We were lucky to catch up with Yochai Greenfeld recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Yochai, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

For the past three months, I’ve been delivering weekly Biblical teachings using my Drag persona – Abbi G’zunt. These monologues reinterpret the weekly Torah portion (parasha), blending sharp commentary, humor, and a sincere respect for the text. The work is informed by my own experiences and by insights from classic Jewish commentaries, such as a classical Jewish commentary called “Midrash Rabah” (5th Century), and seeks to uncover the universal themes that resonate across time—family dynamics, resilience, the search for identity—while also celebrating the particularities of Jewish tradition.

Abbi G’zunt emerged from a deeply personal journey, one that began in the religious institutions of Judaism where I grew up. From a young age, I was drawn to the richness of Torah study—its stories, its questions, its endless layers of meaning. But as someone who is gay, I often felt excluded from fully sharing in this wealth. The traditions I cherished seemed to leave little room for someone like me to engage openly and authentically. This sense of being on the margins fueled a desire to carve out a space where I could participate in and contribute to the ongoing dialogue of Torah in my own way. Drag became that outlet. Through the artistry and performance of drag, in and of itself a marginal art form, I found a way to engage with Torah that felt both deeply personal and creatively liberating. It allowed me to retell these ancient stories through a lens that is uniquely mine—funny, queer, and reflective of the world I inhabit. In doing so, I discovered not just a means of self-expression, but a way to connect others to the texts that have long inspired me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up in Israel, immersed in the cultural and spiritual tapestry of my heritage. At 25, I started a career as a dancer, hoping it wasn’t too late for me to find my place in the performing arts. Over time I expanded my artistry to include acting and singing, and found musical theater to be my home base. 

In 2017, I moved to New York, where I discovered drag and writing—art forms that reshaped my artistic journey. Drag blends performance with identity and tradition with reinvention, while writing deepens my connection to universal themes. Together, these outlets center storytelling and self-expression in my creative work.

These days I live in Brooklyn and balance my art career with a part time role in the Jewish non-profit world, where I get to harness my writing and creativity for my livelihood, and enjoy the safety and flexibility of ongoing remote work. 

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, I was at the height of my career, performing eight shows a week on the Broadway tour of Fiddler on the Roof. The shutdown was abrupt. Eight months of touring came to an uncertain and pending end overnight. I vividly remember the feeling during what turned out to be our last performance of the tour. People in the audience were already wearing masks, and rumors were swirling that the U.S. was about to declare a full pandemic shutdown any day.

The day we got the email saying, “We’re canceling tonight’s show and getting you on a plane back to your contractual points of origin,” our company wasn’t even assembled. Everyone scrambled to get home. I didn’t have a home to return to since I had moved out of my last apartment, figuring I’d find a new place once the tour ended. After living in a friend’s empty New York apartment for three pandemic months, I moved back to Israel for an unforeseeable time.

With no show business to work in for over a year and a half, I had to find a way to make an income and expedite my transition from dancing to acting, a shift I had hoped to make gradually while on the Fiddler tour. Instead, it was happening ad hoc. I signed up for acting classes, picked up remote content writing work through a friend, and started building a new life, not knowing where it was headed.

In 2022, I returned to America with my first serious acting role in a play. That same year, I received a grant to write my first full-length play, which debuted at the Queer Jewish Arts Festival in Baltimore during the summer. Since then, I’ve worked remotely while successfully rebalancing my performing career to focus more on acting and singing without completely giving up dance. Dance remains a vital part of my showmanship, but the pandemic forced me to confront the realities of aging as a dancer and reimagine how to use my body for performance without fully depending on it for my livelihood.

Those years of transition aged my body by three years and my soul by thirty, but they also gave me resilience, clarity, and a renewed sense of purpose in my creative journey.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I believe artists hold open a portal to the present—a space where connection and emotion thrive. This portal is felt when a joke lands perfectly, when a gasp escapes unbidden, or when the end of a story stirs tears. The resulting joy and applause are more than gratifying; they feel sacred. To me, this is divine work—not just in a religious sense, but in a profoundly human one. Life is hard for everyone, in so many ways. To have the privilege of offering relief, elation, and joy to those I perform for is nothing short of a blessing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://YochaiGreenfeld.com
• Instagram: @abbigzunt
• Facebook: Yochai.Greenfeld
• Youtube: @YochaiGreenfeld1437

Image Credits

Andrew Mauney, Yakir Bunker, Steven Rechless, Dirty Laundry Theater, Ohad Kab.