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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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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.