Heads turned as soon as Raye Schiller arrived at the JQ International Impact Awards brunch fund-raiser in March 2022 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
Ms. Schiller, ever-so-cool in a three-piece mauve suit and buzz haircut, was the new kid on the block in the city’s Jewish L.G.B.T.Q. community, and staying with her father until she found a place.
“I was struck by her presence,” said Justin Joseph Nemanpour, who goes by Jay, greeting Ms. Schiller with clipboard in hand. “It was so strong. More than the look.”
“I’m sure he’s a gay man,” Ms. Schiller recalled thinking at first. “I’m only dating women.” Each described themselves as queer and gender fluid. (Both also use “they” pronouns.)
To Ms. Schiller’s surprise, he dated women, and with the odds stacked against him, he had an instant crush on her.
Mr. Nemanpour, 29, grew up in Los Angeles in a Persian-Jewish family. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Jewish studies from University of California, Los Angeles, and earned a master’s degree in Jewish nonprofit management at Hebrew Union College Zelikow in Los Angeles. He currently works as a property manager at the Neman Group, a multifamily leasing and management group in Los Angeles.
“I run the only Queer Jewish Orthodox Moishe House,” he told her. “Take my number, we have to have you join.” (About 100 international Moishe Houses, tailored to each community, welcome young adults into private homes).
Ms. Schiller figured she’d never take him up on it, but eventually did.
“He was really part of my L.A. friends group,” she said. “Him and five or six other queer Jews. We would do Shabbat dinners.”
During a solo cross country road trip from New York, from October 2021 to January 2022, Ms. Schiller, who grew up in Los Angeles and Queens, N.Y., also began moonlighting in standup, drawing from her Orthodox Jewish queer background.
[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]
In April 2023, Mr. Nemanpour hired her when he was running events to do a 10-minute set for a comedy show at JQ, an L.G.B.T.Q. Jewish organization. She has since performed internationally, on Instagram, and does a podcast called “Yenta!” with Antonia Lassar, a fellow comedian and actor.
Ms. Schiller, 30, who by day works remotely as a software engineer at One Switchboard, a progressive political campaign software company in Washington, graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in digital media from Hunter College and William E. Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, and received a master’s degree in software engineering from Cornell Tech in New York.
That December, their relationship took a turn when they stayed at an Airbnb with two friends in “a witchy place,” she said, called Idyllwild-Pine Cove, Calif., where Maximus Mighty-Dog Mueller III, a golden retriever, is honorary mayor. They danced to an alternative techno music playlist and play-wrestled.
“We broke the friend barrier,” Ms. Schiller said, not with “a passionate make-out kiss, but a what-is-going-on-kiss.”
They began dating in quasi-secret, but broke up a couple months later. “I was trying to build a logical case that we could be together,” he said. Dating a man, even a gender fluid man, “was a far-fetched idea for her.”
At the end of April 2024, they realized they missed each other, and, as friends, enjoyed a picnic in Wattles Garden Park overlooking Los Angeles. That evening, Mr. Nemanpour accompanied Ms. Schiller to a standup gig in Burbank. As always, she could recognize his laugh in the audience.
“He has a beautiful, loud laugh,” Ms. Schiller said.
Afterward, as they waited in his car to pick up her father for dinner, she swiped on Hinge and Tinder dating apps.
“Why date these people?” Mr. Nemanpour said. “I’m right here. I can give you what you need.”
They reconciled that evening, giving her, she said, “a new wellspring of material for standup.”
“Love is Love,” one of the first clips they posted publicly about their relationship, went viral, with about 17.1 million views now on Instagram, and 5.5 million on TikTok. “Our relationship can be confusing and unusual but people can tell the love is real — we don’t fit into neat societal gender or sexuality boxes,” Ms. Schiller said.
“We should date for a year, and either get engaged or break up,” Mr. Nemanpour said on one of a half-dozen camping trips they took the summer of 2024, where he displayed the pink, purple and blue-striped bisexual flag and put up twinkly lights.
In March, Ms. Schiller proposed on one knee in Joshua Tree National Park between two interlocking trees where she had set up a rug, pillows and champagne. A week later, on Purim, he got on one knee in his apartment in a cowboy Purim costume amid roses and candles.
On Sept. 14, Rabbi Igael Gurin-Malous, the senior rabbi at Beit T’Shuvah in Los Angeles, who goes by Rabbi Iggy, led a ceremony blending queer elements with Ashkenazi and Persian traditions, before 350 guests at Casa Lago in Beverly Hills, Calif.
As for their future: “We are changing our name to Shemen, for oil,” Mr. Nemanpour said. “It’s fluid and represents a strong livelihood and a good foundation to live the beautiful life we want to live.”
The post Gender Bending Jewish Traditions With a Little Humor appeared first on New York Times.
