New Voices Magazine has a different kind of light to bring to each night of Hanukkah: Jewish zines. As a long-time collector of zines of many stripes, our Editor is excited to spotlight a series of their favorite independently published zines throughout the holiday. This page will be updated each day of Hanukka with another zine feature, to increase the indie-publishing light alongside the growing glow our channukiah. For the fifth night of Hanukkah, read this interview about the Doykeit zine series with JB Brager, the editor of this now four-part collection of writing on themes of queerness, anti-zionism, and diaspora.
Who are you? Who and what is the Doykeit Zine Series?
My name is Solomon JB Brager, I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and I currently live in Brooklyn, NY. I teach history and gender studies–right now at Rutgers University, and I work as a freelance cartoonist and writer. I’m a white Jew descended from Litvak Jews and German Holocaust survivors. I started making Doykeit in, I think 2012, it’s a submission-based zine that collects mostly writing (but also art) on the topic of queer Jewish identity in relation to anti-Zionist and Palestinian solidarity politics. I called the zine Doykeit because it reflected the commitment and orientation of the zine towards diasporic Jewish identity–there have been four issues so far, published about every two years, with the themes of “Diaspora,” “Decolonization,” and most recently “We Will Outlive Them.” For the fifth issue I’m trying to decide if I return to the all- “D” series or not. The zines are all cut n’ paste and photocopied, there’s no digital layout or anything like that. It’s fully self-published and not-for-profit.
Why make these zines?
I started making Doykeit because I was looking for something– I grew up with being Jewish and also being the grandchild of Holocaust survivors as a big part of my identity. As a kid I went to both modern Orthodox and Conservative shuls, I went to Hebrew School until I was like 16 and worked at Jewish day camps, I went to Israel as a high school student– like, I thought about becoming a rabbi at one point, I was really into it–and as I found queer identity and as I became more critical of the state of Israel and with Zionist politics, I felt less and less welcome and also less and less like I wanted to be a part of the Jewish communities I was familiar with.
But I started to find these breadcrumbs– Hannah Mermelstein came to Baltimore to give a talk about Birthright Unplugged; someone introduced me to the band The Shondes, and the lead singer, Louisa Rachel Solomon, told me about JATO (no longer active, check out JFREJ instead!); through queer femme organizing I met Jessica Rosenberg, who at the time was about to start rabbinical school and who introduced me to the world of Reconstructionist Judaism and to Jewish Voice for Peace. And it made me greedy! I wanted to find all the anti-Zionist Jews, I wanted a Jewish identity and faith that wasn’t about nationalism, I wanted at minimum a solid minyan of Jews who don’t think Jewish safety or survival can come at the expense of violence towards and dispossession of another people. So I put out a call for submissions– I bugged people I already knew and started to find other people through the project. I learned about projects I wanted to be a part of from the zine and more about struggles I care about and importantly I learned that so so many Jews had already gone through or were going through the disillusionment I experienced. And that opened up for me the possibility of being wholeheartedly and joyously Jewish. 
What do you love most about these zines?
I don’t even know how many copies of the zines I’ve sold or given out at this point; I’ve also given a number of people permission to print and distribute copies for free or at cost (also anyone who has bought a copy can do this) but every time I do a zinefest or something, someone will come up to me and either tell me Doykeit meant a lot to them, or I get to experience someone finding the zine for the first time, and it really seems like people are finding in it what I was looking for when I decided to make it. People also reach out to me after finding the zine to work on other projects related to radical/leftist/anti-Zionist Jewish identity and I’ve made some really great friends through it. So the zine is accomplishing what I wanted it to and that makes me pretty happy.
What was challenging about creating these zines?
Getting people to submit on a timeline! And rejecting pieces that weren’t a good fit– like you don’t want to say no to anyone when you’re making a zine, but I got some things that just didn’t work. Zines are like a very particular community, so like, I’ve been making Doykeit for like almost nine years and not gotten much pushback about the zine specifically.
Why do Jewish zines matter to you?
The two zines that come to mind with this question are Micah Bazant’s zine Timtum (1999) and the Jews Against the Occupation Haggadah (2008). Timtum really explores what it means to have a particular trans body in the context of Jewish inheritance and memory. I found myself in that zine and that was really important to me– it also gave me, at the time, a way of recognizing myself, and of thinking about my own identity in relation to my family, history, and faith. The JATO haggadah, first of all, I got it the first time I was in an anti-Zionist Jewish space and realized I could be trans, queer, anti-Zionist, and not lose Jewish community. I had never seen Jewish ritual reimagined or made relevant to contemporary contexts, and the idea that a zine could be a prayerbook or a prayerbook could be a zine was revelatory. Jewish zines matter to me because they do what all zines do– they create an accessible way for us to share our stories and ideas, to makes spaces and create connections that we can’t find, in this case, in “mainstream” Jewish institutions.
Find JB Brager’s zines at their online store and order them hard copy here. Read more about Jewish zines and find the other Hanukkah Jewish zine features by visiting our holiday landing page here.
