Meet your genderqueer, Jewish uncle with “amazing tits!”
A recent Jewish Heritage Fund survey found that 7% of respondents identified as LGBTQ+. Queer Kentucky has partnered with the Jewish Heritage Fund to uplift queer Jewish people. With anti-Semitism spreading in the United States and abroad, it is important to uplift our Jewish community members. Queer is an identity that crosses racial, geographic, ethnic, class, and cultural boundaries, so the communities we work with are as diverse as the communities in that queer Kentuckians live.
by Solange Minstein
The living room has been cleared of furniture. The spare tables and borrowed chairs from friends spread out. Chopped liver, salmon ball, matzo, and the Seder plate are all waiting. The guests are buzzingly greeting my spouse, no one dares to address me; still in the kitchen shaping matzo balls, tossing chicken into the oven, slapping together bean casseroles. Friend Passover is the event of all my friends’ yearly social calendars; everyone hopes they will receive the coveted invite, a link to my Passover Tumblr page explaining rules, expectations, menu, and rituals.
When we recite the Shehecheyanu on each holiday, we thank Hashem for bringing us to the current season. Ritualistically, we use the Shehecheyanu to usher in holidays, life cycle events, or commemorate particularly good news.
For me, the Shehecheyanu gives me a chance to consider the path and cycles that have brought me to the moment; for this point in time could not exist without the changes, considerations, and reflections that have shaped me. While Hashem has brought me closer, allowed me to “know” them periodically through experience, I as a human, am the architect of who I become.
I spent the early years of my childhood in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, spending extremely early toddler years strolling through The Castro with my mom. I still treasure a tiny bear that
Glenda the Good Witch bought for me because, “that is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen.” I remember seeing crowds of cowboys, wearing only chaps and hats, making their way through the neighborhood for leather events.
Every Sunday was spent with my Guncles, watching In Living Color and eating Hamburger Mary’s. Thanksgivings they hosted their entire chosen family at their beautiful house in Mill Valley, besotted with the sweetest blackberry bushes imaginable. After we moved to Petaluma, my mom became very good friends with a contemporary of my guncles, another member of the extended family. Lisa, a transwoman, picked me up from kindergarten in a muscle car and would bring me bags of banana-only Runts. She was tall, loud, with giant hair and a boisterous energy that made me knew I was loved.
I came out later in life as both genderqueer and bisexual for multiple reasons. One, I didn’t have the vocabulary or nuance to understand that I wasn’t just a tomboy or aggressive girl. Another, my parents were not supportive of my sexuality insisting that bisexuality is a phase and I was just confused. When I came out, everyone said, “Yeah we know, and we love you.” I guess it’s pretty obvious when you only refer to yourself using masculine gender roles (I am your uncle and he’s got amazing tits!) and you’re still obsessed with The Matrix and Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider.
Coming out however, gave me a clarity I could never find with Judaism. Before I embarked upon this project actually, I didn’t even consider my Judaism and queerness as living in the same neighborhood. They were unrelated identities, not at odds because neither needed the other in my mind. While organizing my thoughts, I realized that’s not the case. They’re not only in the same neighborhood, they’re in the same house, living together and forging ahead. While Judaism, and my relationship with Hashem, is a comfort I turn to in my times of strife, my queerness is what guides me.
After I came out both times, it was like I had been reborn. I didn’t realize how long I had lived an incorrect version of myself. In many ways, it mirrored my relationship with Judaism. I feel like an outsider when it comes to Judaism in Kentucky.
Leaving the crunchy hippie congregation of my childhood to a suburban upper class congregation was a culture shock that made me feel lost. However, I was supported by some amazing people in my community, adults who made me feel seen even though I was one of those very weird, freaky, and frankly disruptive teenagers. Supporters like Rabbi Nachshon Siritsky (who graciously blessed me during my b’nei mitzvah), my youth group advisor Laurence Nibur, and the very patient Rabbi Joe Rapport.
My Jewishness however has never waned. While studying at the University of KentuckyUK, I took Dr. Oliver Leaman’s year-longyear long course on the history of Judaic Thought, and things started falling into place. I had been extremely involved at UK’s Hillel, working at a conservative synagogue, but I didn’t always feel as Jewish as I could. Dr. Leaman connected me with a world of amazement. Maimonides during the Golden Age of Spanish Jewish culture, Martin Buber and the concept of knowing Hashem, Spinoza and predestination. However, the highlight of this class was the invitation to spend Passover with Dr. Leaman at his home.
I was the only student to show up, and the others were shocked that I would because, frankly, he is extremely eccentric. He dresses less than casually, his office overflowing with papers, and he looks like Alan Moore. But, and I mean this in the Souls on Fire Baal Shem Tov way, his Seder was magical. Dr. Leaman lived just off campus in a very small apartment that was just like his office; full of papers, amazing drawings, toys, and tsochkes. He served us a Sephardic style Seder and was prepared for any number of his students who may want to show up. He was personal, open, and definitely gossiped too much with the other professor who came. It was an experience that lives with me indelibly.
When we enjoy the Passover Seder and read the Haggadah, we are instructed that “all who are hungry, let them come and eat. All who are in need, let them come celebrate Passover with us.” Judaism and queerness live together in me because both require community.
Jews cannot celebrate holidays alone, they are meant to be shared together. LGBTQ+ folk need one another to build lasting relationships that last beyond ourselves. L’dor v’dor, generation to generation, is a Jewish value, but for me, it’s become synonymous with both my identities. Recently someone told me I had the audacity to build community everywhere I go. I long for community, someone who feels like an outsider in the Louisville Jewish community, it’s critical I build out safe spaces for both Jewishness and Queerness. This Southern non-Kosher diet-Conservative genderqueer bisexual Jew only knows how to channel the lost energy of a Sunday evening in Mill Valley with their family, eating dinner and watching In Living Color.
