“Hi Team Alma, I have a success story for you!,” read an email the staff of Hey Alma received back in May of 2021. “A very lovely woman responded to my personal and we hit it off over a lakeside walk. Since then we’ve been having frequent and extremely good quality lesbian sex. Thank you so much for bringing us together!”
The email was signed from Joanna Phillips, better known as Jo, a 25-year-old Londoner who had submitted a personal ad to the Hey Alma Classifieds, the matchmaking service we host on our Instagram, about six weeks prior. The ad read: “LESBIAN BOCHUR4BOCHUR. What if… we kissed in the yeshiva… but we were both women? Looking for a dyke with Avigdor energy for fierce & hot Talmud debates that end with you clamping your hand over my mouth.”
The team rejoiced at the wonderful news. Little did we know that the magic was only just beginning.
About three months later, Jo emailed us again to say that good quality lesbian sex had turned into good quality lesbian sex and dating. In April 2022, we heard from her again, this time to say that she and Lucy were celebrating their one year anniversary. Then, in late October 2023, the Hey Alma team heard from Jo and Lucy again, with the news we had been waiting for: They were engaged. “Of all the things I thought might come out of watching ‘Yentl’ during lockdown, this wasn’t high up on my list. But the magic of Queer Talmud and Barbara Streisand meant that I ended up meeting my beshert,” Jo wrote.
On October 27, 2024, now 28-year-old Jo and 33-year-old Lucy were married in the first-ever (to our knowledge) Hey Alma Classifieds wedding.
The weekend began on Friday with the couple celebrating their Shabbat Kallah, a gathering of the brides’ friends and family on the Shabbat before the wedding. (The pair did their aufruf, the tradition of the couple being called for an aliyah, before the wedding, on the last Shabbat before the High Holidays.) They then separated for the Sabbath, with Jo celebrating with her dad and Lucy marking the day with her best friend.
The main event, however, was on Sunday, at Hoxton Docks on the Regent’s Canal in East London. There used to be a gay bar called The Glory right around the corner. It had been a favorite spot of the couple’s — Lucy had produced cabaret shows there and a mezuzah hung on the door to the establishment, though neither Jo nor Lucy ever figured out if it was Jewish-owned. On their wedding day, Lucy and Jo brought back some of that queer and Jewish joy to the neighborhood.
“We basically treated our whole wedding like a cabaret show,” Lucy recalled over Zoom with Hey Alma. And thanks their wedding planner, Dita Rosted, that vision exploded to life. The once-empty warehouse at Hoxton Docks was filled with red, pink and peach ruched floral-looking paper decorations, colorful ribbons, disco balls and fairy lights. Strings of vibrant pom-poms were strung over the chairs and the chuppah was adorned with more paper flowers and streamers. (Instead of real flowers, the brides opted for decorations made from materials that could be reused or recycled.) In a second room of the warehouse, dinner tables were decorated with candles in crystalline holders and giant beaded animals, an homage to Lucy’s mom’s South African Jewish roots.
The main acts themselves, Lucy and Jo, were no less dazzlingly adorned. Jo wore a three-piece emerald green suit and white kippah, both with pink accents. Lucy wore a strapless, corseted ball gown embroidered in pearls. For the bedeken, the Jewish wedding tradition where the groom veils the bride, or, in this case, the brides veil each other, Lucy made a tallit out of pink tulle with beading on the edges and orange tzitzit. The colors of the tallit payed homage to the lesbian flag.
The day began with Lucy and Jo meeting at the venue to sign their civil marriage certificate and then their Brit Ahava, an egalitarian substitute for the traditional Jewish marriage contract or ketubah, which was first devised by Rabbi Rachel Adler. Then, they started moving towards the ceremony. The entire 190-person affair was emceed by drag performer Lolo Brow, who quizzed guests on the couple and had them play on kazoos before it was time to hand things over to Rabbi Lev Taylor, a friend of Jo’s with whom she helped to co-found the Queer Yeshiva, for the ceremony.
As musician Mich Sampson played “Yedid Nefesh,” Lucy first walked down the aisle escorted by her parents. Then, Jo came down the aisle with her dad and maternal grandmother, in honor of Jo’s mother of blessed memory. Before going under the chuppah, Lucy and Jo circled each other three times and then walked in one mutual circle to the song “I’ll Stay With You,” based on lyrics from the Book of Ruth. (Circling is the Jewish tradition wherein, typically, the bride walks in a circle around the groom three to seven times.)
Once under the chuppah, Rabbi Lev addressed the brides before moving into shutafut. This is an egalitarian ritual which replaces kiddushin, where, typically, a groom gives the bride a ring to establish a monetary transaction and therefore their marriage. Instead, Lucy and Jo held up their rings (objects they had purchased together) to signify their partnership. As they performed shutafut, the brides recited in Hebrew, “I will marry you forever. I will marry your righteousness and justice with love and compassion.”
Next, Rabbi Lev read the English translation of their Brit Ahava and moved into the Sheva Brachot, the seven blessings for a Jewish wedding. Mich sang the text in Hebrew, which the brides translated themselves, and then seven couples from the brides’ life read the text of the prayers in English. Finally, the brides’ parents gave them the priestly blessing, Mich Sampson sang the song “Im Eshkachech” and the brides smashed the glass. “When we sing ‘Im Eshkachech,’ we think about all the ways that the world is imperfect and the work that we need to repair it,” Lucy explained. “And in particular, we thought about the women and queers and lesbians who fought and made it possible for us to be standing under that chuppah together.”
Jo and Lucy then shared a brief, emotional moment in the Yichud room before, admittedly, gatecrashing their own reception with friends and family. Amidst the drinks and canapés, the couple had their shtick and then the group did simcha dancing DJ’ed by Jewish drag king DJ Tam Tam. “At one of my Hen Dos, I taught all of my friends, including, my non-Jewish friends, the dance to ‘Moshiach.’ So then, when ‘Moshiach’ came on, I was thrilled to see all of my friends who have never done simcha dancing in their life getting involved,” Lucy recalled.
“It was hardcore,” Jo added.
This was followed by dinner, more speeches and blessings from loved ones and a first dance to “The Promise” by Tracy Chapman. Then, wilkommen: The cabaret-inspired wedding transformed into a real-life cabaret.
“We love going to drag and burlesque performances and the queer cabaret scene. So we brought together six of our favorite cabaret performers,” Jo explained. Emcee for the day Lolo Brow did their sideshow act, hammering and drilling a nail into their nose, as well as sniffing into and out of their nose. Bi-Curious George embodied a gay albatross. Lilly Snatch Dragon did a mermaid burlesque number that included Rabbi Lev getting a bra thrown in his face. Drag king Pip Dream did a burlesque act during which, according to Lucy, “a lot of people had some sort of queer awakening.” The Public Universal Friend AKA The PUF performed a parody of “Pink Pony Club.” And Fabio Lezonli’s performance was just pure chaos.
Afterwards, the party continued on with more dancing and a variety of Lambeth-style cakes and Costco sweets for dessert.
“We’re quite lucky that we have parents and family members and extended family and friends who were really supportive and brought ruach [spirit] to a wedding that was a mixture of absolutely in-your-face queer and also unapologetically Jewish,” Lucy reflected.
In the days after the wedding, when I had the chance to chat with Lucy and Jo, they tell me they are “broken,” both from the intense emotions and dancing. Even so, the advice they offered for those planning their own queer Jewish wedding was crystal clear: Let your values guide your wedding, prioritize joy and find ways to meaningfully engage with Jewish ritual.
“You have to decide what the purpose of your wedding is, and let that guide you,” Jo offered.
“The wedding is like this opening into what your marriage could be,” Lucy went on. “For us, being queer and our commitment to liberation and being unafraid to bring those things into our wedding in a way that felt authentic whilst feeling accessible for the people in the room was very important. I think that’s a big part of being queer and Jewish.”
Mazel tov, Lucy and Jo. May your marriage be filled with love, abundance, peace and plenty more queer Jewish cabarets.
Have we convinced you to submit your own Hey Alma classified yet? Yeah, we thought so.
