Welcome to 2 Queers 4 Questions! In which we ask four new questions about each Jewish holiday. This is our introductory episode, which hopefully explain where we're coming from, what we're trying to do and why.

Season 1

1. Overture

Our first proper episode is here, and it's about the month of Elul, in which we get super quiet and introspective and everyone wonders what is going on with us. It's a month to prepare for the High Holidays and to focus on self-assessment, repentance, repair, relationships.

Our Four Questions for Elul:
1. What is teshuvah and how do we do it?
2. Is being trans a kind of teshuvah? / Is doing teshuvah a kind of transness?
3. Is teshuvah subversive?
4. How is God involved?

2. Elul

HAPPY NEW YEAR y'all, it's our Rosh Hashanah episode and it is a sweet one and a good one. Pass the honey and judge us mercifully, it's the beginning of a new calendar year. (Or is it????)

Our four questions for Rosh Hashanah map on to the four major names of the holiday:
1. Why do we have a Jewish calendar? / Rosh HaShanah, head of the year
2. What does a shofar do? / Yom T'ruah, day of the shofar-blowing
3. What and how are we remembering? / Yom HaZikaron, day of remembrance
4. What do we do with guilt? / Yom HaDin, day of judgment

Please enjoy, and hey - feel free to send any reactions, comments, corrections, interesting additions, drashot, etc., to 2queers4questions@gmail.com. Big blessings from us to you for a sweet new year.  <3 Ezra & Agnes

3. Rosh Hashanah

Yom Kippur. So intense. Drop that bagel and get repenting. The 2 Queers take on the holiest day of the year. We get into the weeds real fast with this one, but hang on because just beyond the weeds is where the good stuff is to be found.

Our questions:
1. Is Yom Kippur a solemn or a joyful day?
2. What does fasting do?
3. What's the relationship between personal reckoning and communal reckoning?
4. What do we learn from Jonah?

Email 2queers4questions@gmail.com to contact us for any reason at all. Feedback, corrections and more questions encouraged.

4. Yom Kippur

It's Sukkot! Temporary dwellings, agricultural prop-work, tons of joy, a sprinkle of nihilism, rubbing our difference in the devil's face. Learn about the B-side of the High Holidays. We surprised ourselves with this one and how thematically juicy it is. And it turned out to be a surprisingly emotional episode, too. Join us?

The Queers (as always): Agnes Borinsky & Ezra Furman
The Questions (rather minimalist, like a Sukkah):
1. What do we build?
2. What do we do?
3. Why is Kohelet so emo?
4. Who's invited, and why?

5. Sukkot

Okay now we're really into the deep-cut holidays. The last of the high holidays is the most mysterious, when we finish reading the Torah, pray for rain and dance like mad.

Our questions:
1. Why is there a holiday about nothing?    
2. What happens at the end of the Torah?
3. Have you ever seen the rain? / What’s rain got to do with it? 
4. Why do we dance?

6. Shmini Atzeret / Simchat Torah

Chanukah... oh, Chanukah. What a joyful bundle of contradictions. The minor holiday with a major cultural profile. The festival of lights in the darkest of times. The insurgent anti-assimilationist celebration that turned into an imitation of a certain keystone holiday of the Xtian empire. You may think you know this holiday, but let's take a closer look.

Our four questions for Chanukah:

1. Who is the enemy and how do we fight them/it?
2. What ruins is it time for us to rededicate?
3. Which miracle? / Where do we want to look for our miracles? 
4. What darkness are we hoping to light? / What do we do with darkness, what do we do with light?

Email us at 2Queers4Questions@gmail.com! Music by Sam Durkes & Ezra Furman!

7. Chanukah

Our Purim episode stumbles in way past deadline, maybe a little hungover but in high spirits. This is a lighthearted holiday which holds many secrets... Our questions:

1. Who comes out of the closet on Purim?
2. Is exile always a bad thing?
3. Who has authority when God seems absent?
4. Why do we throw a wild party to commemorate such a terrifying event?

8. Purim

Pesach. Passover. It's kind of the big one in a way. One of the most iconic and most encompassing and also the origin of the format of this very podcast (four questions). And it celebrates the origin of our people and of our calendar and our autonomy... it was a daunting one and also we were really busy and we are super late. Sorry. But c'mon get off our backs. We hope it is illuminating! 

Our questions:
1. What does it mean to put a traumatic experience at the center of our collective narrative?
2. What vision of freedom does this holiday invite?
3. Food: why? Why food?
4. What are the undigested emotions at play in this holiday – anger, frustration, failure?

9. Pesach

The Omer, baby. Not a holiday, you say? Correct. But an unmissable aspect of the Jewish calendar, and maybe, as we discuss, the key to bringing out the "fuck you" that lies at the heart of having our own Jewish map of time. This is the in-between time, the time of growth, waiting, anticipating, grieving, counting.

Our questions:
1. Are we going away from, or are we going towards?
2. Why is this counting personal?
3. Is Zionism a spiritual problem or a political one?
4. Is the Omer boring?

10. The Omer

It's time for Tisha B'Av, the Jewish day of mourning par excellence, the day that first of all commemorates the destruction of our temple in Jerusalem and then piles on every other tragedy in Jewish history. We're talking about how to mourn, how to heal, how to be broken and what comes next. 

In tribute to Tisha B'av's theme of a ruined structure, we've blown apart our usual terse style of inquiry and left our four questions as four piles of deconstructed rubble:

1. Are we actually sad what does it feel like to mourn on purpose on schedule are we faking it is this real grief. 
2. Okay but what about a temple is the temple supposed to be our home would it feel like a home if we could make it again do we even want it to be our home what happens when you lose your home that you maybe didn’t even really want to begin with?
3. How do we understand blame responsibility collective guilt blaming the victim consequences a loss of coherence.
4. And but then what’s next what do you even do the day after things fall apart is it painful is it exhilarating can we get a little bit of aftercare?

12. Tisha B'Av

Parshat Noach, with Ezra

A dvar Torah on parashat Vayera by Ezra Furman. Content Warning: contains violent and disturbing imagery. Featuring Abraham, Isaac, Hagar, Ishmael, Sodom & Gomorrah.

Parshat Vayera, with Ezra

A blast from the past. Recorded 2 years ago in 5782 (or 2021 for all you assimilationists) as part of our podcast's first iteration, 2 Queers 4 Questions (which, is that still what we're called? I dunno it's blurry and we don't care). 

We both recently listened and were struck by some of the stuff in here, questions and texts that go very deep to the meanings and possibilities of this holiday. So we wanted to share the conversation once again. Happy Chanukah, honey.

Our questions are:
1. Who is the enemy and how do we fight them/it?
2. What ruins is it time for us to rededicate?
3. Which miracle? / Where do we want to look for our miracles?
4. What darkness are we hoping to light? / What do we do with darkness, what do we do with light?

Repost - 2Q4Q: Chanukah (recorded 5782 aka 2021)

A dvar Torah on parashat Bamidbar by Ezra Furman. With God, failure, numbers, Rabbi Yehoshua and language.

Bamidbar, with Ezra

A dvar Torah on parashat Behaalotcha by Ezra Furman. With making records, speech, Moses, Cock Sparrer, Dr. Martin Luther King and Pesach Sheini.

Behaalotcha, with Ezra

A dvar Torah on parashat Shlach by Agnes Borinsky. With parents, children, therapy, God, hearts and eyes.

Shlach, with Agnes

A dvar Torah on parashat Korach by Ezra Furman. With anger, Allen Ginsberg, Korach, Moses, God, Aaron, and liminality.

Korach, with Ezra

A dvar Torah on parashat Chukat by Agnes Borinisky. With water, the lake, death, Miriam, Avivah Zornberg and the unconscious.

Chukat, with Agnes

A dvar Torah on parashat Balak by Ezra Furman. With transphobia, language, Balak, Bilam, art gigs, community and blessings.

Balak, with Ezra

A special joint-parsha episode for the week of Matot-Masei: Agnes & Ezra in conversation about this week's double parsha (strangely, the first double parsha of the year this year). Really I think this was just a very difficult and upsetting Torah portion and we were both afraid to do it alone. 

This is a throwback to the first era of this podcast, when we had rambling conversations about the holidays and asked four questions. And our questions this time around are not even questions. They are just four topics that we were too busy/lazy/excited to turn into questions. They are four rooms in a little bungalow. Join us on an intimate walkthrough:

Q1. Cities of asylum?
Q2. Horrific war?
Q3. Vows?
Q4. The end of the book of Bamidbar?

Also: this episode has noticeable technical flaws! Editing: weird. Timing: off, due to some delay issue. Sound: pretty low quality, Agnes's audio gets better after a rocky start but it's all pretty low-fi. What are we, professionals?

Chazak Chazak, see you in the book of Deuteronomy babes.

[Music by Ezra Furman & Sam Durkes in a little practice room in Los Angeles, February 7th, 2017.]

Matot-Masei, with Agnes & Ezra

A dvar Torah on parashat Devarim by Ezra Furman. With Moses, Rabbi Yosei bar Chanina, murder in Gaza, Isaiah, Tisha B’av and rebuke.

Devarim, with Ezra

A dvar Torah on parashat Eikev by Ezra Furman. With rain, love, the Ronettes, the Shma, Rabbi Chanina and awe.

Eikev, with Ezra

A dvar Torah on parashat Re'eh by Agnes Borinsky. With circumference, crossing over, change, altars and Elul.

Re'eh, with Agnes

A dvar Torah on parashat Shoftim by Ezra Furman. With news, anxiety, authority, Rashi, prophets and trust.

Shoftim, with Ezra

A dvar Torah on parashat Ki Tetzei by Agnes Borinsky. With vows, seeking, lost animals, Bob Kaufman and silence.

Ki Teitzei, with Agnes

A dvar Torah on parashat Ki Tavo by Ezra Furman. With completion, storytelling, covenants, arrival and starting over.

Ki Tavo, with Ezra

A dvar Torah on parashat Nitzavim-Vayeilech by Agnes Borinsky. With Ben Lerner, Caedmon, poetry, failure, Moses, today and possibility.

Nitzavim-Vayeilech, with Agnes

A dvar Torah on parashat Ha'azinu by Ezra Furman. With dreams, songs, the Sifrei, Moses, Jewish holidays, the Sefat Emet and food.

Ha'azinu, with Ezra

After a long time away, the Queers return! Is this the beginning of a new season of 2Q4Q? We do not know. But we wanted to talk about prayer. Here is a conversation between Agnes and Ezra in which we ask four questions about Jewish prayer, using the Abraham Joshua Heschel 1952** essay “Prayer As Discipline” to structure our talk. We get into some real open-hearted amateur theology type stuff here and we really love how the discussion went.
(**i might have the year wrong, it's around then)

The Questions:
1.	How do we approach God? (Begins at 7:25)
2.	Why talk to God? (26:25)
3.	What does prayer do? (43:31)
4.	Do the words we use matter? (56:24)

As for what’s next on this show, we’re not sure, we’ve been thinking about different ways to talk more about prayer, maybe about other things too. We will let you know. In the meantime you are always welcome to email us at 2queers4questions@gmail.com. Thanks for your listening ears. Love, E&A

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