Furman seen in Davis Square in Somerville, Mass. (Ella Rockart)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It has been a busy past few years for Furman, who had toiled for years in relative folk rock obscurity with the band Ezra Furman and the Harpoons before making more of a splash as a solo artist with a string of five albums, the first from 2012. Records such as 2015\u2019s \u201cPerpetual Motion People\u201d and 2018\u2019s \u201cTransangelic Exodus\u201d brought widespread acclaim, and she scored the music for Netflix\u2019s hit show \u201cSex Education\u201d in 2019.<\/p>\n
In addition to being a new mom and a professional musician, Furman starts at Hebrew College in nearby Newton this fall. She\u2019s also starting a podcast on Jewish holidays called \u201c2 Queers 4 Questions.\u201d She\u2019s only doing one semester of rabbinical school for now, and then will take all of 2022 off from school. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhich might suggest that I\u2019m doing some musical activity then,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For Furman, rabbinical school is the culmination of a lifetime of thinking about God \u2014 but making music, which she calls spiritual, also helped her get there.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone I know asked me if I think that learning the Torah trope for my bar mitzvah influenced me to become a musician, [and] it completely did,\u201d she said. \u201cI think [singing] is a part of the brain that remembers in a different way, but also thinks and feels in a different way. And that\u2019s the part of the brain that prays, is the part of the part of the brain that I think talks to God, that thinks about God. I think it\u2019s a spiritual act to make music.\u201d <\/p>\n
Has raising a child made her even more in touch with her Jewish identity?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a good question,\u201d she said, tilting her head to the side in contemplation. \u201cI haven\u2019t thought about it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Either way, her two year-old, for whom she uses they\/them pronouns in respect for their privacy, is surrounded by Jewish ritual at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sing \u2018Sh\u2019ma Yisrael\u2019 before putting them down for bed every night. So, they know the word \u2018sh\u2019ma,\u2019 they kiss the mezuzah as we\u2019re going through the door to their bedroom, and in everything about being a parent, you\u2019re making the world for this person. And the choices you make are their environment,\u201d Furman said.<\/p>\n
She explained that she has been thinking about her own childhood lately \u2014 her experiences at a Jewish day school from elementary through middle school, and then as a teenager entering the largely irreligious music scene. <\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up in places where wherever I could be queer, I couldn\u2019t be Jewish in the way I wanted to be,\u201d she said, \u201cand wherever I could be Jewish, I couldn\u2019t be queer in the way I wanted to be. One of them had to be under water for the other one to breathe. I didn\u2019t have a lot of people showing me that it was possible to ask for both and do both.\u201d <\/p>\n
And now? <\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, what becoming an adult has meant is that I get to make the life I want, and others\u2019 idea that these things are incommensurate with each other, doesn\u2019t actually prevent me from doing anything. I mean it might get me stigma and hate, harassment, whatever. But I can still have transness, and Judaism, and parenthood, and the art life, the music life.\u201d <\/p>\n
She takes a long pause. \u201cI have a lot of flaws,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I\u2019m also happy with who I am.\u201d <\/p>\n
Eventually she walked back across Somerville\u2019s Davis Square to where she left her bike and helmet; it was drawing closer to evening and she was on her way to pick up her child before the crush of Boston traffic reached its height. This will be the second time in her life that the Tufts graduate has lived in Somerville as a student and she\u2019s excited to get started.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that I\u2019m going to finish, and I might be a rabbinical school dropout \u2014 which seems cool,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cIt\u2019s a weird thing to do and it\u2019s going to be awkward both for my music life and my school life \u2026 I just was like, well, these two ventures don\u2019t fit together. But I need them both, so I\u2019m going to do them both.\u201d <\/p>\n
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