Jacob Feldon needs a deer hide.
He’s been working with an area hunter to get it, with hopes of thinning it into parchment. Feldon, an incoming senior at Logan High School, also will need handmade ink, gold leaf and medieval margin art to complete his re-creation of a 12th-century poem as it would have been originally crafted in traditional Jewish scribal art.
The poem is called the “Sefer Tahkemoni,” and it was written by Rabbi Yehuda Alharizi in Spain almost a millennium ago. In it, the writer pens his love for a young man, calling him a “gazelle” and describing how his cheeks glow when he drinks wine.
Not every 17-year-old wants to spend time transcribing medieval poetry. But for Feldon, this art is a physical manifestation of the identities and histories that he has been working to intertwine.
“Queer Jews are nothing new,” Feldon said. “We’ve been around forever. We’ve been contributors to culture and to religious writing that has to do with our experiences. My own experience resonates with these figures from thousands of years ago.”
Feldon, who identifies as bisexual, has spent most of his life in northern Utah. He loves history (he fence-rapiers for the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group committed to keeping alive medieval European cultures and practices). He can spend (and has spent) 36 hours binge-reading Hasidic philosophy.
“Jacob remembers so many things,” Milada Schekoldin, Feldon’s study partner, said. The two often read Jewish texts and analyze them together.
“If you ask him a question, he will find a PDF or a book, and then he will memorize it and know everything,” she said. “He’s good material for a rabbi,”
Today, Feldon views his Jewish identity as a part of himself that he’s unequivocally proud of, something he never would want to change.
He didn’t always feel that way.
“Being Jewish in Utah…” Feldon said, trailing off. “Not the greatest of experiences.”
He felt ‘ostracized’
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jews make up .2% of Utah's population, but the lack of a large Jewish community in Utah perhaps prodded Feldon to seek it out more fervently.
Feldon said he had to transfer schools after the sixth grade due to antisemitic episodes. His mother, Colby Tofel-Grehl, noted that the family knows only one other active Jewish family in Logan. Taking time off school for Jewish holidays has often required extra explaining and, sometimes, teachers would refuse to accept Feldon’s late work — even if it was tardy due to his religious observance.
“There was no malice behind that,” Tofel-Grehl said. “The community is structured around the dominant religion, which is understandable. But one of the really big challenges for Jacob is if he’s going to choose to be a practicing Jew, he has to accept that extra workload and burden.”
There were times when he was younger, Feldon said, that he felt insurmountably “other-ized and ostracized,” to the point he wished he could discard his Jewish identity. It would, he reasoned, make his life much easier.
It didn’t help that, in a state where Jews make up 0.2% of the population, Feldon had to drive 90 miles each way to a synagogue in Salt Lake City every Wednesday and Saturday to prepare for his bar mitzvah. When he decided he wanted to keep kosher, he found that there were precious few kosher restaurants. There are also no eruvs in Utah — enclosures that allow Jewish people to carry their belongings on Shabbat, when doing work of any kind is prohibited.
Still, the lack of a large Jewish community in Utah perhaps prodded Feldon to seek it out more fervently.
“I had to take a much more active priority in my life than if I had lived in a big Jewish community,” he said. “And, for me, during the pandemic, when I had more time to myself and more time for introspection, I realized I wanted a deeper connection there, and I had to go looking for it.”
So he did.
Embracing tradition
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) “Honestly, I was less surprised by Jacob’s queer identity,” his mother said, “than I was by how devout he is to his religion.”
Feldon grew up in a Reform Jewish family, a more liberal practice of Judaism. But during COVID-19, he began turning to ba’al teshuvah, embracing a more traditional strand of the faith.
“Honestly, I was less surprised by Jacob’s queer identity,” his mother said, “than I was by how devout he is to his religion.”
There have been times throughout Feldon’s faith journey that he tried to put his Jewish identity above his queer one, or vice versa, especially since many Orthodox Jews reject homosexuality. But he ultimately found that his two identities didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
“Things change and more affirming worlds are built based on viewing people as people, and understanding that me being queer is just one identity out of many that I hold,” Feldon said. “That entire identity cannot be reduced.”
While he doesn’t identify with any particular movement in Judaism, Feldon considers himself “broadly traditional.” A principal value of Judaism, and one that has guided his explorations within the faith, is questioning.
When Feldon was a child, his parents would treat him to ice cream if he stumped the rabbi with a question. Now, he has turned that same discerning eye to traditional Jewish practices, selecting which forms of observance bring him personal fulfillment, and which ones don’t.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Feldon finds being in the outdoors for his prayers a nice way to start the day, which he finds “grounding and meditative.”
Adopting ba’al teshuvah is more of a personal journey than a ritualistic transition, Feldon said. For him, that meant going from attending synagogue once a year for Yom Kippur to davening, or praying, three times a day. He washes his hands in a basin next to his bed after waking up in the morning. Another practice is laying tefillin, black leather boxes encasing Hebrew parchment scrolls, on his head and arm.
“I find the pieces that bring me the most joy,” Feldon said, “and I use them as anchors.”
When he first discovered the “Sefer Tahkemoni” poem in Rabbi Steven Greenberg’s “Wrestling With God & Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition,” he found a kindred spirit — and a reminder.
“To any other queer youth, there is a space for you,” Feldon said. “You don’t have to sacrifice one identity for another.”
