Cantors Ze’evi Tovlev, Kalix Jacobson and Jordan Goldstein felt that they couldn’t fully express themselves in a world built for men and women.

So they created a new melody. That’s how the Shir Chadash: A Nonbinary Cantors’ Concert was born. (Shir Chadash is Hebrew for “sing a new song.”)

In 2023, Tovlev, Jacobson and Goldstein became the first three openly transgender or nonbinary cantors to be ordained.

The trio, who all identify as nonbinary, performed a mix of secular, Jewish and originally composed music that embodied themes of joy and liberation at a June 6 concert at Temple Shalom.

“It is not easy to be trans or queer today. We haven’t focused on that for a lot of this concert,” Temple Shalom’s Cantor Tovlev said at the event. “We wanted to instead focus on the joy, on the liberation, on the world we are trying to build.”

The set list included the traditional — “Eliyahu Hanavi” and “Shavua Tov” — and contemporary — Dolly Parton and Jewish songleader Dan Nichols — ending with a version of the Priestly Benediction adapted to be gender expansive.

During a performance of Nichols’ “Love is Love is Love,” Tovlev invited Temple Shalom’s adult choir up to the bimah to join in song. Other pieces were similarly interactive, with the audience encouraged to sing the refrains.

Jacobson, who will soon begin as the sole spiritual leader at a Monroeville, Pennsylvania, synagogue, sang “Clarity,” a ukulele solo they composed in 2017 after their legal name change. It’s a reflective piece on coming to terms with their gender identity.

The concert celebrated the unique bond between the three.

“It is such a rare thing for any of us to have the opportunity to sing with other people who fully understand our experience, because there are truly only two other people who understand our experience, both as a cantor and being nonbinary/trans, particularly in the state of the country today,” Goldstein said. “Beyond the feeling of being seen so heavily, these are two of my best friends, and there’s nothing quite like doing your favorite thing in the world with your favorite people in the world.”

Each of the three cantors specializes in a different vocal range: Tovlev a self-described “boy soprano,” Jacobson a tenor with perfect pitch and Goldstein a “foghorn of a voice that holds down the melody,” according to Tovlev.

“Voice parts have no gender here,” Tovlev announced at the event.

“The three of us have very different voice parts, but we mesh very well together, and that’s really rare to find,” Jacobson told Washington Jewish Week. “It’s not something that’s very easy to do, to sing so naturally.”

Jacobson added that the three only met to rehearse twice over Zoom and spent an hour practicing immediately before the concert.

“I cannot emphasize how much time we spent together [in cantorial school],” Jacobson said. “It’s a lot. We just can read each other. It’s a real joy. We know each other so well.”
Tovlev, Jacobson and Goldstein became close friends while attending Hebrew Union College and often sang together for leisure.

After ordination, each of them took up the cantorate at congregations across different cities: Tovlev in Kensington, Jacobson in Pittsburgh and Goldstein in Brooklyn, New York.

“We realized that we missed singing together,” Tovlev said. “As cantors serving solo in congregations or communities, we don’t often get the chance to sing in harmony as much as we did during school. The three of us are also composers, and really enjoy sharing our music with each other [and] with our communities.”

Shir Chadash is the second iteration of the Nonbinary Cantors’ Concert series, with the first being a Pittsburgh concert in honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance last November.

“It was more scenes of grief, resilience, loss and the hope that you need to get through the challenge of transphobia in today’s world,” Tovlev explained. “This concert in June [was] much more based on joy and celebration and community and pride.”

“We find joy and pride — apropos for this month in particular — to be one of the best forms of resistance against a world that would like us to be silent,” Goldstein said. “That comes through both in our trans/nonbinary identities, but also very strongly in our Jewish identities.”

Goldstein added that “all people should be able to see themselves be represented and have human rights … so joy and liberation are radical acts in and of themselves.”

Tovlev expressed gratitude for the Temple Shalom community, which brands itself as a “diverse, inclusive, accepting, welcoming safe space for everyone.”

“It’s hard to be trans right now, in this political landscape, and I feel incredibly grateful to be in Maryland and incredibly grateful to be at Temple Shalom, where I feel supported and understood by community,” Tovlev said.

The cantor added that some of the temple’s youngest members have come to them for support.

“There are trans kids in my congregation who have come up to me and said, ‘Cantor Ze’evi, I don’t know if our president likes me for who I am,’” Tovlev said, referencing a “growing trend of legislation against trans individuals” on the state and federal levels.

This fear and uncertainty makes concerts such as Shir Chadash more necessary, according to Tovlev.

“The more we acknowledge, not just the difficulty of being trans, which we did in the November concert, but the joy and celebration and the community that exists when you are trans, the more we lean into the joy, the more we can show young trans kids that there are happy, thriving trans adults … hopefully this will be a message of hope, of these three trans adults who are loud and proud and thriving, and you can do that too,” Tovlev said.

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com