#jewish dykery

[frumdyke]

g-d is real and He wants me to go buy phannie merch with enough time to get home and shower before shabbos 😸😸

[cielleduciel]

personal thoughts about life yada yada

on a subconscious level i'm so used to treating my sexuality and gender as separate from and conflicting with my heritage because i'm so used to being faced with hatred and willful ignorance from my own family, both immediate and extended, and they have been the primary mode of accessing my heritage for basically my entire life. and even though logically i know this isn't right or even factually correct, i've essentially accepted that maintaining a close connection to my heritage will mean that i have to deal with the arguments, the disapproval, the resentful tolerance, and the fact that there are some family members i can never be honest with, because it would make coexistence impossible

and then like, on the way to pride last year, i met an older albanian woman on the train. she was around my mother's age and she sat next to me and jane who were decked out in full pride gear and i was so nervous she would notice my necklace with my albanian eagle charm. and when she inevitably did notice and cautiously commented on it in english, i chose to address her in albanian despite everything, to introduce myself to her in all my dykery and awkwardness and accept whatever followed. and then it just wasn't what i was fearing at all. she got so excited. i don't think she was expecting it either. in a flurry she showed me all these photos of her lesbian daughter at her wedding, with her jewish wife, with their kid. she wanted to know everything about me and where i came from. she told me how upset she was with the cultural state of things back home regarding LGBT populations, how she hates that her daughter doesn't feel comfortable bringing her wife and kid to albania, how she feels angry at our people and that they need to change. she looked at jane, who was dressed as openly trans and gay as she's ever been that day, and asked me, "is she albanian too?" i was stunned. idk. i don't even remember anything i said to the woman, apart from sputtering "mashallah, mashallah" over and over as i looked through the photos of her daughter's beautiful little family, but i remember her so so clearly, how she thanked me so sincerely, how she looked at these photos of her daughter and daughter-in-law and grandchild with so much love and pride in her smile

the kicker is she wasn't even going to pride. she had completely forgotten that weekend was the festival, she was just going into boston for a day trip with her husband. the odds of that are literally unfathomable to me. jane couldn't understand anything we were saying, but she saw the photos, and she immediately recognized that it was a jewish wedding. when i explained to her the full context of our conversation afterwards, the significance of this entire coincidence wasn't lost on her either. it was like looking into a mirror reflecting an alternate reality of what my/our life might've been, except it wasn't something imaginary or metaphorical, it was a real life being lived right now by real people who were just like us. and this person's mother was proud of her, and happy for her, and protective of her. and in all my own astonishment and joy, i also felt a grief and an anger that this wasn't my mother. this wasn't my life, despite this irrefutable proof that it could have been, because this isn't who my mother and my family chose to be.

i remember telling my mother about this woman i met on the train, and she seemed to pay it no mind. i got the sense she was casting doubt on my ability to even understand enough albanian to be able to report on my encounter accurately, despite the fact that she's the one always advocating for me at family gatherings when they ask, "can she even understand us?" and because of that i even fell for it for a little while, thinking to myself, maybe i did fundamentally misunderstand what this woman was saying, maybe the photos weren't what i thought they were. but it didn't last long because i know that's not possible. my mom wasn't there, and while my speaking fluency has been in rough shape for many years, my listening fluency has always been perfect. my eyes are fine. i know exactly what i saw and what this woman told me.

i think about this a lot ever since it happened and i've been wanting to write it down somewhere, as a way to manifest the memory. it's hard not to assign meaning to it, not to feel like it was a message or that it was meant to happen somehow. the idea that it was just simple coincidence feels a little crazy to me. the rest of my time at pride that year feels unremarkable by comparison because it's like meeting this woman caused a total paradigm shift in my brain. i don't think i'll ever think of my relationship with my family and heritage in the same ways again because of that

anyway i'm thinking about this again because in the wake of all these national headlines i recently took some advice and started actively seeking and paying more attention to local politics, events, movements. and it's definitely helping to divert my energy and provide a more constructive focus for my own emotions and values. in that context, seeing the story about worcester's transgender sanctuary city resolution on my dashboard was a fun coincidence. i'm not naive enough to overestimate the significance of a resolution like this, given that it doesn't actually contain any specific policies or changes that are new or materially impactful, and given recent accounts about the city council's internal culture. but in following these stories independently i get to see a lot of statements from the different councilors, including some of etel haxhiaj's passionate and angry statements in defense of our local LGBT population, which has been making me feel a way similar to my encounter with that woman on the train. not nearly as impactful or profound, of course, but it's there.

all of this combined is giving me a little more confidence to not just accept things in my life as they are, i think. i don't know what that will translate to in the future, as my situation is still precarious, but i can definitely feel my internality shifting. i know a better life is possible, and i know that both logically and emotionally now. that's really it. idk. if you actually read all this thanks for joining me i guess

[frumdyke]

wow okay not only did I not know that neil gaiman was jewish but this is so real. so so much of my family died in the holocaust and the ones who escaped came to england speaking no english so the customs officer gave them a name based off what they looked like and what little luggage they had. I don't know what the family name was before this so I can't track my family tree very far back. but I do know that after they came to england some of em fiddled with the spelling and there are some people up north with a different spelling to me (can't tell you much more about them bc we don't really talk but they do exist.)

the holocaust is such recent history and I think people often forget that. my family tree is tiny. I can only track my ancestors a couple of generations. and heritage is very important in judaism (like neil said, we would take on the name of our father.) seeing another person writing out their family history like that got me all emotional. I just had to add my lil bit,,,, so have some rambles,,

Why is your last name gaiman

Well, you asked....

For a long time Jews didn’t have surnames. We were patronymic. If your name was Ruben, and your father’s name had been David, you’d be Ruben ben David. (ben meaning son of, or bat daughter of). Ashkenazi Jews got surnames at the end of the Eighteenth Century, when countries passed laws making the Jews get surnames.

So...at the end of the nineteenth century, in Radomsk and Lodz in Poland, into the 1940s, it was spelled Heiman. The Heimans on this Holocaust memorial, in Miami, were my family. By the end of the War, they were all murdered.

My great-grandfather, and his family, left Poland and moved to Antwerp in about 1911. 

Here’s the Antwerp Police records on the family from around 1913. It was being spelled Geiman, then. (It was a throaty “Ch” sort of an H, the kind you’ll find in the scottish Loch or in Chaim, a first name meaning life, which is, I am assured, where the surname comes from, and the Ch became a G.) 

Leib Geiman was a courier on the Diamond Bourse.

(Why is my great-grandmother, Eva, not listed? Why were all the children there with my great-grandfather? I have no idea.)

Somewhere around 1914, Leib Geiman came to London. There are different stories in the family about why he left Antwerp, most of them involving a missing diamond.

My great-grandfather Leib (or Leon) spelled his name Geiman for the rest of his life, and that was the name he was buried under in 1951.

My grandmother, Mary, didn’t like the spelling Geiman. She kept fiddling with it. My grandfather was Gaeman on the engagement announcement, then Gaiman on the wedding invitations. I think she went back and forth a bit -- Gaeman was the spelling on my Aunt Helene and Uncle Ronnie's birth listings. And then, before my father was born in 1933, m grandmother changed it again, to Gaiman, and that was the name he was born under, and that was how they left it.

My Uncle Monty became a British Citizen in 1947. His naturalisation information says,

(I don’t know why they weren’t dotting their eyes...).

So that’s why my last name is Gaiman.

[into-control]

Karlie wore a suit with no bra & a pair of Pride™ Stan Smiths last night... Much to unpack there 👀. Damn does that suit pattern make her look like her LEGS are six feet long 👀, then she also wore the gayest shoes possible with her tiddies completely free-range underneath the suit jacket 😳... Girl, everything about this is GAY as hell. Somehow Karlie always manages to out-gay herself & every time I am in awe of her Majesty Dykery. Also, she basically confirmed she's NOT Jewish with her tiddies

JDJGJJDDJDJ

[frumdyke]

dunno how im gonna do tisha b av this year ive been ravenous all week

[frumdyke]

wait i never told you guys. i found it super difficult to concentrate in shul on rosh hashanah because i swear my shtender had yaoi etched into it. i kept moving my machzor around to see if it was still there like i wasnt sure if it was actually real. i went a bit insane during mussaf i think. so i think maybe good things are coming this year

[frumdyke]

purim is such a weird time of year for me cus like yeah im a fundamentally silly person its the perfect chag and i love food and being around my buddiessssss but its my diavarsary and i get all introspective and i look at my past costumes and think about gender for hours and like. idk. i dont do minor fasts since i got diagnosed and i feel weird about that too. lots feelings i guess

[frumdyke]

sitting in a chabad restaurant scrolling trans memes on tumblr is a surreal experience. there is a picture of the rebbe looking directly at me

[frumdyke]

cant believe dnp decided to do oct 19 on shabbos chol hamoed succos. could they not have picked a different day all those years ago. my mum has invited three other families plus a local grandma for lunch. i have to play nice host and pretend im not thinking about two gay boys all day. we're not all gonna fit in the succah !! on phannie day !!

[frumdyke]

in my (orthodox jewish) primary school we had a mock seder every year around pesach and i remember in year two my teacher asked for some people to volunteer to be the five rabbis. and my (eight year old girl) hand shot up and i was chosen to be rabbi akiva. i was soo happy i made a beard out of cotton balls glued to a card triangle and i got to go to school in my brother's shabbos suit it was awesome 👍👍. and my mum was still surprised when i came out lol

[frumdyke]

not in the mood to draw but the idea of miku in a bekeshe and streimel with big blue payos...

[frumdyke]

genuinely forgot that there are people who see cishet as the default which like yeah i guess is setting myself up for disappointment but its never a fun thing to hear from a rebbetzen innit. i mean maybe it means ive mostly surrounded myself with good people ?? or at least people who know that there may be a faggot among them ?? lmao

[frumdyke]

cant wait for lag i need to mess with my hair so baddddd

[frumdyke]

so hard finding the balance between the high holydays and being a petty gay bitch

[frumdyke]

succos is so cute. lets look at the stars together.

[frumdyke]

date a non jewish girlboy call them your goyfriend