Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 4, 2021

How would I describe myself? Ezra Furman said wryly, tearing a corner off of her slice of pizza in a shop in Somerville, Mass. I try to avoid it.

Theres certainly a lot to cover. The 34-year-old musician is an acclaimed indie rocker, an observant Jew, a transgender woman, a mother, and as of this fall a rabbinical student.

I would say Im a transfeminine psalmist, she said after a pause. Shes deceptively delicate in person despite her rowdy stage presence, wearing a soft pink shirt and a mask that reads VOTE! I think its true that I am a trans woman. I think non-binary is also accurate. And Im not sure how these incommensurate things can be together, but they just all feel accurate.

Its an identity Furman, formerly of Berkeley, has explored in music and lyrics throughout her career, which has also defied categorization. Her discography mixes glam rock with grunge and doo-wop, upbeat indie pop with sweet crooning ballads and howling punk songs about poverty and climate change. She has appeared on stage wearing tzitzit under a dress and produced an album about queer love that doubles as a midrash on Exodus. Perhaps most significantly in her career as a touring musician, she doesnt travel or perform on Shabbat.

I give up professional opportunities all the time, she said. I guess it takes some trust that its gonna be okay. I have developed a will to ask for all the things that I need, even though I was told they cant go together.

For many of her fans, especially those who are queer and questioning, Furman provides a rare public example that it is possible to be religious and queer, to be transgender and a parent. After she came out as a transfeminine mother in April, there was an outpouring of joy across social media.

You have always been in a light in the darkness and you sharing this with all of us has the exact effect you intended: proof that life can be beautiful and fulfilling AND you get to be yourself, one Instagram commenter wrote. Another said: so happy for you, your family, and thank you for sharing this so valuable to be witnessed, appreciated and to be inspiration for others.

But it wasnt all positive her manager received a stash of hate mail that he hid from her.

He was like, Ill just tell you if theres something important, Furman said with a sigh.

My goal was to show my life a little to people who might find it useful to have a model of trans parenthood in real life, she said, a little ruefully, and then I found transphobic people make you pay a cost for that. But I do think it was worth it. I can take some degree of it if its worth it.

She and her partner, who she doesnt talk about publicly for privacy reasons, are used to queerphobia, as she puts it, in an open way and in a structural way. But shes hopeful, perhaps more than she was when she last talked to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2016, when shediscussed her difficulty finding a Jewish space to pray comfortably.

I see glimmers of a future where its just not an issue for anyone you encounter and you never have to explain yourself. I want nobody to have to explain their gender or sexuality or family structure, she said.

It has been a busy past few years for Furman, who had toiled for years in relative folk rock obscurity with the band Ezra Furman and the Harpoons before making more of a splash as a solo artist with a string of five albums, the first from 2012. Records such as 2015s Perpetual Motion People and 2018s Transangelic Exodus brought widespread acclaim, and she scored the music for Netflixs hit show Sex Education in 2019.

In addition to being a new mom and a professional musician, Furman starts at Hebrew College in nearby Newton this fall. Shes also starting a podcast on Jewish holidays called 2 Queers 4 Questions. Shes only doing one semester of rabbinical school for now, and then will take all of 2022 off from school.

Which might suggest that Im doing some musical activity then, she said.

For Furman, rabbinical school is the culmination of a lifetime of thinking about God but making music, which she calls spiritual, also helped her get there.

Someone I know asked me if I think that learning the Torah trope for my bar mitzvah influenced me to become a musician, [and] it completely did, she said. I think [singing] is a part of the brain that remembers in a different way, but also thinks and feels in a different way. And thats the part of the brain that prays, is the part of the part of the brain that I think talks to God, that thinks about God. I think its a spiritual act to make music.

Has raising a child made her even more in touch with her Jewish identity?

Thats a good question, she said, tilting her head to the side in contemplation. I havent thought about it.

Either way, her two year-old, for whom she uses they/them pronouns in respect for their privacy, is surrounded by Jewish ritual at home.

I sing Shema Yisrael before putting them down for bed every night. So, they know the word shma, they kiss the mezuzah as were going through the door to their bedroom, and in everything about being a parent, youre making the world for this person. And the choices you make are their environment, Furman said.

She explained that she has been thinking about her own childhood lately her experiences at a Jewish day school from elementary through middle school, and then as a teenager entering the largely irreligious music scene.

I grew up in places where wherever I could be queer, I couldnt be Jewish in the way I wanted to be, she said, and wherever I could be Jewish, I couldnt be queer in the way I wanted to be. One of them had to be under water for the other one to breathe. I didnt have a lot of people showing me that it was possible to ask for both and do both.

And now?

To me, what becoming an adult has meant is that I get to make the life I want, and others idea that these things are incommensurate with each other, doesnt actually prevent me from doing anything. I mean it might get me stigma and hate, harassment, whatever. But I can still have transness, and Judaism, and parenthood, and the art life, the music life.

She takes a long pause. I have a lot of flaws, she said. But Im also happy with who I am.

Eventually she walked back across Somervilles Davis Square to where she left her bike and helmet; it was drawing closer to evening and she was on her way to pick up her child before the crush of Boston traffic reached its height. This will be the second time in her life that the Tufts graduate has lived in Somerville as a student and shes excited to get started.

I dont know that Im going to finish, and I might be a rabbinical school dropout which seems cool, she said with a laugh. Its a weird thing to do and its going to be awkward both for my music life and my school life I just was like, well, these two ventures dont fit together. But I need them both, so Im going to do them both.

Originally posted here:

Queer Jewish indie rocker Ezra Furman is headed to rabbinical school J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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