How did you first meet the director, Sandi Dubowski?
Amichai Lau-Lavie: He came to interview me for his movie Trembling Before G-d, his epic gay orthodox film from the late 1990s. He wanted me in it because of my background. I declined because that wasn't my narrative. We jokingly say that at the time, I said, “I want my own movie. I don't do collage.” I may or may not have said that in my early divahood. But we became friends. At first, it wasn't quite clear what the scope would be and what exactly he’d be focusing on. I was very impressed with his vision.
Trust between a director and a subject is so important in a documentary like this one. At what point did you really feel that you could trust Sandi?
AL-L: I would say on some intuitive level—maybe foolishly and without any real credibility—when I said yes to him following me and having film crews and it slowly became apparent that this was going to happen a lot. I would say, on some intuitive level, from the very get go and through the years.
We had our disagreements over what to film, how to film, when to film, and his respect and attention to my view and to my needs—which at times superseded his wishes, but he respected that—built with time. I think the rapport was such that I trusted him. I think both he and I share a larger faith in the course of things and that we're both in the service of greater good. So, it's not necessarily about my ego or his ego. There’s plenty of both, but we are part of a bigger movement. Both of us are storytellers and there's a bigger story here to tell.
What's the experience of watching the finished film like for you?
AL-L: I most recently watched it with my mother, who is 94 and who’s not quite in dementia but beginning to lose her cognition, and it was moving to watch it with her and to try and watch it through her eyes.
I try not to cringe and I try not to judge myself—Should have said that. Should have done that. Why didn’t he get that scene, not this scene?—and accept it as its own piece and know that I have a voice to add to the chorus of this moment and to appreciate the artistry and the enormous dedication that Sandi and team have put into the film.
I understood that while Sandi is telling his version of my story, it is on me to tell my story. In other words, he's made a portrait of me the way artists draw portraits of people. It's not the actual person. I need to be my storyteller. When I get off the perfectionist train, I have deep respect that the film will do what Sandi wants it to do, which is to add my voice to this moment of paradigm shift. Not everyone's going to love it. Not everyone's going to hate it. I have my own job to do. That helps me be a little less anxious about being so vulnerable and so public.
Over the course of making the documentary, what was the most challenging thing for you?
AL-L: I would say there's something almost spiritual about knowing that the eye of the camera is on you a lot. It makes you want to be at your best. It makes you want to not fuck up. It makes you want to be articulate, suck it in to look good. And the proxy of the camera is really that the eye of the world is on you at all times. Can you walk your talk on and off camera? What does it mean to really have integrity and not fake it and not act it, but to be it? It was practice in being authentic in a way that I feel accountable.
Each of our lives take so many twists and turns. We look back and we see things that really surprise us. As you watch the film and think about your life, what most surprises you?
AL-L: It's not really surprising, but I can see from a very early moment, my curiosity and exploration of fusions, of choosing to blur the binaries, whether that is through the political work, through the drag work, through the way I'm doing ritual both with reverence and irreverence, with trying to honor my family tradition and queer it up.
The very end of the movie, the last few minutes, after October 7—which has been such a back and forth on trying to finetune an impossible statement that's not going to make everybody happy no matter what—I insisted that instead of saying “I stand with my family's pain, but it doesn't justify the suffering of Gaza” to say instead, “I stand with my family's pain, and it doesn’t justify the suffering of Gaza.” This move from “but” to “and”—one word—for me is significant. And as I look through the film, I see my curiosity and exploration of the “and,” the weaving, the fusing, the bridging, and at times getting it wrong and going way radical to come back to a synthesis. This notion of the “and” and the weaving together of what seems unweaveable is a through line that I'm glad about, because I really think that's my main message at this moment, this notion of finding the fusions, insisting on the “and” not the “but,” building those bridges again and again and again.
Your father is interviewed on camera, your mother, your brother, Benny. What is it like to watch family members talk about you and your choices and have that be so visible?
AL-L: I have my brother's blessing. I have my mother's blessing. My father is dead, so he didn't get to see this. I don't know how the wider family will respond, but for me, it is part of the woven mosaic of my life, and I feel like I have their blessing despite how tumultuous my path has been and that we were not always on the same page.
So when the film screens in Israel in December, I think I have their blessing, including the controversial stuff at the end, where I'm absolutely standing with and for Israel and for Palestine. Not everyone's going to love that, and I'm anticipating some people not loving it. I’m building support systems around my heart to deal with disappointment and hurt. But for the most part, it feels good that my journey is part of my family journey. I'm not ostracized, I'm not an outlier, and I'm not cast out. There is a sense of love.
Did you have any idea at the outset how long you would spend making this film?
AL-L: No idea. No idea. It just kept on happening. It was like, “No, we can't stop now, you're going to rabbinical school. Oh, my God, now there's Trump. Now there's this, now there’s that.” I kept telling Sandi, “This movie won’t be over until the final scene is my wedding.” And at some point, we're like, “Guess not. Maybe that'll be the sequel, because he's not around.” In the last months we realized we're at a very critical paradigm-shift moment for Israel, for Jews, for the world, the film has to be released now. And this is where I trust Sandi, and he trusts me, and we trust that we are part of—without being all theological about it—a universal story, and we trust that it's the right moment to be helpful and to be less of the problem and more of the solution.
What do you hope that the impact of the film is going to be?
AL-L: I hope that people who are watching it, if they’re Jewish, Jew-ish, other, queer, Muslim, Palestinian, human, troubled, excited, that they see a role model of someone who honors both inherited and chosen identity and leans into an expanded sense of empathy. That there is a possibility of being in this “and” concept, of transcending our tribalism in a way that doesn't diminish where we come from but expands our sense of being. On a spiritual level, on a queer level, on a human level, on a political level, that we can aspire to this notion of expansion, of both, of more than just where we come from. There's a lot of active listening and empathy and compassion and getting beyond what got us here, which is not what's going to get us through the next phase.
I hope that my voice is part of this larger chorus of not the most popular voices right now, which are finding a middle ground that isn't diluted and that isn't hyperbole, but that is really charting a path of connectivity and fusion. I hope it helps there.
I hope it helps many Jewish people who are ambivalent about their Jewishness to feel excited about a type of Jewishness that is positive, that is non-patriarchal, that is imagining new paths and renewing ancient ones. I hope that people who are spiritually curious but so traumatized by the hostile, toxic God of our ancestors and the masculine faces of divinity, are like, “Wow, there's other ways of doing this.” And I really hope that it's a place to have political divisions and civic cultural divisions be just a little softer.