I grew up as a lot of different things: Girl. Queer. Shy. Jewish. Not Jewish enough. One Direction’s biggest fan. Bookworm. And most importantly — an avid Internet user.
I’ve been world-wide-web proficient for as long as I can remember, for so long now that I can’t even pinpoint how old I was when I first learned the feeling of having the whole universe at my fingertips. The only way I can place that magical moment in time is that it was both before my first period and when the computer was still confined to a single room in my childhood home.
Ever since I first explored Google and Bing and Yahoo and all they had to offer, I have been on a quest to connect — to see my full self reflected on any and every screen that made its way into my girl hands. I searched high and low but always came back disappointed and discouraged; no matter how niche the FanFiction or how specific the discussion forum, I somehow couldn’t find any other queer bookish Jewish girls who wanted to be my friend and could answer the questions that strangled my brain all day long. What are these feelings towards other girls that I’m experiencing? What do they mean? Am I going to hell? Even if they couldn’t answer them, at least we could swim in the confusion together.
In my senior year of high school, during the peak of the pandemic I slowly started coming out to myself, my family, and close friends. While I was met with more acceptance and love than I had expected, I felt more isolated than ever before. But then I found jGirls, an online magazine made by and for self-identifying Jewish girls, ages 13-19. Baruch Hashem for the internet! I’d heard about the magazine from an internet friend, who was a member of jGirls’ Teen Editorial Board at the time. Since I was graduating from high school that spring, I was too old to apply to be an editor but she encouraged me to submit my poetry, a creative outlet I picked up in junior year. I carefully sieved through my long document of “every poem i have written since march of 2019” and pitched three of my favorites.
A few months into my first-year of college I received an email from jGirls: they wanted to publish my poems! Overwhelmed with gratitude and joy that a magazine liked my work enough to want to display it, especially since the poems were about the most vulnerable parts of myself, I was warm with validation and pride for weeks.
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Jewish girls and non-binary youth are largely invisible in research and media; the more intersections of identity you add, the more the amount of available content dwindles. In the absence of information from academics about Jewish girlhood, I decided to see what they were saying about themselves. This led me to explore how digital spaces, specifically jGirls, gives queer Jewish girls and non-binary youth the opportunity and space to resist invisibility by talking about their experiences and producing knowledge that is unique to them — and desperately needed.
In addition to navigating a time overwhelmingly filled with change and high emotion, queer Jewish girls also have to learn how to navigate their different identities and different forms of oppression they may face, such as homophobia, transphobia, and antisemitism. They also may have difficulties finding community or spaces of refuge, just as I did, because they may be met with antisemitism in queer spaces or homophobia in Jewish spaces. On top of all these webs of confusion and shame that may pop up in their youth, they are severely underrepresented in media and research. The research that does exist about queer Jews often centers the adult male gay voice and adults in general — rarely are the experiences of queer Jewish youth found at the center, if even documented at all.
In order to move forward and create change, it is important to acknowledge the challenges this population has faced and continues to face, but it is equally important to celebrate these wonderful, queer, Jewish girls and non-binary youth, their experiences, and the spaces of belonging they find within each other. One of the spaces that does an amazing job of this is jGirls. I chose to put them at the heart of my research on this topic because of the ways the magazine supports, celebrates, and uplifts queer Jewish girls (including me).
In my own research and in this article, I use the term “girls” loosely, employing a similar framework as jGirls Magazine. The FAQ section of jGirls website explains that “jGirls exists to counter the effects of gender oppression… We know that people who don’t identify as girls are impacted by gender oppression, and we want to include a wide range of voices and experiences.” I used this framework in my research as I believe all sexualities and gender identities deserve to be heard, valued, and represented. I intentionally chose sources from individuals with different identities and relationships to their gender to highlight the experiential affinities among queer Jewish youth.
Since I put a pause on my research last fall, the magazine has changed their name to jGirls+. On their Instagram they explained that this transition is “to more accurately reflect our community, which includes teens who don’t identify as girls. We’re making this tweak as a first step while we work toward a new name that will more fully capture who we are.” My use of “girls” included anyone under the age of eighteen who identifies as a girl, was socialized as a girl, or is a gender minority. However, I still find it important to note that including all gender marginalized groups under this shorthand label cannot properly portray the expansive spectrum of gender identity and the beautiful, complex, unique experiences of gender non-conforming youth. There is so much more research that needs to be done and so many voices that need to be heard.
I conducted my research by analyzing three sources from jGirls archives: “Kyke Dyke,” a poem by Sarah Young, a cisgender lesbian, “The Power of Macaroons,” a personal narrative from Reggie Hopkins who identifies as non-binary and bisexual, and “Lehitatef v’Lehaniach,” a narrative from Alyx Bernstein, a transgender girl whose sexuality is not stated. When analyzing these sources, I sieved out two different themes that appeared in all of them, which I named using words from the pieces themselves, inspired by Carolina Silva’s article “Because There Are Young Women Behind Me,” who chooses to use excerpted phrases from primary sources as headings when presenting findings. The two themes I found were “And then I looked to the Jewish community…” and “I am Jewish and Queer/I am me.” I used these themes to categorize the knowledge the individuals produced and shared in their writing. Just as there is not a monolithic queer Jewish girl, the experiences, challenges, and joys of queer Jewish girls cannot be adquately showcased here. My research serves as just one perspective and welcomes future contributions from other writers and researchers on this topic.
The first theme that appeared (“And then I looked to the Jewish community…”) was that during these individuals’ experiences of exploring their identity and coming out, they first found support in the Jewish community, organizations that support Jewish LGBTQ+ youth, like Keshet, and events such as shabbatons. They leaned on the new friends they made through these spaces as they wrestled with gender dysphoria, their relationship to Judaism, and harassment at school. These connections are important to highlight because they create spaces of belonging for these individuals and also because one of the primary ways that youth learn about themselves is through their peers. Friendships and relationships with other girls in adolescence are key pieces of their emotional development as they explore who they are and who they want to be. These friendships are especially meaningful when they can bond over shared experiences, challenges, and joys.
Reggie Hopkins shared that “I struggle finding something to wear that doesn’t make my skin crawl. I message my friends from Keshet, and as we talk, my confusion eases, and I define the ‘wrongness’ as gender dysphoria.” The support and assistance they received from the friends they made at Keshet highlights the important role that community and connections to people with similar identities play for these youth as they explore who they are and navigate adolescence. Hopkins also mentions that queer Judaic theory is something that pulled them back to Judaism while coming out.
In Sarah Young’s poem, she cites KlezKanada, an annual Jewish music festival, as a space of belonging for her where she could bond with other queer jews. Similarly, Bernstein writes in her narrative “I then went to a Keshet LGBTQ Teen and Ally Shabbaton, in March of 2016. In a space that was Jewish and queer, I felt, for the first time, that I could embrace both of my identities simultaneously.” Support for queer youth within the Jewish community can yield a huge impact; it allows these individuals to connect with both of these identities simultaneously and experience their full selves, which they may not be able to do in spaces that are only queer or only Jewish. This support and acceptance of their authentic selves also lets them celebrate themselves and their peers, which is another way that queer Jewish girls refuse invisibility and take up space through community.
The second theme that emerged was that these individuals saw their queerness and Jewishness as as inherently connected. This sentiment is not true for all queer Jewish youth, but it is critical to highlight the power they found in this union because of the pressure these youth often face to “choose” between their different identities. I also find it important to note because the concept of intersectionality is at the heart of my research.
The term “intersectionality” was coined by feminist theorist, Kimberlé Crenshaw to explain how all aspects of a individual’s identity interact with each other, rather than operate independently. Crenshaw compares intersectionality to living at intersecting streets. Put simply, these individuals live at the intersection of Queer Street and Jewish Lane. Being queer and being Jewish prompt their own separate experiences, but they also interact with each other to create queer Jewish experiences. For these individuals, combining these identities allowed them to reclaim power and connect on a deeper level to both of these different parts of themselves.
In Young’s poem, she first describes the interconnectedness of her queer Jewishness when she shares that in high school she was referred to as a “kyke dyke.” Here, these identities are compounded in a violent and offensive way. As the poem progresses, she finds pride in her identity, writing, “I saw the beauty / In being a Jewish lesbian / In finding love / With a strong Jewish woman / The product of thousands of years of oppression and resurgence.” This shows that not only does she view these two aspects of her identity relationally but also that she finds power and strength in their union; they cannot be separated — in her writing and within herself.
Bernstein’s narrative primarily focuses on her struggle to reconcile her Jewish and queer identities, but her narrative ends with a moment of celebrating who she is through embracing Jewish tradition. She writes, “I will wear a new tallit with my tefillin. I will take an ancient tradition, and make it my own. My identities are not in conflict—they are each an integral part of what makes me who I am, and I am proud of all of them.” The final line emphasizes how through reclaiming these traditions, she was able to claim the different aspects of her identity in a way that felt authentic and right for her.
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There are so many things I wish I could tell my girl self. I want to tell her that she is not as alone as she feels. I want to tell her that the world is bigger and brighter and queer-er than she could ever dream. I want to tell her that she deserves to be listened to and that she is capable of doing just about anything. While time travel is unfortunately not yet an option, doing this research felt pretty damn close. Reading and celebrating the works of today’s queer Jewish girls let me hold space for past versions of myself and all of the queer Jewish girls who came before me. I am eternally grateful for them and communities like jGirls who have continued to uplift and support us.
I spoke with jGirls Executive Director Elizabeth Mandel about my research. “[jGirls] strives to be a space where people can bring their full, authentic selves, their vulnerabilities and questions,” she said. “We strive to move past an inclusivity, and into belonging. I would like to think that it is these fundamental values that have made jGirls a platform for so many young people to explore and talk openly about their sexual orientation and gender identity, and the joys and struggles of living as one truest self. Not because we are an LGBTQ+ space, but because we are a space for everyone to bring their full selves.”
I found the information I was initially seeking out from academics in these brilliant young individuals. When I listened to them, I discovered unique and new knowledge that only the young themselves are able to produce. We must continue listening to them. We must welcome them into our chosen families and Jewish communities .We must create spaces for them that we wished for in our adolescence. We must show them that they belong and that they matter. They are our future.
