In this extraordinary compendium, Sienna brings to the center texts, experiences, desires, pain and oppression of queer Jews that have been marginalized or even mostly erased. Through these texts, A Rainbow Thread demonstrates the diversity of Jewish life and at the same time helps us to imagine—in the past and the future—rich and vibrant queer life.
Like a treasure trove long forgotten and glowing with heirlooms, this queer Geniza connects us not only to the ones who struggled, wrestled and celebrated all forms of love before us, but also enables us to better connect to each other with dignity and with delight and to offer future generations the blessings of our multicolored legacy of lives focused on love.
Sienna excavates and curates a fascinating history of queer Jews across centuries, languages, and countries, creating an eye-opening piece of scholarship that revels in the complexities, struggles, and joys of what it means to be queer and Jewish.
This extraordinary collection of queer and gender-expansive Jewish texts, astonishing in its breadth and depth, manages to be both an indispensable resource for those already in the conversation and entirely accessible to those newer to queer and/or Jewish concepts, thanks to the clear, thoughtful way Sienna contextualizes and explains each text. I’m very excited for this to become a classic in every Jewish and queer library.
A Rainbow Thread both soothes the grief of longing for a place in Jewish history and energizes the reader with the excitement of so much new information. Combined with Sienna’s lyrical expository style, there’s no doubt this book will be an instant and beloved classic.
This book is a revelation. Queer people yearn for visibility, particularly in history. We know we’ve always been here, but we’ve been on the margins, and often written out of history entirely. A Rainbow Thread is like an oasis in that textual desert: nourishing, delightful, affirming.