TUESDAY, December 6th, 7 pm Eastern:

The shapes of trans lives, identities, and cultures are changing rapidly. The term transgender is itself just a few decades old, and exists in a web of ideas about sex and gender that only calcified in the 20th century. At the same time, people who deviated from social conventions of what we would now call sex or gender—people we might see as ancestors of trans people today—have always existed. What happens when we look for them in ancient texts? How might we think about trans continuity in our cultural archives, without coercing ancestors into contemporary categories? Join Max Strassfeld—whose recent book, Trans Talmud, investigates the androgynes and eunuchs who appear throughout the foundational Jewish text—along with scholars Jules Gill-Peterson and Joy Ladin, for a conversation on reading the trans archive today, moderated by Jewish Currents editor Ari M. Brostoff.

SATURDAY, December 17th, 7-9 pm Eastern:

Join Jewish Currents and Black Ox Orkestar for a night of music and celebration! Purchase tickets to the concert here.

Black Ox Orkestar—the Montreal-based band exploring the sounds of the Jewish diaspora—released their first recording in more than a decade in the form of the Jewish Currents Winter Gift 2021-22, “Mizrakh mi ma’arav.”

This song appears on the band’s new full-length album “Everything Returns,” which picks up right where they left off: an entrancing collection of roiling interpretations of Jewish diasporic instrumentals combined with brooding vocal-driven originals (sung primarily in Yiddish) showcasing their unique sound and sensibility—offering a distinctive take and timbre within the contemporary landscape of Jewish, Yiddish and klezmer music. “Everything Returns” will be released by Constellation on December 2nd, 2022. Go to cstrecords.com for more information.