Yiddish is a queer language.
For at least 150 years, Yiddish-speakers have been blending their queerness with their Yiddishness, drawing on this international language’s built-in intersectionality to create theater, music, art, film, and literature that defies old taboos by including our own queer selves. As Sara Felder wrote, “Queer Yiddishkeit gives me permission to go back to the world of my grandparents without leaving myself behind.” The multimedia presentation will start in 1877 with a gender-bending sorceress, attend the 1907 Berlin premiere of Sholem Asch’s play God of Vengeance – set in a Jewish-run brothel and featuring a lesbian kiss – and enjoy examples from every decade since. You can expect: a son with two moms, cruising in 1930s Vilnius, transitioning in the shtetl, a gay bullfighter from Brooklyn, a Yiddish remix of Marlene Dietrich, sapphic bagels, AIDS activism, a ritual spanking, and much more.

90-minute presentation in English with original and translated Yiddish examples.