Ba(r/t) Mitzvah
Hello again! I’m back from Minneapolis, and done (for the moment) with posting ridiculous photos from my trip. Last week, before I left, I participated in a panel discussion organized by the National Council of Jewish Women, as part of their Chicago chapter’s effort to build bridges between Jewish and LGBT communities. I was speaking as a “transgender activist,” which sort of amused me, and spoke alongside Lisa, a representative from the Center on Halsted and the Rabbi of Or Chadash.
The conversation was really interesting, and I’ll get to the meat of it later in this post. First, I want to talk about an interesting and thorny topic that came up during the discussion section of the evening. I claimed that, to truly integrate and embrace the LGBT community, Judaism needs to move away from inherently gendered ceremonies such as Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. That, even if the ceremonies are ‘equal’ (which is effectively true in liberal Judaism today, even if that wasn’t always the case) the idea of ‘separate but equal’ for boys and girls is a bad precedent to set at the threshold to adulthood.
I know this is going to be a tough pill to swallow for many Jews, and I said as much at the panel discussion. The idea of a Bar or Bat Mitzvah is ingrained in the idea of those ceremonies. But it’s flawed, problematic, and oppressive, particularly for trans Jews.
I hadn’t realized I felt this strongly until I was sitting on the panel, and responding to a question about how I felt about my own Bar Mitzvah. I said that, at the very least, children should be asked, “What would seem better? A Bar Mitzvah, or a Bat Mitzvah?” This is part of the larger discussion that should be happening around gender in all of society, of giving children (and people of all ages) the ability to stake a claim on their own idea of their gender, rather than what their “real” gender means to others.
Trans Jewish pride flag. Apparently pink and blue are "trans" colors, now?
I don’t know if I would have been able to respond to that question by saying, “I want a Bat Mitzvah,” particularly at the age of twelve. But I sure as hell know I wasn’t presented with that option. There’s the cliche anti-gay slogan of “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” But as stupid as it is, it raises two important points. First, that being LGBT means you will find no explicit support for your identity in your holy book (if you’re in an Abrahamic religion; can’t speak for anything else). Second, it means that gender will be so assumed as to be invisible. What if Eve said, “Actually, I’d rather go by Ethan.” Or Adam looked up to God and asked, “Instead of removing a rib, could you remove what’s between my legs?”
Those questions are almost absurd, when looking at gender and sexuality as it’s presented or discussed in most synagogues, regardless of how liberal. Being tolerated versus being embraced came up at the panel discussion, and I think this is a good example of the difference between the two. I have no doubt that I could go back to the congregation in which I grew up, and I’d be accepted. They are a tolerant congregation in that they wouldn’t have a problem with my being trans; I’d be tolerated. But to be embraced, to be accommodated and made to feel fully welcome, they’d need to do more than simply not kicking me out or being polite to me when I’m there. They’d need to adjust their language. In some cases, adjust the very structure of the religion. (I’m sorry, I’m not going to feel comfortable in a religion that uses exclusively male pronouns to refer to its deity, regardless of how genderless “He” is or how convenient it is to use masculine pronouns.)
I’m not sure how – or if – Judaism can change to accommodate my admittedly-large requests. But I do think that this discussion has helped solidify some of my feelings around my religiously Jewish identity: I’m not looking to have a Bat Mitzvah. (Something I’ve toyed around with.) I’m looking for ceremonies and structures that are only beginning to be created (if they exist at all).
I would like to go back to Or Chadash and try to find a time to speak with its Rabbi, but I’m glad this speaking opportunity made me feel more confident about my concerns with Judaism, or claiming “Jew” as a large part of my identity.
(The rest of the discussion focused a lot on the idea of being a Jew and being LGBT both being identities that can involve the experience of being othered. That is, of being viewed as so different than “normal” that you become wholly apart from humanity – an “other.” A large part of theories surrounding oppression involves the idea that othering a person – be it based on religion, sexuality, gender identity, race, height, sex, etc, etc, etc, – inevitably leads to oppression and poor treatment. For some classic examples, see treatment of blacks in the Western World, particularly when slavery was legal, treatment of Jews in Europe, particularly leading up to WWII, and treatment of Muslims in the US, particularly right after September 11.
The position that Lisa took – and that I agree with – is that oppressed groups (in this case, Jews and LGBT folk) should be natural allies in the fight against oppression and subjugation.)
Themocracy
[...] of this very much links back with my Ba(r/t) Mitzvah post, because the deeper I dig into Judaism the more frustrated I get with the historic, [...]
[...] my struggles with it as a culture, a religion, and (most of all) as an identity. Last month, I posted about a panel discussion I’d taken part in, the goal of which was to build bridges in the queer and Jewish [...]