Lab/Shul
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie co-founded Lab/Shul in 2013 and currently serves as senior clergy and ritual leader.
The Lab/Shul community is dedicated to exploring, creating and celebrating innovative opportunities for contemplation, life cycle rituals, the arts, life-long learning and social justice. Building on Storahtelling’s vision and practice, Lab/Shul seeks to redefine the role of sacred gatherings that nourish our thirst for meaning, connection, spirituality and community.
Interested in learning more? Visit labshul.org for more info and upcoming events.
Living Torah Fellowship
Beginning January 2026, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie will serve as the inaugural Living Torah Fellow of the Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah (LKFLT).
As part of LKFLT’s strategic commitment to building an ecosystem of Jewish-wisdom-centered experiences and resources, this pioneering fellowship supports Rabbi Lau-Lavie in developing high-quality Jewish wisdom content that reaches and inspires broad audiences. The program amplifies his voice through literary projects, innovative teaching courses, and strategic partnerships with Lab/Shul, Ayin Press, Reboot Studios, and other collaborators.
Over the fellowship year, Rabbi Lau-Lavie will complete major content initiatives—including a landmark podcast series and an interactive storytelling program—while participating in a community of leading Jewish thinkers. This experimental approach fosters peer feedback, capacity-building, and frameworks for Jewish wisdom-based Judaism across multiple media formats.
This prestigious recognition enables Rabbi Lau-Lavie to expand the edges of Jewish learning and empathy for diverse audiences.
Judaism: Born Divided?
Below the Bible Belt Part 2
Can our forgotten original feud direct us from discord to diversity?
Online Study Course with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie from January–December 2026
Join a year-long inquiry into the forgotten feud between the rival kingdoms of Israel and Judah—the Iron Age clash over territory and theology that shaped the Bible and still influences Jewish divisions today. Through biblical texts, archaeology, and critical scholarship, we’ll explore how these tribal-global tensions echo in our religious-secular, literal-liberal, and Zionist-diasporic gaps, seeking pathways to empathy, pluralism, and peace.
This course emerges from Below the Bible Belt’s 42-month journey through all 929 chapters of Hebrew Bible (2022–2025), where ancient civil war themes surfaced amid modern turmoil—offering clues for today’s schisms.
Sign up for: Monthly livestreams with Rabbi Amichai and guests, written reflections, ongoing read/watch/listen resources. Consecutive yet drop-in friendly—each builds on the last.
Check it out and subscribe to the Below the Bible Belt Substack.
Follow Below the Bible Belt on Instagram.
Sabbath Queen
SABBATH QUEEN, a feature documentary filmed over 21 years, 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 rejecting and embracing his traditional destiny and becomes a drag-queen rebel, a queer bio-dad, and the founder of Lab/Shul – an everybody-friendly, God-optional, artist-driven, pop-up experimental congregation. SABBATH QUEEN joins Amichai on a lifelong quest to creatively and radically reinvent religion and ritual, challenge patriarchy and supremacy, champion interfaith love, and stand up for peace, ceasefire, and an end to the Occupation in Israel/Palestine. The film interrogates what Jewish survival means in a difficult rapidly changing 21st century. Watch the trailer >
The SABBATH QUEEN film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City in June 2024. Check out all other festivals and screenings HERE.
For the latest updates, follow @
Activism
Rabbi Amichai is an active voice for justice, dignity, democracy and equity worldwide. Over the years has devoted time and energy towards human rights initiatives, immigration reform, peace efforts in Israel/Palestine, Interfaith dialogue, LGBTQ justice and inclusion, and environmental efforts.
In 2026, Rabbi Amichai became the Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of Rabbis for Human Rights.
He serves on the Advisory Board of the Sulha Peace Project for Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers, the Leadership Council of the New York Jewish Agenda, the Advisory Council for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and as an advisor to Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance. In recent years he’s been engaged as an organizer, speaker and leader with pro-democracy and pro-peace protests and projects in the United States and Israel through work with The New Israel Fund, T’ruah, Unexeptable and Standing Together.
He is the co-founding member of the Jewish Emergent Network, and founding faculty member of the.Reboot Network.
His past affiliations include serving on the advisory team of The International School of Peace in Greece, serving refugees from around the world; Board member of ORAM – Serving LGBTIQ Asylum Seekers and Refugees, Board member of Nehirim – serving LGBTQ Jewish in North America, 2016-2018 Fellow in the Global Justice Fellowship of the American Jewish World Service.
Alef/Bet – The Podcast! Ancestral Jewish Wisdom – Reimagined for Right Now.
Curious to know what Judaism has to say to these complicated times and our every day needs and challenges?
Stay tuned for Alef/Bet – the podcast version of Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie’s popular online series with 22 interactive study sessions exploring the big ideas, core concepts, tough questions, essential values and best practices of Jewish life, from an inclusive, evolving and justice-driven perspective, reimagined for right now.
This podcast series provides opportunities for adult learners of diverse backgrounds to explore the essential elements and evolution of Jewish wisdom through timeless teachings and a critical contemporary approach.
Coming in 2026.
Produced by Lab/Shul, Ayin Press, Reboot Studios.
With generous support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah.
Becoming
“BECOMING”, conceived and led by Rabbi Amichai, is Lab/Shul’s newest project, reimagining coming of age journeys and rituals for individuals of all ages and stages of life. Rites of Passage help us grow up, be better at being more helpful, more human, stage by stage throughout our lives.
Inspired by Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies, BECOMING makes meaning of life’s milestones through study, conversation, storytelling and ritual creation in small cohorts of fellow seekers, witnessed by and in the context of community.
Listen to Rabbi Amichai discuss BECOMING on Judaism Unbound >
Storahtelling
Storahtelling™, Inc., founded in 1999 by Amichai Lau-Lavie, is a unique method integrating Judaism’s oldest form of sacred storytelling with contemporary stagecraft. By using innovative leadership training programs and theatrical performances, Storahtelling makes ancient stories and traditions accessible for new generations, advancing Judaic literacy and raising social consciousness.
Storahtelling started off as a ritual theater company, by 2007 it grew to include a training institute, focusing on its signature pedagogy, The Maven Method™.
The Maven Method draws from the ancient tradition of Torah reading alternating with an interpretive translation in the local language. Trained Storahtelling Mavens transform Scripture into script, bringing sacred narratives front and center as personally and collectively meaningful conversations.
In 2012 the Storahtelling company of artists, led by Lau-Lavie created the Lab/Shul community, an artist driven, everybody-friendly congregation with the Storahtelling methodology core to its vision and unique approach to ritual and spiritual life. Through Lab/Shul the Storahtelling approach continues to develop, focusing on the following three areas:
- Maven Training: Annual training programs for clergy, educators and artists who become Mavens in their local communities. (Coming back in 2025).
- Storah Service: Interactive theatrical performances of the Torah Service.
- BECOMING: Training of teens and adults to be storytellers in our B-Mitzvah and GENerate programs, reimagining coming of age experience by utilizing the Maven Method.