Cantor Ze’evi Tovlev, MAJE ’21, MSM ’22, Cantorial Ordination ’23

After enrolling at Hebrew Union College’s Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, Cantor Ze’evi Tovlev, MAJE ’21, MSM ’22, Cantorial Ordination ’23 came out as transgender and nonbinary as a second-year student, becoming the first nonbinary cantorial student stateside—“a huge honor and a huge responsibility.” Although they were embraced with “an overwhelming amount of good intention,” Tovlev says that the campus community did not yet have a great deal of information about trans and nonbinary students. “Many of the people I spoke to had never met someone who used they/them pronouns before, or at least hadn’t been in community with them in the past. What I tried to do was build institutional knowledge. I wanted to make sure the good intentions of the faculty, administration, staff, and the student body were able to translate into this becoming a safe space.”

“The reason why I am able to be a pioneer in nonbinary liturgy is because of the work that I did as a student at Hebrew Union College.”
— Cantor Tovlev