Exploring Queer Yiddishkeit Through Autoethnographic Film: language, temporality and place

• In Event: Language ideology with Respect to Yiddish

Abstract

This paper explores transnational iterations of Queer Yiddishkeit in global and local contexts, with a view to understanding the queer futures of Yiddish. Through autoethnographic film collected during fieldwork in 2022-23, I ask: in what ways are queer culture-makers engaging with Yiddish? How are queer Jewish artists, activists, and community language spaces shaping contemporary Yiddish culture? And, what are the potentials of a practice-based and autoethnographic method to better understand Queer Yiddishkeit in global and local contexts?

Jeffrey Shandler (2006) describes Queer Yiddishkeit as ‘works of literature, journalism, filmmaking and performance art, that juxtapose queerness and Yiddishness’. Taking Shandler as a starting point, my research contends that rather than juxtaposing, Queer Yiddishkeit can be understood as INTEGRATING queerness and Yiddishness, through culture, performance, music, poetry, politics, heritage and identity. I demonstrate that queerness and Yiddishness are being integrated by performers, writers, community language teachers and activists in new and meaningful ways for both academic Yiddish Studies scholarship, and for global understandings of contemporary Yiddish culture.

Autoethnographic filmmaking as a method underscores a commitment to a reflexive and participatory approach to research. I am an insider in the community I am researching – part of a global community of queer and trans Jews who explore or enact Jewish and queer identity through Queer Yiddishkeit. Drawing on the work of Jack Halberstam (2005, 2011), José Esteban Muñoz (2009) and Zohar Weiman-Kelman (2017, 2018), I take a queer-theoretical lens to these articulations of community, language, and culture. Fieldwork was undertaken across three Yiddish hubs in North America and Australia: New York, Montreal and Melbourne. By taking a focus on Yiddish events happening across these places, along with online digital space, I present an argument about the transnational flows, affects and understandings of Queer Yiddishkeit today.

Author

• Nicola Menser Hearn, Monash University