Yona Speidel, the Emmy nominated author and producer previously generally known as Our Lady J, not too long ago skilled grief as a Jew for the primary time. Simply six weeks after changing to Judaism in March and formally altering her identify, Speidel marked her late brother’s Yahrzeit (the anniversary of 1’s demise) by lighting a candle and reciting a prayer for the lifeless. She texted the prayer to her household.
“None of them are Jewish or have any desire to convert, but they all said Yahrzeit,” Speidel tells me over Zoom from her New York Metropolis residence. “They all read the texts and they lit the candles. I feel so lucky to have so much support. I could cry because it’s really a wonderful testament to the amazing people that my family are and the people that they’ve become as well.”
Raised in an ultra-religious Amish and Mennonite neighborhood in Chambersburg, Penn., Speidel moved to New York Metropolis when she was 21. She got here out as trans in 2004. A fixture of New York’s downtown artwork scene, she landed in Los Angeles as a author on “Transparent,” the groundbreaking Amazon Prime Video collection a few an older trans girl (Jeffrey Tambor) and her very Jewish household in Los Angeles.
The “Transparent” writers room impressed Speidel to discover the potential for changing about 12 years in the past. “When I moved to New York as a young queer person at the age of 21 I just thought I loved New York,” she says. “I didn’t realize that so much of what I love about New York was Jewish New York, from the musicals to the food to the attitude of learning and acceptance and progress and social progress. Those are huge elements that were hugely influential to my coming of age. I didn’t realize how much of that was Jewish until I started writing on ‘Transparent.’ Then it became a formal study. So it was a lifetime of kind of casually dating Judaism, I guess.”
Speidel formally transformed on March 23. “I’m a little more observant than some reform friends that I know,” she says. “I do Shabbat, I do the holidays. I’m learning Hebrew, biblical Hebrew.”
Speidel says at present’s political local weather, particularly round Center East points, has made telling those that she’s now Jewish a bit bit extra difficult than she anticipated. “It’s a lot harder than coming out as trans,” she says. “I’ve just had a lot more pushback in my social circles and a lot more silence, a kind of uncomfortable silence where people don’t know what I’m doing. It feels very similar.”
I ask Speidel what she loves about being Jewish. With out lacking a beat, she says with a large smile, “Barbra Streisand.”
“Have you listened to her audio book – all 48 hours?” she asks, referencing Streisand’s 2023 memoir “My Name Is Barbra.” “It makes me so proud to be Jewish. I love her so much.”
Fangirling over Babs apart, Speidel says, “There’s so many different things I love about being Jewish, but humor is way up there on the list, how we deal with adversity, how we sharpen our intellectual skills. We hunker down and we fix problems rather than running away from them. We have solutions that are creative rather than destructive. There’s a reliance on ourselves to get the job done.”
Gaby Hoffmann, left, Judith Gentle and Yona Speidel at a “Transparent” screening in 2016.
Penske Media by way of Getty Photos
Speidel is just not solely a author and producer, however she’s additionally an actress, a director and a classically skilled pianist (she was the primary out trans girl to carry out at Carnegie Corridor). She’s at present co-executive producer and a author on the upcoming Netflix collection, “The Boroughs,” a Nineteen Eighties-style sci-fi journey a few group of senior residents preventing beings from one other world. “The Boroughs’ isn’t a Jewish show, but it’s about family,” Speidel says. “Family is a big part of being Jewish.”
The ultimate cuts of the episodes of the collection had been locked by the point she transformed, however “’The Boroughs’ is my first on screen title,’” Speidel says.
She continues, “Our Lady J was used for the credits, but I texted one of the producers and the showrunners as well, and I said, ‘Is there any chance that they could just slip [my new name] in?’ They unlocked the episodes to give me a new name card. Just hearing myself say that, I feel very lucky.”
“The Boroughs” premieres on Netflix on Might 21.
