Rabbi follows Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie’s epic 17-year journey as he creatively and radically reinvents religion and ritual for the 21st century. He is the founder of Lab/Shul (www.labshul.org), an everybody-friendly, God-optional, artist-driven, pop-up experimental congregation. He is the first openly gay descendant of 39 generations of Orthodox rabbis, including Israel’s Chief Rabbis, and his father Naphtali survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Rabbi Amichai is a gay father of three children with two lesbians. He created a drag performance character, Rebbetzin Hadassah, a Hasidic rabbi’s wife. He is committed to new ways of building care and community and forging multi-faith, multi-racial progressive movements for justice, equality and human dignity. Full of surprising, profound, and hilarious twists, this powerful story is deeply old and radically new. Rabbi is a journey seeking the answers to life’s ultimate questions and wrestling with what it means to be human in these challenging times.

After 17 years of filming, DuBowski is in post-production and raising funds to complete a rough cut. All donations are tax-deductible.

Funding provided by The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program as well as The Sundance Institute Catalyst Program and Talent Forum, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Catapult Film Fund, The Hartley Film Foundation, The Lynn & Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Films, The Dorot Foundation, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, Reboot, Jeff Schoenfeld, Carla Solomon, Barbara Dobkin Foundation, Daryl and Steven Roth Foundation, The Jeannie Blaustein and Peter Bokor Fund of The Jewish Communal Fund, Bertha Foundation, Influence Film Foundation, Genuine Article Pictures, and an intergenerational team of Executive Producers from their 20’s through their 70’s from Broadway, film, advocacy, government, and philanthropy, including Jeffrey Solomon and Audrey Weiner, Ben Lowy, Adrian Salpeter, Jess Jacobs and Audrey Rosenberg, Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin, S. Asher Gelman, and Matt Nosanchuk.