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How Yiddish taught me to embrace the joy and defiance of being queer
(JTA) — Queer elders can be hard to find. There’s no app I could mindlessly swipe to find a queer mentor. So, for wisdom and guidance on how to live as a queer human, I’ve had to look elsewhere.
I was nicknamed “Bubbe” (the Yiddish word for grandmother) in high school, due to my early bedtime and exceptional affection for sweaters, puzzles and tea. But in college, when I came out as nonbinary, Bubbe no longer seemed to fit: My gender sits somewhere on the spectrum between “bright floral button-downs” and “Bernie Sanders.” Friends soon coined me “theydy,” a gender-neutral play on zeide, the Yiddish word for grandfather.
While my affection for puzzles and sensible footwear are certainly theydy–esque, they are not truly the reason that I am fond of this nickname. I love being called a theydy because Yiddish culture has taught me the value of being a little strange, a little out of place and more than a little queer.
Yiddish, the 1,000-year-old language of Central and Eastern European Jews, never quite fit into a culture of American assimilation. At the turn of the 20th century, in a country where most people spoke English, Yiddish was the language to be forgotten (or at least used only when you didn’t want your Americanized kids to know what you were saying). And in the middle of the 20th century, in Israel, where most people spoke Modern Hebrew, Yiddish was never quite considered “good enough,” “academic enough” or even “Jewish enough.”
But before the Holocaust decimated the Jews of Eastern Europe, Yiddish established itself as the language of poets, artists and writers. Queer and gender-bending sensations like Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story and play “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” and Sholem Asch’s play “God of Vengeance” were written in Yiddish, and S. An-ski’s drama “The Dybbuk,“ in which a son’s spirit possesses the body of the woman he loves, was popularized in Yiddish.
Yiddish was also the language and culture of bold and fiery activists — people like Rose Schneiderman and Clara Lemlich — who were powerhouses of the early American labor movement.
As queerness is increasingly persecuted in the United States, Yiddish culture has been my refuge: a culture with no country that is well-suited for people being rejected by theirs. Just as queer people build communities out of necessity, grounded in a deep sense of love and care, I have found Yiddish culture to be heimish and warm, welcoming those with and without an ancestral connection to the language.
Today, inspired by the Yiddishists of the past and the present, many queer people of my generation have taken on Yiddish learning and leaned into Yiddish culture. From the Queer Yiddishkayt Facebook group, to the queer klezmer band Isle of Klezbos, to the virtual Queer Yiddish Camp, many queer people are drawn to Yiddish language and culture. Perhaps this is because queer people often especially understand the importance of being counter-cultural. Native Yiddish speakers are few and far between outside of the haredi Orthodox communities of Jerusalem and Brooklyn, and so for queer Yiddishists, the benefits of learning the language are rarely material. Rather, they are political, spiritual, sentimental and communal. In a society that tells us that our value comes from our productivity, learning Yiddish is itself an act of resistance.
My queer Yiddish is deeply intertwined with the fight for a better and more beautiful world for all, “a shenere un besere velt far ale.” I’m the social justice organizer at The Workers Circle, a Jewish social justice organization where we embrace our Yiddish tradition through vibrant cultural expression, Yiddish language learning and bold activism. I’ve been arrested with the Workers Circle three times for nonviolent civil disobedience, fighting for federal voting rights and democracy reform legislation. Each time, as I felt nerves coming on, and my hands began to sweat, I could hear my queer elder — Yiddish culture — whisper in my ear. I was reminded that I am not the first person to take a stand for what I believe in. I come from a long legacy of people trying to do the same.
Through its defiant perseverance throughout history, Yiddish culture has shown me what resilience really looks like. And through its humor, food and music, I have learned from Yiddish culture how to lean into the joy of being. Yiddish culture is my queer elder. I am proud to be a theydy.
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The post How Yiddish taught me to embrace the joy and defiance of being queer 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.
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