Undzer Tish (Our Table) is a compilation of nigunim—melodies of yearning and joy, often wordless—recorded by trans, nonbinary, and queer Jews in summer 2022 on Abanaqi land. We sang and stomped our way through these tunes in a farmhouse-turned-synagogue, our voices drawing strength from our gender-expansive ancestors who found home in song. Each track description contains a story about our personal relationships with these melodies. May they offer you sacred company whenever you need it!

~

A note on this album and the four-pronged letter ש (shin) found in the scribed title on the cover art:

If you take a look at the tefillin shel rosh, the tefillin box that is traditionally placed above your forehead for daily davvening (prayer), you will notice there are two 3D shins on the lateral sides of the box. And if you were to look super closely at them, you’d notice that one looks like a normal shin, with three prongs, while the other one shockingly has four!

Nu, what is the reason for these two different shins, and why are they opposite each other on the tefillin shel rosh?

We learn that the two different shins represent our ancient ancestors: the three-pronged shin depicts our Grandfathers Avraham, Yitzchak, and Ya’acov, and the four-pronged shin depicts our Grandmothers Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, and Leah.

When you flip one of these shins upside down, they fit snugly together in a hug of trAncestral gender-full Oneness! (Image here: bit.ly/shinsnuggle)

Our ancient ancestors are holding each other.
They are holding us, and we hold them back.

The Jewish scribal tradition teaches that this matriarchal four-pronged shin is not kosher to use in holy texts, which as a transcribe, I (Noam) do abide by when scribing mezuzos (doorpost amulets). According to halacha (Jewish law), it can *only* be used on the side of the tefillin box.

HOWEVER, I believe this is the shin of the world that is coming.

This is the shin of rematriation. Of destruction/renewal. Of moshiakh.a משיח.ה –– Of dveykus דבֿקות (longing/yearning/cleaving) for a world without abuse and abuse of power. For a world of comfort and non-hierarchy and love and justice and trauma healing and gender-expansive queerness.

This is a dreamy album of trans, nonbinary, and queer Jewish people singing our neshamas (souls) out. Singing songs that we wrote and songs that we learned and were passed down like a prayer from generation to generation.

Our ancestors come from many places in the diaspora: we have Ashkenazi, Bukharian, Sephardi, E. European ancestry. A few of us even discovered that we had shared spiritual lineage—that some of our ancestors were Radomsker Khasidim who mostly dwelled in Poland, and were known for their singing!

It was so special to come together and sing in a small farmhouse that was converted into a shtibl-style synagogue at The Brattleboro Area Jewish Community Shir HeHarim, on Abanaqi land.

Please sing with us at our table, undzer tish
לאָמיר זינגען צוזאַמען בײַ אונדזער טיש !

Noam Lerman, on behalf of Rena Branson, Itai Gal, Sadie “Zeydi” Gold-Shapiro, Simcha Halpert Hanson, and Ariel Shapiro