Our Lady J, a television writer and producer known for her work on Pose and American Horror Story, is opening up about converting to Judaism.
The 48-year-old screenwriter, who is also a singer and musician, is credited as being the first out trans writer to be hired for a TV writers’ room.
Our Lady J is now going by the name Yona Speidel after converting to the religion on March 23, 2026. She said in a new interview with Variety that she started exploring the possibility of converting over a decade ago.
“When I moved to New York as a young queer person at the age of 21 I just thought I loved New York. I didn’t realize that so much of what I love about New York was Jewish New York, from the musicals to the food to the attitude of learning and acceptance and progress and social progress. Those are huge elements that were hugely influential to my coming of age. I didn’t realize how much of that was Jewish until I started writing on Transparent. Then it became a formal study. So it was a lifetime of kind of casually dating Judaism, I guess.”
–Yona Speidel, Variety
Yona says that converting to Judaism has been more difficult for her than coming out as a trans woman.
“It’s a lot harder than coming out as trans,” she said, crediting the political climate for making it difficult. “I’ve just had a lot more pushback in my social circles and a lot more silence, a kind of uncomfortable silence where people don’t know what I’m doing. It feels very similar.”
Yona also talked about how she observes the religion. She said, “I’m a little more observant than some reform friends that I know. I do Shabbat, I do the holidays. I’m learning Hebrew, biblical Hebrew.”
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