Historical Homos Ancient Jewish Lesbians feat. Rachel Joravsky
Welcome to Season 3, Hormones!
Bash is thrilled to be sharing the mic this week with a dear friend and hysterical comedia, Rachel Joravsky, to talk about a fascinating and oft-overlooked group: Ancient. Jewish. Lesbians.
Rachel is a TV writer, comedian, activist, educator, and self-acclaimed "power Jewess," so naturally we took a gay look at The Book of Ruth together (shout out to all the Ketuvim) to uncover what is so "queer" about two women living together and raising a baby on their farm. (Hint: a lot.)
We also delve into the medieval Rabbinic scholars' views on how to deal with lesbians (hint: flogging), and we cap it all off with the story of a modern day Ruth and Naomi in honor of our guest's Jewish Socialist tendencies.
Pauline Newman and Frieda Miller raised their daughter together in Greenwich Village in the 1920s and were fundamental to the US Labor movement's inclusion of women's rights. As always, come for the fabulously sexy history and stay for the jokes about Jewish pu$$y ("It's Chosen," says Rachel.)
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This episode was written, researched, and hosted by Bash, and edited by Alex Toskas.