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A trans Jewish performing artist is throwing a ‘Queer Clown Bat Mitzvah’ on Coney Island for all
(New York Jewish Week) – Growing up in Brooklyn, Dylan Mars Greenberg went to Hebrew school and celebrated Shabbat and holidays with her family. But she never celebrated a bar or bat mitzvah — “it wasn’t something my dad really wanted me to do,” she said.
Instead, the 26-year-old filmmaker, musician, actor and writer began creating and performing art as a teenager with a group called the Art Stars based in the East Village, launching a varied career as a performance artist. Her current band, Theophobia, performs a “hybrid of music, performance art and comedy” — a mashup that’s right at home at Coney Island USA, a center for visual and performing arts with acts like clowning, circus, burlesque, sideshows and Vaudeville.
This weekend, Mars Greenberg will bring those two paths together, holding a communal Jewish coming-of-age ceremony at Coney Island Shooting Gallery Arts Annex, a gallery and performing arts venue that is part of Coney Island USA.
Queer Clown Bat Mitzvah will feature a live concert with spiritual moments, sideshow acts and spaces for queer expression — as well as a rabbi to coach attendees through the experience.
“The event as a whole is really supposed to be a celebration of identity and acceptance, both Jewish and LGBTQ identities and in particular queer and trans identities,” Mars Greenberg told the New York Jewish Week.
The Queer Clown Bat Mitzvah was partially inspired by how many Jewish and queer performers Mars Greenberg has encountered over the years, including during the period when she came out as transgender.
“I’ve met a lot of people who are both very openly trans and queer and gay and also very open about Judaism. That is inspiring to me because there was definitely a period where I wasn’t sure how welcome I’d be in the Jewish community,” she said. “I’m realizing now that the Jewish community encompasses so many different things.”
The show will be hosted by the artist Pink Velvet Witch, and the lineup includes Mars Greenberg’s band, Theophobia, as well as the band 95 Bulls and a performance from Maggie McMuffin, a sideshow and burlesque performer.
Rabbi Rachel Grant Meyer, the former rabbi-in-residence at HIAS and the founder of Rabbae Jewels, a jewelry business that celebrates queer Jewish and Yiddish culture, will oversee the evening’s explicit Jewish content. Meyer will deliver a short Torah commentary and share a blessing with the crowd. The event will be a new frontier for her, but one that she believes is deeply needed.
“I was brought in because we’re in a really difficult moment in this country, where trans people in particular, but queer people in general, are really under attack. There was a desire to have a celebration of queer identity and trans identity and to do that through a Jewish lens,” she explained.
In recent years, Republican lawmakers in dozens of states have sought, sometimes successfully, to limit or ban gender-affirming care for trans people, weaken nondiscrimination laws and prohibit drag and other expressions of queer identity, including in books children are allowed to read at school.
“One of the centerpieces of my Jewish life is the concept of Shabbat or rest. And inherent in that is the concept of Oneg Shabbat, or the joy and celebration of Shabbat. That’s what this is, a rest or a pause from a political moment that’s really devastating,” Meyer said. “This is meant to give people a taste of a different, joyful, celebratory world and a pause from so much of the hatred that is so demoralizing, debilitating and takes away our dignity.”
Meyer characterized the show as designed for Jews who “didn’t have access to or who felt really alienated from gendered rituals as children,” but also emphasized that it is open to anyone, regardless of their religious identity or gender expression.
“I really want to invite people into Jewish culture in ways that are non-proselytizing and show that there are actually ways to live values and to express your identity, whether that’s cultural or religious, that don’t limit or control other people’s behavior,” Meyer said. “I will be blessing everyone and everyone will really be blessing themselves and lifting each other up in community.”
“I wanted it to be something that anyone can participate in and for people to appreciate Judaism also while having a good time,” Mars Greenberg said.
Queer Clown Bat Mitzvah is on Saturday, Aug. 19 at 9 p.m. at the Coney Island Shooting Gallery (1214 Surf Avenue, Brooklyn). Tickets start at $20. Find more information here.
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The post A trans Jewish performing artist is throwing a ‘Queer Clown Bat Mitzvah’ on Coney Island for all appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.