{"id":80178,"date":"2025-12-24T15:18:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T15:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/80178\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T15:18:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T15:18:06","slug":"in-a-new-album-yiddish-becomes-a-language-of-queer-belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/80178\/","title":{"rendered":"In a new album, Yiddish becomes a language of queer belonging"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI want to change the way I wear my shoes,\u201d Brooklyn-based Yiddishist and musician Ira Khonen Temple<\/a> sings on the first track on their debut album, \u201cStrange Tongue\/Mistame Loshn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I don\u2019t wanna change the way I say \u2018hello,\u2019\u201d Temple continues. \u201cI wanna say it in my fruity voice and hear the birds around rejoice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those lines in the song \u201cchange my shoes\u201d contain coded poetry that members of the queer Yiddish community readily understand: In Yiddish, the term \u201cfeygele\u201d \u2014 literally, \u201clittle bird\u201d \u2014 is often used to describe a gay or effeminate man<\/a>. Today, this term is being reclaimed by queer and trans Jews \u2014 including Temple. With \u201cStrange Tongue,\u201d the multi-instrumentalist \u201centers the growing ranks of people reclaiming Yiddish heritage and exploring its queer potentials,<\/a>\u201d according to the country music site Rainbow Rodeo.<\/p>\n

The album \u201cis queer because I\u2019m queer,\u201d \u00a0Temple writes in the liner notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt represents my experiences on both sides of the mekhitse, and my experiences of the mekhitse itself,\u201d they continue, using the Yiddish term for the physical barrier used to separate men and women at an Orthodox synagogue<\/a>. \u201cThere is no right side of the mekhitse for me. But also there is no wrong side.\u201d<\/p>\n

While this may be Temple\u2019s first solo album, the musician has been a mainstay of the \u201cKlezmer Shtetl\u201d in Midwood, Brooklyn \u2014 arguably the world capital of the klezmer music scene<\/a>. There, they co-founded the klezmer band Tsibele<\/a>, and led the klezmer ensemble at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. Temple\u2019s other credits include \u201cFiddler on the Roof in Yiddish,\u201d where they played the accordion; the music director for playwright Paula Vogel\u2019s \u201cIndecent\u201d in 2019 and, most recently, accordionist for Broadway\u2019s \u201cCabaret at the Kit Kat Club.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

With \u201cStrange Tongue,\u201d Temple probes the various gendered experiences they have lived over their 40 years. It\u2019s a journey that is both highly personal and deeply relatable to other queer and trans Jews.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never identified as anything,\u201d Temple said. \u201cThe journey of who someone is and where they come from matters. Gender is also how people stay safe and how they make friends. It can be expansive, but it also reflects a world of limitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Describing what this means, Temple shared anecdotes of the places they\u2019ve made music \u2014 before and after their transition.<\/p>\n

Temple describes visiting a Budapest synagogue pre-transition and, not realizing that a gender divide was in effect, sat among the men and was offered a kippah. However, in the same breath, Temple describes making music as a butch woman with the Satmar Hasidic community \u2014 in a program for older women funded through the Brooklyn Music School.<\/p>\n

\u201cI developed a program of music they were familiar with and enjoyed. I would bike down Bedford Avenue in a pair of tear-off Adidas track pants and stop three blocks away and put a long skirt on over it. I\u2019d tear off the pants and have leggings underneath the skirt,\u201d Temple said. \u201cI would walk in with a button-up and short hair and they kind of just had to deal with it, but I was definitely not the only butch woman there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several songs on \u201cStrange Tongue\u201d reflect these gender-bent experiences. There are multiple Yiddish women\u2019s folk songs like \u201cAgunes lid\u201d on the track \u201cFayer\/Fire,\u201d which describes a woman left in legal limbo after her husband refuses to give her a get, or Jewish divorce. \u201cUshpizn,\u201d a Satmar song sung by men during Sukkot, strikes at an intense homosociality that some perceive in gender-segregated Orthodox spaces<\/a> \u2014 a fascination for many in the queer and trans communities.<\/p>\n

The most forwardly queer track on the album might be \u201cHot Mir Zikh\/Queer Wedding Song,\u201d which offers a tongue-in-cheek tableau of an almost mythologized queer wedding. It mentions neopronouns<\/a>, \u201caunties throwing down,\u201d \u201cbutches in their vests,\u201d the Shekhina (the divine feminine)<\/a> and family trauma.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrange Tongue\u201d has a strong focus on vocal music, and much of the vocal work happened while Temple was at a crucial point in their transition, notably their voice changing. \u201cI went to study with Ethel Raim [the founder of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance], and at the same time my voice was changing because I was starting testosterone \u2014 my voice changed every day,\u201d Temple said, describing the vulnerable task of adjusting to and exploring this new, deeper voice.<\/p>\n

Temple grew up going to a Conservative synagogue in Denver, but they wouldn\u2019t be introduced to klezmer and Yiddish until attending a workshop by musician Jeff Warschauer during their time studying Arabic and modern Middle Eastern history at Columbia University.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like a homecoming to a home I didn\u2019t know that much about,\u201d Temple said. \u201cIt led to me immediately starting to learn [klezmer] tunes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much ink has been spilled on the connections between queerness and Yiddishkeyt<\/a>. Scholar Jeffrey Shandler notes various commonalities: \u201cdiasporism; rootless cosmopolitanism; a penchant for transgression, border-crossing, and being proudly, defiantly different; standing as a challenge to broader societies sense of \u2018certitude and power.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For Temple, \u201cthere was a deep meaningfulness knowing I was entering a scene where there was queer royalty,\u201d they said. Temple cites several queer mentors in the Yiddish and klezmer scenes, including Reim artist and activist Jenny Romaine<\/a> and two OG members of The Klezmatics, fiddler Alicia Svigals and vocalist Lorin Sklamberg.<\/p>\n

Sklamberg helped Temple hone their vocals for the album, and also provided his own vocals to one of the tracks. \u201cWorking with Ira was a thrill \u2014 for being a part of the creation of new additions to contemporary Yiddish song repertoire and their refreshingly original takes on traditional material,\u201d Sklamberg said. \u201cAdditionally, it was a rare privilege helping Ira navigate the vulnerable challenge of singing with what is essentially a new voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young queer Jews have found \u201cStrange Tongue\u201d empowering. \u201cIt sounds like my Jewish spaces,\u201d said Bea, a 27-year-old accordionist and singer.\u00a0 \u201cA mix of Yiddish and English, frum and veltlekh [religious and secular] \u2014 and all very queer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raia, a 21-year-old Yiddishist in Western Massachusetts, agrees. \u201c\u2018Strange Tongue\u2019 lets me slip in after musicians like Ira, as noticed or unnoticed in my queerness and transness as I want to be,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

Perhaps not surprisingly, this warms Temple\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen younger queer and trans musicians tell me my music is meaningful to them it makes me feel so warm and proud,\u201d Temple said. \u201cThat I produced something that can help people feel a kind of belonging that I didn\u2019t feel as a younger person, which doesn\u2019t always come easy to me! It makes me feel grounded, and shows me a clear need for this work \u2014 to spread that sense that we belong to this world and to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ira Khonen Temple\u2019s \u201cStrange Tongue\/Mistame-Loshn<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 is out now on Borscht Beat. Temple will next perform the album at Stone Circle Theater in Ridgewood, Queens, on Feb. 15. Get details here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI want to change the way I wear my shoes,\u201d Brooklyn-based Yiddishist and musician Ira Khonen Temple sings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,17,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-80178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-culture","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}