Little Death

In this introductory episode, I want to bring each of you along in the odyssey of how this podcast came to be and the many metamorphoses that had to happen within me, through me and around me to be able to get to this particular moment. In this process, I will share a bit of who I am as a queer anti-Zionist Jewish settler and as a passionate researcher, organizer, and truth teller. As well as the lineages of thought that inform this podcast, from my philosophies, to my eco-based spiritualities and decolonial politics. I will do this in Chapters that tell the story of how Little Death came to be.

In the first Little Death interview, my dear friend, Emily Goldsmith, takes over as host. Em is a queer artist, actor, educator, fellow witch, yogi, writer, and comedian. Em asks me the same questions that I will ask others throughout this season: Who are your people? What role does grief and loss play in your life, work, activism and artistic endeavours? And how does this inform the ways you dream up liberatory worlds?

Em and I reminisce on how we first met and why we resonate with the term, “queer platonic partner,” in the radical ways we show up for each other that go beyond conventional friendship. We touch on queer occult practices and I share about my ancestors, transestors, chosen family, and queer community that ground me in an otherwise shaky world.

In Part 2 of the first Little Death interview with yours truly, I share about my experiences growing up with death, as well as the cultural practices and Jewish grieving rituals that surrounded me. I speak about conflating Jewish culture and faith with the racist ideology of Zionism, and the fear-mongering and gaslighting experienced by Palestinian peoples through a normalization of violence in Israeli society. I discuss the interconnectedness between ongoing struggles for Indigenous peoples on these lands and in Palestine. Ending with how liberation in the present can be found in small moments of joy and what dreams I hold for the future to come.