did a lot of writing. I inherited one of my father's typewriters and was like clanking away writing stories.
Rabbi David (16:04)
You're an extraordinary writer. I I've always been drawn to your writings and various projects that you've done. You can get into that a little bit later, but I just wanted to interject. So writing was another play.
Rabbi Amichai (16:15)
Yeah,
no, I loved writing and I loved figuring out how to say things and then I started exploring a career in education. My early 20s, I started realizing that storytelling is a very important tool in the human toolkit of well-being and of growth and of tough truths.
Rabbi David (16:38)
Yeah.
Rabbi Amichai (16:39)
through story in many ways. I began experimenting in different ways of doing that in Israel, in American Jewish summer camps, started exploring what does it mean to be a teacher, an educator, a storyteller. I was interested in psychodrama. But I'll tell you the night that really made me understand that I want to be a storyteller as a real deep as a
Rabbi David (17:03)
Like as a craft, as
a sacred call.
Rabbi Amichai (17:05)
And
it's a night that I think shifted many people's consciousness and trajectories and time will tell how it changed Jewish and world history. So this is November 4th, 1995. night...
Rabbi David (17:20)
Thank you.
Rabbi Amichai (17:23)
Saturday night in the night it's Huckabee and his oz prime minister was Fascinated by a Jewish terrorist need to say it you got a meal a fundamentalist Jew who grew up exactly as I grew up with the same religious Zionist convictions in Akiva same youth movement and He believed I think still believes that in order to save the land of Israel and the future of the Zionist Israeli state it's Huckabee who was involved in the peace leadership and the Oslo
accords needs to be eliminated and so Rabin was assassinated that night was a huge
terror and shockwaves throughout the world. I was living in Jerusalem and I was on my rooftop in Jerusalem that night looking at the rivers of candles throughout downtown Jerusalem, the waves of grief. This is before social media. So we went glued to our screens. We were in the streets and I heard Yigal Amir talking on the radio.
that night and saying I did this because of voice told me to kill it's hot and all I could hear was the story from Genesis of the binding of Isaac where Abraham Abraham here's a call that says sacrifice Isaac night for the sake of the legacy for the sake of loving God for the sake of the continuity of this you gotta sacrifice your beloved son it's hot
Rabbi David (18:41)
Chapter 22 of Genesis, yeah.
Rabbi Amichai (18:51)
And in my mind I was thinking, I am witness to the sequel. In the original Genesis story, Abraham doesn't sacrifice Yitzchak. An angel interrupts. Isaac is spared. We are here.
Rabbi David (18:56)
Wrong.
Rabbi Amichai (19:05)
But in this story, Isaac was not spared. You know who spoke about it at the funeral? Bill Clinton. The only one to mention the binding of Isaac, the sacrifice. But I was thinking, Igor Lamire and I come from the same place. We are very different in our political understanding and our religious understanding of our destiny. But both he and I are privileged to have the hard drive. I know the story. I know how to read Torah.
Rabbi David (19:31)
You have the original
Rabbi Amichai (19:33)
I know how to read Midrash, I know how to teach. It's my responsibility as a humanist, as a peacemaker, to talk back to the fundamentalists and say, not this way. Human life, more sacred than land. The peace is, et cetera, et cetera. So I was thinking to myself, if Judaism is a car that is now about to drive off the rails in this kind of fundamentalist hateful rhetoric,
Rabbi David (19:46)
Right.
Yeah.
Rabbi Amichai (20:02)
who knew back in ninety five right you don't change the color of the car you change the engine change the fuel and what's the fuel the stories we tell and how we tell them so if we tell the story of the binding of isaac how do we talk
Rabbi David (20:18)
How
do we tell?
Rabbi Amichai (20:19)
to the story how do we say it in a way that honors where we come from but doesn't perpetuate the toxic trauma that intergenerationally we are carrying that night and the days after I did a lot of writing about talking back to the binding of Isaac talking back to the narratives that I inherited convinced me that what I want to do is be a storyteller
And that led to a lot of things including the theater work, including storytelling, including Hadassah Gross, and including eventually the theatrical enterprise of being a rabbi.
Rabbi David (20:57)
What's amazing in that story, mean, of course, that you bring it up now, in this coming year, we're going to be marking the 30th commemoration of that horrific event and its repercussions and its consequences. And what's remarkable to me in listening to your story is that there two things that stand out. One is that the story is that he didn't actually do.
if he had adhered actually to the text, the text is horrific on its own account that someone would be willing as a father and you and I are both fathers, something that when we first met, it was not the case. Both of us have children. We have sons and the story stands alone as a traumatic or horrific text on its own. A text of terror as Phyllis Treble would call it. And what's ironic here is of course that he didn't actually, Yigal Amir did not adhere to the simple meaning of the text. He added his own gloss, which was horrible because he
should have spared Isaac as it were instead of going through. But the second takeaway for me, which is remarkable, is that in some way, your calling is born of this, your own sense that you're called to be a voice that speaks back to the text, that speaks into the text in ways that are both.
consistent with the tradition, because the tradition has this Midrashic element, which means to expand the text, but also your own take on it was unique with your own skill set. That you, as a writer, as a storyteller, and also as someone who knows that sometimes the only way to go forward is to go sideways, right?
that you had to go slightly sideways to this whole tradition and do it your way, which is always something, as your friend and as a colleague, when I think of Amichai, I Amichai does it his own way. There's something about you that's unique. And so this moment changes your life and sets you forth on this, what becomes part of your calling, storytelling, which is a unique neologism. It's a kind of a word that you created, which is another key creative piece of you. You are incredible with...
language and naming and so you name a troop called Stora as in Torah but story and Torah telling together and it becomes a Phenomena here in the United States, but let's go back to this moment that we began with
where you come to the United States and you are brought to do a fellowship at the venerated Upper West Side Synagogue, B'nai Jeshrin, by Rabbis Roli, Matalon, and Marcelo Bronstein. Pick us up there. So your Israelis-ness now is slightly receding, your Jewishness is coming to the fore, and you're kind of set free here in the United States? Are there things that happen for you in the United States that can only happen here away from Israel, away from your family, away from that scene?
Rabbi Amichai (23:40)
Yeah, I think that's a good way to describe it. I was in my late 20s. So Saturn return is just kicking in. I'm figuring out like, who do I want to be? What is at stake? Israel was going through its own turmoil. mean, Netanyahu became prime minister for the first time in 96. That felt ominous, frankly, again, 30 years later.
Rabbi David (23:44)
Yeah.
And the scene like here? Are you like in the gay scene?
Rabbi Amichai (24:11)
So now when I first
came here I was just very curious. I lived on the Upper West Side. I began exploring what Jewish looks like, what American looks like, what synagogue is like. I started teaching. My mandate was, so BJ at the time, to talk about this now, these years later, BJ in the late 90s was like the place to be on Friday night. Totally. Right? There were like two
Rabbi David (24:40)
Dating
scene.
Rabbi Amichai (24:41)
dating scene fighting I have a lot of two services music
Rabbi David (24:45)
outside the door. Yes, you know, there's a bouncer at the door to get in. was like, I'm kidding, but yeah.
Rabbi Amichai (24:51)
Probably was.
And what the rabbis at this time said to me was look we have a lot of people who are coming to us Friday night, but there's no continuity. They don't show up during the week. They don't deepen the literacy. They don't get to know each other. It's a pickup scene. It's a great scene. People get connected to their Jewishness, to their realness.
Rabbi David (25:09)
all
the sociologists of Judaism who want Jews to be Jews.
Rabbi Amichai (25:16)
All the questions you and I would get asked over the years, what's your recipe? What's your secret sauce? Can we replicate Rabamu? Can we leverage Lapshal? The answer is yes and no. It's complicated. But at the time the rabbis wanted to have a thicker...
conversation around Jewish values. And that was the work I was doing in Israel. I started creating Jewish study groups in Tel Aviv, in Haifa, in Jerusalem for secular Israelis who wanted nothing to do with Judaism but wanted to open the book, the books, get to know the bookshelf, know that we have access to the same text, right? That's still a response to that, to that night. Like we have to know
where we come from. have to be on the same page of our antiquity so we can create a new meaning making. so in New York
Rabbi David (26:04)
know that you had
that skill. just wanted like, that's a skill that you have in spades, which is the ability to speak to code switch very easily between like you have so many different selves, you know, your Israeli self, your Jewish self, you're very connected to like what it feels like for a secular Jew or somebody who's secular Israeli. Did you always have that? Did you know that you had that emotional intelligence that way?
Rabbi Amichai (26:27)
You know, it's funny you mentioned that the term code switching. I actually think on some level my my growing up religious and secretly increasingly secretly consciously gay was boot camp for code switching. Wow. Right. Like I remember talking about taking my keeper off. I remember at the age of six.
Walking from my home in Ramat Gan, which is a suburb of Tel Aviv on the board of Bnei Brak, the super ultra orthodox neighborhood. And we lived in the in-between. And I would take my kippah off when I went to the public library because there were these like, Hiloni secular kids who would taunt religious kids. And I'm like, not messing with that. Taking my kippah off, I'm going to blend in as a kid. Wow. Right? And then in my teen years, as I'm beginning to question Jewish law, because of
reading the Bible and Jewish law and knowing that I am worthy of an execution and I'm an abomination and a deep wise voice inside of me says, yeah, okay. The problem is the text. Whoever wrote the text, I didn't know the word patriarchy then or the, you know, all those fancy words, but I realized something here was not right. And then I started discovering that I'm not the first, no, the only one to question the validity on the authority of the text as is.
Find code switching what if what if you know on Friday nights, I guess in my late teens I started running away from my father's synagogue and I went to a reform synagogue Quiet I didn't tell my parents Anyway, so I think the code switching had to do with understanding that I am on the margins that I am on the fringe But actually it's a good place to observe what's going on and to be a translator
Rabbi David (28:21)
Right. And so know how to translate to wear the garb will get to the the cross-dressing. Yeah. Someone else's clothing, someone else's reality and then know that code switching like that's something that you have. I think it's remarkable. So you were saying, so here you're setting up all of these. You're an educator turning people on in Israel where he named more secular to Jewish text. And then you're, you're kind of charged by the rabbis here to do that here.
Rabbi Amichai (28:45)
Yes, and so I started doing that here. I started a Torah class. I started a Sex on the Table class on intimacy and the Talmud. There's a bagels and boo-burr thing I was part of. There was all these like, and right the...
Rabbi David (28:59)
love your alliterations by the way. You're naturally an alliterative person. I love it.
Rabbi Amichai (29:04)
Everyone says I should have gone into copywriting made a lot of money and then gone into rabbinate. Whatever I'm doing it the other way around but I Don't know we're in midlife we'll talk about midlife crisis as the conversation goes on so it's I'm there I'm beginning to experiment all these different classes and workshops and working with the rabbis and learning what they need and what people need and Who shows up and who doesn't show up?
Rabbi David (29:12)
the raven as a detour for your
Rabbi Amichai (29:30)
I guess a couple things happen simultaneously. The first is that I'm sitting in a synagogue at Ne'esh Echeren on a Shabbat morning and for the first time in my adult life I am moved by prayers. It's musical, there's a, know, the B.J. Rabbi's brought gravity and intention into it, politics, human values.
Rabbi David (29:45)
It's.
Rabbi Amichai (29:55)
and at the same time i'm noticing that on show but morning on saturday morning there is this sizable chunk of the service which is the Torah service which actually is not as exciting and the Torah is chanted in Hebrew most of the people sitting don't know Hebrew they're following along in the books the particular show about that
caught me on fire was sometimes in November, the story of Joseph and his brothers. This is such a good story. And as I've said often, 40 blocks south of Nezheshar, and there's a line around the block to get into the Joseph musical on Broadway. And here we are, theatrically presenting the original on a stage with somebody who scripted with the actual words. And it's not exactly the most exciting thing on the planet. And
with my theatrical had on i went to the rabbi's and i said guys i can do sunday night i can do wednesday evening i can do everything you've asked me to do prime time give me toa on shabbat morning the jews and the pews we can do a better job with the torah service it's theater yeah and they said it's complicated by mitzvahs you know the whole thing and i know anyway long story short that was november by april
I got a free Shabbat. was Tazliah Metzoha, a Torah portion all about leprosy and bodily discharge. I went researching briefly that once upon a time the Jewish traditional storytelling was born in Jerusalem around 450 BCE, 2,500 years ago, as the original Jewish story hour. Where the Torah scroll was unrolled for the first time, it is described in the biblical book of
Rabbi David (31:21)
Nobody wanted it.
Rabbi Amichai (31:45)
Maya and read out loud and alongside the readers of the Hebrew Torah were the mavens the maveneem who Translated there were the storytellers were line by line from the written made it alive in the vernacular They were storytellers and that tradition Targum was alive for 1500 years before dying out around the shift to European jury thousand years ago
Rabbi David (32:11)
And thus was born.
Rabbi Amichai (32:13)
I'm like, let
me do this and so on that's about in April somebody chanted the Torah in Moroccan trope I translated line by line
Rabbi David (32:21)
musical
musical notation of the rocking tradition. which was beautiful. Reading of the Chora. Morty.
Rabbi Amichai (32:26)
Shrem, who since
then became a cantor. And I translated, I interpreted the Torah line by line, but instead of talking about Sarahat, which is maybe biblical leprosy, I talked about HIV. Because at the time I was living with a boyfriend who since deceased, Pi, who had HIV. And so I talked about what it's like to live with leprosy. What does it mean to be in quarantine, to be adjacent, to come back into community?
but it was a modern rendering of a biblical concept and everybody was riveted and suddenly understood that the only way to own the written Torah is by allowing the spoken Torah, right? We have Torah, the written text, and we have the spoken oral Torah, Shabal Peh, to speak it out, to talk back to it, to speak with it. And out of that Shabbat morning in April, storytelling was born. The rabbis were like, this is great.
To their credit they gave me the space to grow this over the next couple of years and out of that a Jewish theater company was born to restore the art of the translator to make Jewish space a site specific arena for storytelling talking back to our toxic texts of terror and Rediscovering our voice as queer as women as Jews
Rabbi David (33:50)
modern, whoever, whoever.
Rabbi Amichai (33:52)
to make Midrash matter.
Rabbi David (33:54)
So midrash, for those who don't know, listeners, midrash is the Hebrew word for to seek out or to expound upon. kind of the actual name for a body of literature that expands upon the text itself by either expanding in the lacuna, like the spaces between the story, parts of the story that are not mentioned, questions in the text. It's an expansive endeavor. It's distinctly and uniquely Jewish in its form, meaning like the rabbis had a chutzpah. They're like, are aggregated to themselves.
the text says X and the rabbis do X plus and they add and they add. And what you were doing was a kind of modern, postmodern version of Midrash, of expounding on the text into modern idiom, into modern frames, into actually dynamic theatrical representation of Midrash. wasn't just like reading it in the book, as Midrash became read as it was read, as it was written down over the centuries. You're making modern Midrash like you're actually writing scripts and...
engaging the audience. I think that was the first time that I met you. I think we met, before we met in the UK, which we talked about before the taping, I met you because I went to a high holiday service one year when I came back to rabbinical school in 2003-04 and you were at BJ. The troupe was doing something on Yom Kippur and I came into the children's service where you guys were doing a storytelling version of the traditional.
reading for Yonkipur and there was like it had a goat and there was like a trumpet and I was like blown away. I was blown away because I'd never experienced that before and it was really creative and it was engaging and the people were into it and people were like up and riveted they weren't looking at their books. It was alive, it was dynamic and it was 3D. It was kind of like the text of the tour became three dimensional, third dimensional. And so storytelling becomes this
beginning of your like in some ways that was the beginning of your rabbinate right like storytelling it was like all of sudden now you are a leader you're you start training people in storytelling right you can actually become someone who knows how to do this method it's trademarked it's your thing and at some point the rabbinate comes knocking on your door so at some point now you're an out
actually, before we go to the rabbinate, can we go to Hadassah Gross for a second? We gotta go to Rebbetz and Hadassah Gross. And by the way, for all of our listeners here, all of this, once you see Sabbath Queen, where are people gonna see Sabbath Queen, by the way?
Rabbi Amichai (36:22)
It'll be in lots of places. It's screened everywhere.
Rabbi David (36:25)
We're gonna come
back to that. back to Sabbath Queen. when you see the documentary, you'll see a lot of this trajectory. But for those who are listening, right, so you're out at this point, you're publicly gay, and you're living in New York City. At that point, are your parents, how's your family doing in Israel? they cool with the fact that you're chosen lifestyle, you're living with Pi, you're living with a gay man, you're doing instruments, you're doing Sabbath things. Are you getting...
Pushback, are you having private conversations? Are people saying, hey, Amichai, you're a part of this rabbinic family. Are you getting any of that? I mean, I know it's complicated. Families are complicated, but a little bit maybe, or.
Rabbi Amichai (37:07)
I think it was mixed. think my parents, bless them, and my immediate family understood that what I was doing was not to piss them off. wasn't a dafka. It wasn't just to get back at them. It was me exploring how to be me and honor my tradition in ways that made sense. It was not their cup of tea. Wow.
Rabbi David (37:26)
But that's an amazing thing for them to be to go that far because a lot of families as we know
Rabbi Amichai (37:31)
look there was plenty of tensions and I made a choice of living very far away that was not an accident. Recently my brother Benny Lau who's an important rabbi in Israel was with me and is an important part of the Sabbath Queen film as are you by the way we'll talk about that but Benny my brother was with me at a Q &A at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival back
now in december and spoke about the film and actually admitted he said it was very easy for me that i'm the high is thousands of miles away right right for many years that distance allowed us now to know right and that's okay that's okay we're very close and we honor each other's paths and we're not exactly on the same page what happened to me is a few things first of all i want to say that the rabinet knocked on my door or i knocked on the rabbinets door way earlier
I don't know if you know this, but in the early in in 93 94 I'm a stinker. I'm like 23 24 but shlomo Karlova of blessed memory was in Jerusalem I ran a pub called Zusha at the basement of Yakal of the synagogue and cut out and it was like a Hasidic pub but it was like quite the hangout scene and of shlomo you would come there and
we would hang out and I knew him already, he knew my family well. And I went to him and I asked him to get Simei Cha to be ordained by him. And that was when he started ordaining Reb Mimi and Reb Yoni and people we know in the early 90s.
Rabbi David (39:01)
He said radical
move for those who don't know Shlomo Kabbach was out there is an Orthodox rabbi who was you know, definitely over the line in certain ways as an Orthodox rabbi. He did some radical things but yes, he said yes.
Rabbi Amichai (39:13)
He said yes. And I said, okay,
I'm going to start. And then started figuring out what we'll do. I'll study Hasidic thing with Mimie. I'll do something with Yoni. And then he died. And I was like, okay, I guess I'm not getting my ordination from her.
Rabbi David (39:29)
He was a person that you thought like it would have to take a unique person to give you correction
Rabbi Amichai (39:34)
Retrospect
Shlomo Kahlabach taught me so much and I'm so grateful to him and I'm aware of his complexity but he would not have been the right one to give me my lineage of Rabbinate moving forward. The next one I went to was our beloved Rabbi Rabbi Zalman Shekhteshalomi who I met also in the mid 90s and Rabbi Zalman said you're not ready yet but come back to me when you are.
and he was right I wasn't ready and so I let it go and then storytelling began we'll come back to Hadassah in a moment and my flag was artists are the new rabbis.
Rabbi David (40:09)
Storytelling
was about art. Yeah, artists...
Rabbi Amichai (40:13)
We will bring the art into the synagogue and we will wake people up through the heart. That's storytelling You know, I'm not gonna sell you religion I'm gonna invite you into the story and for everybody who's baggage by religion who's hired by God who's
Rabbi David (40:27)
What I call post-traumatic God disorder. Post-traumatic?
post-traumatic God too much? Yes. Yes, The wrong God?
Rabbi Amichai (40:33)
do it through the back
door you would through the art do it through the humor and that was my spiel that was my stick which i believe it is a spirit and it's everything we do from the music to the aesthetics to the store
Rabbi David (40:40)
deeply your spiritual path.
Because it's affective and it's alive and it's transformative and cathartic and all of those.
Rabbi Amichai (40:51)
And it challenges the status quo, right? That's what artists do. So at some point in the late 90s, around my beginning, path at Ne'ezh Echaran, around Purim, so it's around this time of year, there was a weekend of a study group that I was involved with that was studying the Book of Esther for an entire year, a group of Israeli and American, mostly Jews. And I was invited to be the MC of the Cabaret on the weekend, somewhere in the Catskills.
And somehow I had the thought that sure, I will do it in drag. I've done drag once or twice before, very small scale. There is a photo of that one time that somebody showed me that drag is horrific. I would never be shown, never be seen publicly in that outfit again. Sort of looked like a very demented Snow White. what happened that night was over a serious amount of vodka.
Rabbi David (41:50)
you
Rabbi Amichai (41:50)
Hadassah
gross emerged. Hadassah gross came as is. That was her name. That was her identity. She had the great Hadassah cookbook that she took off my aunt's shelf on the Upper West Side. We knew she was Hungarian. We knew she was the widow of Rabbi Moisha Groys, an important rabbi. We knew she teaches Kabbalah. And I was out of the picture. She took over. That night, there's no...
Video there's a single photo, but people told me it was riveting it was Taking the story of Esther and poor him and all of our shadow through this Make-believe drag hilarity into somewhere both dark and beautiful
Rabbi David (42:40)
And there were things that you could say as a dasa gross.
Rabbi Amichai (42:43)
So well over time, over
time Hadassah came back the following Purim and then another Purim and there was some successes and there was some horrendous failures. We'll not get into that. But within a few years by the early 2000s Hadassah is a thing.
Rabbi David (42:58)
I remember her at a Limur, New York, which is this large conference of learning that takes place over a weekend, the Easter egg place. I already had known who you were, but we weren't yet like close friends. But I remember her on a Friday night at Limur, like a thousand people were there. And I remember her presence. remember once she showed up in the room, she was magnetic. you, Amichai, in embodying her, people were drawn to her.
There was something about this character which was very you and also very... They're not you. Yeah.
Rabbi Amichai (43:34)
Very not me.
It's incredible. mean, we can talk more and this is not the focus. The shamanic way in which cross-dressing or inhabiting another role being in the liminal space between genders, being the court jester, the Malka, something ancient indigenous wisdom. And I really do feel on a deep level that Hadassah is channeled.
Rabbi David (43:41)
Yeah.
Yes.
something that's telling.
Rabbi Amichai (44:04)
other words yes I did drag but another entity took over and it's not just several vodka tonics for her to take over something happens there and in fact one of the reasons why ten years later in around 2013 I decided to or she decided to let her be it felt a little too much
but in the decade or so in which she traveled the world and performed and taught and turned out that she's a holocaust survivor, that she's the widow of six illustrious rabbis, not just one, that she has a lot to say about grief, she has a lot to say about trauma, she has a lot to say about healing. She was an unabashed evangelist of Jewish faith.
And while I felt very ambivalent being on stage and like celebrating Judaism or talking about God or lighting Shabbos candles, any of those things, was no prisoners because it was funny and it was a show, but it was also real. And in that, is it real or surreal? Something opened up.
Rabbi David (45:03)
safe anyway.
We're gonna
pivot now to talk about your rabbit, but like there's no better way to like pivot into that through that post that door Than to talk about a character who embodied that same marginal The ability to speak from the margins and code switch of course the question for you is that I can't wait to explore is like the authenticity of it right like where you are
in your truest form because when you are able to code switch so clearly and also use the different garbs and cross dress and wear other people's clothing, wear other people's experience, know, where you are, sometimes I know as somebody who's attuned to other people and that's a question, but you did it so beautifully and with such, you know, the provocateur in you, that quality in you that stands from the outside and says, and is critical, but also humorous. Like with Hadassah Gross' character, and I invite listeners to find
her, if you can. She was remarkably brilliant in embedding depth with humor, kind of slightly to keep people off, like to give them an out, to let it a soft landing. She said hard truths, and she, you know, it was really an amazing character. And then when the rabbinate started knocking on your door again, or you knocked on its door again...
That's a question for you, like in terms of your detour. What happened there and was it something that was always waiting for you and it was knocking again like 1993-04 with Shlomo Hadassah, you kind of took your way at being a rabbi, but you were not a rabbi yet, you were a Rebbetzin. You were kind of there. What happens there where you start exploring, I don't know, getting off the highway or getting back on the highway? Like, what was that like?
Rabbi Amichai (46:49)
I
think you happened.
Rabbi David (46:53)
Me? Yeah.
Rabbi Amichai (46:54)
There's a beautiful scene in the Sabbath Queen film where Hadassah grows as a guest at your shul, at Romamu on Purim. And you say one of the most profound lines in the film about what is a mask and how do we find truths and what is the hidden and what is the revealed. I think you were already very successful with Romamu. You were very hospitable to Hadassah, to my early years with storytelling before we created Labshul, the community that came out of storytelling.
And I was looking around at rabbis like you, like our friend Sharon Brouse, like other young innovators, not so young anymore, who were creating a new sort of rabbinate, were reinventing the synagogue. I was looking at the role models of Roli and Marcelo and other creatives.
Was looking at my brother who was a successful rabbi in Jerusalem and I asked myself How can I be a change agent? What is my best way to go into the room where things happen and to be helpful and pushing the envelope of change to be part of the paradigm shift and for years I use the artists of the new rabbi's flag and hadassah
was just this you know cultural terrorist who you know took a room by storm and it was so outlandish but she was the widow of rabbis and that was on some cosmic psychic level a very important level for me to stand there and say well what if i do this without the wig what if if i do this without the heels what if my
Feminine divine my femininity that is so powerful through hadassah Makes way to my masculinity to who I am in my body Can I be the rabbi and not just the rabbi's widow? Hmm, and I remember the first few times that I experimented with creating ritual space with leading a blessing teaching something that felt pious And I was like, where the heels oops. I what's going on? I'm innocent
And it felt like, uh-huh, this is where you're going. And so as I turned in my late 30s, I already began the beautiful journey of being part of this queer family where I'm very honored to help raise these beautiful children in a very alternative family here in New York. And I thought towards my 40th birthday and I thought, if I'm gonna start the rabbinet and be a link in the chain,
of the DNA that I inherited and be a helpful voice in a world that needs more helpful voices to walk the talk of humanist, moral, queer, feminist, love-driven and not fear-based Judaism, it's now or never. And I looked in the mirror and I thought, okay, this is the time to do it. The LabShul community that I co-created with beautiful artists was ready for its next phase as a...
Rabbi David (49:59)
It was already a community. You'd already started a community before the Arabian. It was kind of the beginnings of a community. You'd taken storytelling and it kind of, it became a great name for those who were listening. Labshul, which is a really, like perfectly encapsulates the experimental, innovative element. You called it a God optional, right? A God optional meaning come with whatever theological. BYOG.
Rabbi Amichai (50:04)
It was very nascent.
Yeah,
we look basically we were a theater company that created ritual and then we realized we're a community that creates theater right and that happened around 2012 13 and then I thought okay, and I was the artistic director and the spiritual leader
Rabbi David (50:40)
You're coming you're like there's a next moment and the next moment
Rabbi Amichai (50:44)
was for
storytelling to become lab school for us to be a community and for me to embrace the rabbinate longer story I don't think we have the time for it now I chose intentionally and well done the Jewish theological seminary in the Upper West Side the conservative movement that I believe philosophically I stand with completely that halakha evolves with careful consideration we honor the path
Rabbi David (51:11)
Like
the conversation you had with Rabbi Hartman. Yes. The Jewish law That they're gonna keep Jewish law evolving and moving. Organic.
Rabbi Amichai (51:18)
organically.
And I was so impressed by the way in 2006 the Jewish Theological Seminary and the conservative movement voted to admit me as an openly gay human into the rabbinate and other LGBT students. The process by which they went with that decision-making was so impressive for me. The careful approach to different perspectives even though saying yes to this change at the expense of saying no to the generations of Jewish law.
felt like there was room in that room for me. was room around the table. And so I went to the Jewish Logical Seminary. I graduated in 2016. You were there with me. Yes. My mother, my brother, my family, my children, my community. There's a whole other chapter we won't get into about an hour of time about why I broke with the rabbinical assembly of the conservative movement over some of my convictions.
Rabbi David (51:57)
there and then there was there
Rabbi Amichai (52:16)
but not, you know, having not lost my sense of solidarity and respect to many of the leaders and the through line of what this movement is about at a moment where I actually don't think it's about denominations.
Rabbi David (52:30)
Those who will hopefully watch the Sabbath Queen will go through many of these stages in a very profound way and see some of that transformation from the rabbinate and your break from the concerted movement. But just two things now to discuss. Number one is like, I wanna ask you about that moment when you graduated and then I wanna ask you about Sabbath Queen. So that moment, that day, I was there. That was a powerful moment.
And I knew, I had only known you for about, since about 2004, three, four, right? So I only knew you for about 12 years or so of your journey, a remarkable journey from a a young Israeli kid born into this rabbinic and very public family who finds his way and, you know, comes out and...
is very publicly out in some ways. there was an article that you had not given permission and you kind of publicly were outed in Israel and you found your way. Your family loved you but from a distance and you come to America and you discover that you have these superpowers. You're a great storyteller, you're a great writer. You have access to the text in ways that nobody else really has here in America. But you also have this code switching capacity. You find power in being.
a provocateur, also being a thoughtful provocateur and you push people in very generative ways and all these things are happening. And then like the story.
At that moment, as you are no longer Hadassah Gross, the Rebbetson, teaching Torah with heels and with a wig and with a Hungarian accent, which you pulled off incredibly well, but here you are in your full Amichainess, your full unmasked beauty, standing there with your mother, quelling and proud of you and tears are flowing and your mentor is there and he's holding the prayer show all over you and I'm sitting there and I'm watching and I'm crying and I'm thinking to myself, now looking back, did you feel
on that day that that everything had gone up until that point all the different places you had been were leading you to that moment where you stood there as a representative
of this lineage, you know, that it looked different. It was a different form than your brothers. You were one of four kids, you know. You were the youngest. But here you were standing in the glory of that moment, having been on all these different places, you know, that the divine had brought you. And you were...
like that was your destination. Did you have sense of that? Am I putting something like that in your amazing story?
Rabbi Amichai (55:18)
Well, clearly you're tapping into something that we're both feeling moved by. My rabbinic choice, your rabbinic choice, we both come from similar backgrounds and have chosen similar and different paths. I wasn't there for the moment of ordination for yours. I'm grateful that you were there for mine. As you're speaking, David, the image that I have in front of me is the one I had in front of me on that day. And that's my grandfather.
my father's father.
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, died younger than we are now, and died leading his congregation in Poland to the gas chambers in 1942.
In the early 1930s he started knowing, he realized what's gonna happen and he started writing a book about martyrdom, about Kiddush Hashem. The manuscript was lost, my father hid it. But my grandfather was a rabbi who stood with his community and who stood for Jewish values and human values and dignity in the face of such horror.
Would he have chosen otherwise? Would he have gotten out? A thousand questions. None of that matters now. But I feel at this moment in 2025, we're living under tyranny in an authoritarian state whose power is just growing at a moment of such unknown sadness and uncertainty for my family, our families in Israel, for my friends and families.
friends in palestine for people around the world who are shocked by where we are right now what does it mean to be a spiritual leader what does it mean to be in service of human need to be a spokesperson for morality for resilience so who knows what's next for us right we're not fifties right midlife you're starting a podcast right
Rabbi David (57:31)
midlife.
Rabbi Amichai (57:36)
I'm doing my own sticks. thinking about my next...
Rabbi David (57:38)
The
The next phase. So there was a sense, you know, your grandfather was there, and so there was a sense that all of these things were leading. And you do draw from all of those detours. Whether they were originally destinations will be my final question to you, but certainly you've used all of what you've taken and all of the exits that you've taken. Like they're part of your, now your highway, the way that you live in the world. And so for those who are listening or watching,
The Sabbath Queen documentary that we've been referencing from the beginning is an incredible feat because it's 21 years of footage of your journey. Somewhere in there, you knew that your story was going to be bigger than you. Somewhere in there, you knew that your story could serve other people and that by witnessing it, the next queer kid who wants to become a rabbi will watch this and see you as their mentor, the mentors that you never had.
Right? The people, the images and the leadership that you were not privileged to have, that you became that for others through this documentary, right? And you knew in there that you had a meta story. When did you know that? Cause did Sandy approach you or did you? Cause I think that was incredibly prescient by one of you to see that your story in all of its variegated ways. mean, there are 15,000 hours, how many hours of
Rabbi Amichai (59:05)
that I know.
Rabbi David (59:05)
Least. Least.
I mean every time I saw you there was a crew that was gaining like these were precious things that were happening. Some of the scenes in Sabbath Queen are things that I just thank God, thank the Lord, thank Shechina, thank Spirit that someone was there recording it because it's really, it's art. It really was, it's a work of art. So when did...
Rabbi Amichai (59:30)
Yeah.
Rabbi David (59:31)
So how is it leading you? want to know how that's leading you now into our midlife crisis. Both of us are like, I'm doing this, you're doing something. I want to show people some of this at the end, like, how did it, you know?
Rabbi Amichai (59:43)
So briefly on Sabbath Queen, I am a storyteller. And at some point I realized that there is another storyteller who wants to tell my story. And that's Sandy Dubowski, who's a very talented filmmaker. we met around his revolutionary first film, Trembling Before God, about the lives of LGBT people in the Jewish Orthodox community. And he started filming really around Hadassah in the early 2000s. And it was...
Just a thing, you know, and it kept growing. So it's him you need to ask. Okay at what point he's like, oh, this is a thing is it But I will say as the film Started screening this past complicated year. We realized that the filming began shortly after 9-eleven and it ended after 10-7 so between
Rabbi David (1:00:20)
Yeah.
Rabbi Amichai (1:00:37)
That terror attack that changed the world and the terror attack that was still living in, right, of October 7th, the film tells the first two decades of the 21st century. And yes, it's me and my choices, but it's our story. It's the paradigm shift of Judaism and of Israelism and the American story, the terror that we're living in and how that's shifting.
our lives and the many wonderful changes that we're seeing in our world. So at some point Sandy realized that this film is a story about me and not just about me. I think the reason this film is resonating for people now on spiritual levels, on political levels, queer people, Jewish people, other people is because it tells the story of reflection while running on what does it mean to live. Live out loud. Live with love. Honor the tradition.
love and love more one's path. it ends really after October 7th with me standing with my family and with the rest of the people in the Holy Land with love and hope and broken hearts. And it ends with a call for moral imagination. Film's done. It's now touring. It will tour more on campuses and theater. Really amazing.
Rabbi David (1:01:58)
And how's it been received?
Rabbi Amichai (1:02:01)
really incredibly I mean I can tell you the number of conversations and heartfelt dialogues and you know just now we screened in Israel and a woman stands up at the end of the screening and says I am a lesbian Haredi ultra-orthodox woman I've never said these two words out loud together tonight I can thank you hmm and then as Palestinian man stands up and said I'm a Palestinian Muslim I rejected my Islam
But tonight, because of this film, understand that I'm allowed to pick and choose. And I can look what is worthwhile in my tradition that I want to honor. So these are some of the, that's two in one night. We're like, wow.
Rabbi David (1:02:43)
And since it doesn't leave you feeling hopeful about the future, I mean, we're both in our midlife crisis, we're both thinking about what's next, next 15 years, but like, we are in the precipice. Are you feeling some hope?
Rabbi Amichai (1:02:56)
I will recycle Viktor Frankl's wise words about being a tragic optimist. I think spirals contract and then expand. You talked earlier about making a detour. What is a spiral? A spiral is a detour. Things are in a circle. It's not going anywhere. Same circle. And then there's a tiny shift, and boom, you get a spiral.
So we're in a spiral and we're spiraling down. It's it's a it's a mobius trip. OK, so right now Trump and right now Bibi and right now Hamas and right now the horror of reality. I live in the mythic. I I am almost at the end of a three and a half year journey to read the entire Hebrew Bible daily and to post on it. It's called below the Bible Belt. My blog, we just started the Song of Songs. We just finished Job.
Rabbi David (1:03:27)
We're spiraling
Rabbi Amichai (1:03:54)
In August, I will be done reading the entire Hebrew Bible, three and a half years, chapter by chapter, day by day. What that's giving me, other than really knowing the Bible, which is why I did it, is getting a sense of the mythics. Part of something so much bigger, and yes, my grandfather's photo is on my desk, and the Bible is on my desk as well. But I'm here too, and I'm in 2025, and I'm in my mid-50s.
Rabbi David (1:04:08)
The Mythic Scope. Whip.
Rabbi Amichai (1:04:21)
I know that my heart yearns to be much more in Israel, be part of what's helpful in an Israeli Jewish conversation that talks back to Yigal Amir 30 years later and to his successors who are now running the country. I want to be part of Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Palestinian, Israeli dialogue for peace, because only through faith will we find the path forward. I miss Hebrew.
in my intimate daily life on a more... I think that's where I'm after almost 30 years in the States that's where I'm gradually moving to and it's going to be a back and forth because the hyphen is where I live I am an an Ivri a Hebrew a boundary crosser it is about the hyphenation
Rabbi David (1:04:52)
So more time in Israel,
and the Bible below the Bible belt, know, everything you do has a kind of intensely innovative, creative, and yet backwardly compatible, to use Rabzalman's terms, like really connected to the past and rooted. In that light, I wanted to show our watchers, though, this remarkable new God-optional guide to Friday night dinners fit for a Sabbath queen that you've written called the Shabbok, and that's going to be out with Eye & Press, you know, labshul and below the Bible belt.
and Sabbath Queen, and I just want to close our, first to say thank you to you for being in this, one of the very first moments of this new venture for me and my next project for my midlife crisis, but it's really to be able to sit with a brother, to be able to sit with a colleague, to be able to sit with remarkable people and talk about their stories and to have.
their tour, their wisdom, their life experience emerge from it. really, it makes me so happy. It makes my heart sing. And I just wanted to close this detours and destinations by saying the spiral image is very powerful for me. The image that a spiral is basically a circle in a line that I've had, like a circle that's had a slight detour that leads to the next destination. I want to ask you, when you look back now on this destination that you're in and you see those various detours you've taken, do you see them?
As my friend, Shirama Ira, once said, may all of your detours be destinations. Do you see them in that way?
Rabbi Amichai (1:06:39)
Yes, and I want to say that I will feel incomplete if I don't bring this up. The phrase that I keep coming back to again and again, especially this past difficult year and a half, is one that we both claim we've created and I think we both did, which is, all you need is Vav.
Right? All you need is the Vav, that letter in the most important Hebrew word, Biblical Jewish word is Ve'ahavta, and you will love, and that begins with a Vav, with the and. And so when I teach all you need is Vav, and I know you teach all you need is Vav, that Vav, that hook, that and, is the invitation to look at every detour as a destination, and every destination as a detour, to be in the and.
Now what? Who also?
How can
principle that we inherited from my ancestors and that we know is the mighty force of change that helps on days when it feels like all there is is you say no all you need is love all you need is love and that's something I learned with you and from you and the help will keep on doing together
Rabbi David (1:08:17)
Yeah, it's horror.
Amen. I say amen to that. Rabbi Amichai Lalevi, Sabbath Queen. Thank you so much for this incredible conversation, brother.
Rabbi Amichai (1:08:35)
Thank brother. Now I want to hear your story. You got it. Coming soon. Amen.
Rabbi David (1:08:38)
All right, that's your podcast. Okay.
want to thank producer Efrat Bigger, our editor Maya Geyer, music by Shimon Smith, thank you to the 92nd Street Y and its staff and to Eden Sydney Foster. I'm your host, Rabbi David Ingber, and this was Detours and Destinations. See you at our next stop in our next episode.