Gid Spinning Night

Come join our joyful band of queer Jews and fiber artists for an evening of hands-on craft, learning, and community care. We’ll be spinning gid–traditional sinew thread used to sew Torah scrolls, megillot, and tefillin–through a process that is tactile, collaborative, and surprisingly fun.

Gid is an essential but often invisible part of Jewish ritual life, and access to producing it has historically been tightly restricted. This gathering offers a rare opportunity for queer Jews to participate directly in this sacred craft that has largely been closed to us (as well as to other marginalized groups within the Jewish community), and to do so in a way that reflects our shared values of inclusion, sustainability, and mutual responsibility.

Working with backstrap sinew from roadkill deer, we will break the tendon into its individual fibers then spin them back together into usable thread. The gid produced will be used to repair and restore tefillin and Torah scrolls in the Twin Cities, removing our community from the customer base that supports discriminatory production processes.

No prior experience necessary. Non-Jews and allies are welcome and can participate fully!

Yonathan Reches is a hide worker and scribe based in St. Paul, where he lives with his spouse, child, and dog. He founded the Kedusha Project, a collective of artisans dedicated to creating sacred texts and ritual objects through practices that are ethical, sustainable, and rooted in reverence for the life that sustains them. Yonathan’s work bridges traditional craftsmanship and contemporary values, recovering and reimagining methods long held within insular communities. He produced the world’s first egalitarian-made tefillin and the first megillah on giraffe parchment, and he continues to look for ways to innovate the kedusha industry!