Not the kind of race I mean

I was recently having a conversation with a number of artistic peers, discussing the impact of our personal and community histories on our art and artistic process. I don’t remember who the question was raised by, but the group consisted of a mix of racial/ethnic/gender/sexual identities, making for good conversation.

In general we all agreed that our various personal and community histories – of religion, race, ethnicity, language, geography, class, sexuality, gender, and so on and on and on and on – played a factor in how we approached creating art. While it was a great conversation, and fodder for more discussion, I’m less interested in that than in something which happened after.

During the conversation, I said, “It’s been interesting going from presenting as part of a strong, privileged group – white, heterosexual, male – to an oppressed group: queer, trans, female.  I try to both be conscious of and artistically honor that oppression while being aware of the privilege I still do posses.”

Then, while giving someone a ride home – who identifies as black, female, lesbian – she turned to me and said, “Your comment really surprised me, since I don’t think of you as white.”

What?

She continued saying that my olive complexion doesn’t meet her idea of ‘white’ness. And it’s true. At various points, I’ve been thought to be Hispanic, American Indian, India-subcontinent-Indian, Pacific Islander, Italian, Arab, and – most humorously – ‘ethnic looking.’ (I shit you not. By a photographer wanting diversity in a high school photo shoot. She didn’t intend for me to hear.) My mom jokes that, when she came back from summer vacation when I was young and we spent every day at the beach, the (very dark-skinned) custodian at her school would come up to her and say “You could be my daughter!” I’m not too pasty even in the dead of winter.

But not white?

The friend who said all this felt that, in some ways, the more old-school way of looking at race was more accurate. Race, she said, is more of a subdivision of culture and geography than a huge lumping together of sort-of-similar skin tones. So, she concluded, Jewish people weren’t white.

There is certainly historical precedence for her opinion: “among those not considered white at some points in American history have been: the Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Spaniards, white Hispanics, Slavs, and Greeks.” But she didn’t mean that I wasn’t white in  racist way, as a justification for discrimination, just in an observational way.

It reminded me of a story I heard at a storytelling conference. A black woman was talking about her experience as a voter’s rights activist in Chicago in the 1960s. She apparently pissed off the the wrong people in the Chicago machine and  so her dad said she had to leave Chicago for a little while: white people were out to get her. He was going to send her to Israel to stay with some friends, because “Jews aint white.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about all this for the past week, particularly as I just finished the excellent book Constantine’s Sword, which covers the 2,000 year relationship between Judaism and the Catholic Church. Hopefully that’ll be the subject of another post one of these days.

But back to race. Googling “are jews white” doesn’t offer much help. An interesting take on genetic information. An essay from Majority Rights, a site which “discusses various issues related to the preservation of Western culture and the ethnic genetic interests (EGI) of people of European ancestry.” I do, however, like “Jews and the Problem of Whiteness,” which discusses community relations between Jewish and Black populations through the lens of race. From that essay:

As Lerner points out, Jewish whiteness “is the privilege to renounce one’s Judaism. By and large the way to get into this system is to take off your kippah, cut off your beard, hide your fringes; in other words, to reject your entire cultural and religious humanity.” I seek to empathize, here, as my previous discussion of the sociological passing of blacks should indicate. Nonetheless, the Jewish option to be white, however difficult, has been exercised widely.

That’s a good summary of why the idea of my not being white kind of surprised me. The history of Jewish oppression is absolutely a history of racism, of othering, of bigotry. It shares lots with the racism which impacts people of color. But I have at least somewhat adequate passing privilege (how I hate that term!) as white. Part of that, admittedly, has to do with geography: how I’m perceived as white versus Jewish would probably be different in different parts of the country, and of the world. My mom and my brother have both talked about living in smaller communities where their Judaism was strange or exotic. My dad has told me about going to civil rights marches in Chicago’s northern suburbs, where families had signs on the lawn reading “No dogs, blacks, or Jews.”

It seems like the ‘whiteness’ of Jews depends on perspective. That makes me remember a page from my high school year book. The editors had surveyed students from different Chicago-area high schools and asked them what they thought of Evanston, a very diverse community, and its high school, which has a huge range of student academic achievement. Everyone north of Evanston (generally more wealthy suburbs) saw Evanston as “ghetto” and dangerous. Everyone south (generally less wealthy, in Chicago proper) saw Evanston as rich, white, privileged.

The idea of racial identity changing with geography is fascinating to me. That, growing up in Chicago, I’m white. Growing up in Generic Small Town, I might not have been perceived as white. Or identified my own race as something other than white. And how much identity depends on other people, as a reference for ones self.

I’ll leave you with this chart:

(For the record, I do think this discussion and disagreement is newsworthy, I just think it’s really poor reporting to reprint a biased self-written press release supporting a specific position. So I’m not opposed to the Sacramento Bee reporting something,  just on how they chose to report.)

Lets define apartheid first. According to the International Criminal Court (according to Wikipedia…)  apartheid is defined as a crime against humanity:

committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

Admittedly, lots of countries haven’t signed on to the document with this definition, because they aren’t members of the International Criminal Court: the US, Canada, and most of Western Europe. Likewise, a definition created in the 1970s was not signed onto by the US and others. The US Ambassador  at the time said, “[W]e cannot…accept that apartheid can in this manner be made a crime against humanity. Crimes against humanity are so grave in nature that they must be meticulously elaborated and strictly construed under existing international law…”

But whether or not there’s an agreed upon legal definition, I think that definition – of systematic oppression by one racial group, over another, with the purpose of maintaining the former’s regime – seems generally agreed upon. (Though feel free to disagree in the comments.) But is Israel committing acts of apartheid against the Palestinians?

From Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA, and obviously a biased source, but I need to start somewhere):

Israel is a country founded on the idea of different rights for different people, based on race. The first difference is that Jews, wherever they live, have the right to “return” to Israel, but the Palestinians who were expelled from their homes in 1948 do not have this right; in fact, they are explicitly denied Israeli citizenship, and denied the right to return to their homes. This is racist.

The second form of apartheid is the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which denies Palestinians living on those territories full political rights, even while Israelis living there have full political rights in Israel. (The political rights of citizens of the Palestinian Authority, like the rights of apartheid South Africa’s bantustans, are empty and of no effect.) The apartheid wall, which cuts Palestinian communities off from each other and creates tiny Palestinian enclaves; the hundreds of checkpoints Palestinians have to cross to travel their own land; and the different access to highways, water, and land accorded to Jews and non-Jews are all forms of apartheid. Gaza is an open-air prison whose inhabitants live in constant misery because of the illegal Israeli siege.

The third form of apartheid is in the different treatment of Palestinians inside Israel proper. While Jews hold Jewish nationality, so-called “Israeli Arabs” have a separate category of citizenship – Israeli citizenship. Palestinian communities in Israel proper are consistently underserviced by government in relation to the rest of population, and because most Palestinians refuse to serve in the occupation army, they are denied many educational and employment opportunities. (Emphasis added)

My limited understanding of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is that all three claims are true. That said, it’s really hard to go from action to intent; that is, I agree with QuAIA’s analysis of Israel’s actions, but I’m hesitant to go the step further and say those actions are specifically carried out with the intent of subjugating Palestinians, something which seems to be necessary to move from “acting like an asshole” to “imposing an apartheid regime.”

For those who are interested, Wikipedia has a fascinating list of folks who support calling Israel’s actions apartheid (including the UN, Jimmy Carter, and others) as well as arguments criticizing the analogy.

What really pisses me off, though, is how Michael Lucas and others equate “criticism of Israel” with “antisemitism,” something that causes me no end of frustration. Being critical of Israel – even saying straight out “Israel is stupid and should be dissolved, because religious states are inherently problematic” – is not antisemitism! Antisemitism is specifically anti-Judaism, and Judaism and the State of Israel should not be viewed as equivalent.

So there.

The QuAIA FAQ also has a really interesting answer to “Do you support Israel’s right to exist?”

It’s hard to answer this question without making clear what exactly it means. For example, when apartheid ended in South Africa, did South Africa cease to exist? Or did only apartheid South Africa cease to exist? Did apartheid South Africa have a right to exist? Does Canada have the right to exist? Do states, in general, have the right to exist? Or is this a right that only people and peoples have?

It is a strange and specious wording, superficially plausible, that originates with and is used by defenders of apartheid Israel to frame the debate in a tendentious way. The phrasing does not come from any left-wing group that criticizes Israel on the basis of human rights, justice, and equality. The question is, does Israel recognize the Palestinians’ right to exist as a people? The answer reflected in Israel’s every deed on the ground seems to be NO.

We support any solution in which all citizens — Jewish, Arab, Christian, Muslim, or otherwise — have full legal and political equality in a secular democracy, and in which Palestinians have the right to return to their homes. We do not support any state in which different people have different rights based on their race or religion. That is why we are called “Queers against Israeli Apartheid”. (Bold added, italics from the original)

I love this answer, and it’s honestly never one that occurred to me before: States shouldn’t have rights, people should. (QuAIA also talks about whether or not being anti-Israel is antisemitic. Check out their thoughts on that, too.)

In the end, I’m hesitant to say “Yes, Israel is engaging in apartheid.” I’d want more evidence of ideological racism (like what existed in South Africa). From what I can see right now, Israel is absolutely engaging in really apartheid-like actions, but – giving them the benefit of the doubt – those actions may be performed under honest (if misguided) beliefs of security and safety.

At the same time, the way this discussion has been taking place makes me even more skeptical of Israel’s claim of a moral high ground.

And I was pretty skeptical already.

Picking on Israel went really well for the aggressors...

Following my last post, I’ve been trying to do some research to figure out why Obama’s urging to use the 1967 Israel borders as a starting point was a bad thing, and why it pissed off Israel (and a bunch of other folks). Here’s what I’ve been able to figure out.

In 1967, Israel was attacked (again…) by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in the Six Day War, so called because that’s how long it took for Israel to kick everyone else’s ass and over double its territory. That’s right: Israel was invaded and ended up with more land than it started with. Specifically, Israel ended up with the Sinai Peninsula (since returned to Egypt), the Gaza Strip (which Israel has already pretty much withdrawn from), the West Bank (which Israel has also basically said they’re wiling to part with, even though Jewish settlers keep making new settlements), East Jerusalem (which Israel is most emphatically not willing to part with and no one seriously expects them to), and the Golan Heights (which is, as far as I can tell, the biggest point of contention concerning the 1967 borders). For more info, check out Wikipedia’s page on Israeli-occupied territory.

But even the use of the word “borders” is making some people upset. Someone on Twitter sent me this link, which talks about how the map to the right describes armistice lines following the 1967 Six Day War, not mutually agreed upon borders of a cohesive, internationally recognized and legit state. And, apparently, the pre-1967 borders/lines/whatever were really just the result of the cessation of hostilities in 1948, when soldiers (mostly) stopped shooting at each other for the next two decades. (Noticing a pattern here?)

As far as I can find, the outrage over Obama’s comments, from right wing US politicians as well as Israel, is pretty much manufactured. This has been the US’s official position for the last 20+ years, and shouldn’t have surprised anyone. But is it a good position? That, not surprisingly, is much more difficult to determine.

From what I can tell, a big part of the problem is that Obama didn’t really push for a tit-for-tat exchange. That is, he suggested Israel give up the land it acquired in 1967, without pushing for the Palestinians to give up the right of return. Basically, Palestinians want the ability for those who were either forced from their land or fled during conflicts to be able to come back and/or receive financial reparations. Some additionally want for descendants of said refugees to have the same rights. In total, that’d make for between one and four million Palestinians (very vague estimates) who could claim the right of return. Lots of folks are saying “Fine, Israel needs to give up some significant chunks of territory, but not without the Palestinians renouncing the right of return. Obama didn’t call for the Palestinians to do so, and thus screwed the pooch.”

I’m extraordinarily conflicted on the legitimacy of the Right of Return. On the one hand, if the Palestinians were driven out by Israel, that’s pretty bogus. On the other hand, Israel has (reasonably) said “Hey, we didn’t drive them out, our neighbors started attacking us! If the Palestinians fled in 1948, or 1967, or 1972, the blame can be placed squarely on the shoulders of the Arab nations who militarily invaded us.”

At the same time, the borders themselves (or armistice lines, chalk hopscotch courts, or whatever) or seem to be a sticking point, since Israel claimed in the late 1960s that

“We have openly said that the map will never again be the same as on June 4, 1967. For us, this is a matter of security and of principles. The June map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz. We shudder when we think of what would have awaited us in the circumstances of June, 1967, if we had been defeated; with Syrians on the mountain and we in the valley, with the Jordanian army in sight of the sea, with the Egyptians who hold our throat in their hands in Gaza. This is a situation which will never be repeated in history.”- Abba Eban, Israeli Statesman, in Der Spiegel, November 5, 1969 (Emphasis added)

Right, but you weren’t defeated. And then you weren’t defeated again in the 1970s Yom Kippur War. While talking about the memory of Auschwitz made sense in the 60s, I honestly thing that discussion (which people still bring up today) sounds much weaker 50 years later.

Meanwhile, the Israel has almost withdrawn from the Golan Heights in the past, until a disagreement over ~100 meters (really about whether Syria would get access to the freshwater Sea of Galilee) caused things to break down.

Oh, and lots of well-thought-of Israelis support the 1967 borders! So there isn’t some 100% universal agreement, even in Israel.

At the end of the day, it does seem like Obama committed a faux pas by calling for Israel to make concessions without saying the Palestinians would have to do the same. That said, Israel could have responded by saying “We’ll talk 1967 borders when Palestine talks about giving up the Right of Return.”

Instead, everyone jumped on Obama for being unreasonable, instead of acknowledging that, yes Virginia, Israel will need to make some concessions if it actually wants to move forward on a peace deal.

Limmud Chicago

Much more exciting (for me, at least) was a session called “A Queer Take on Talmud.” I went in with some interest, but also some skepticism: none of the things I’ve read on Judaism as it relates to gender identity or sexual orientation has been particularly revelatory. Interesting, yes, but not eye-opening.

“A Queer Take on Talmud” was revelatory. Eye-opening in the way I’ve been waiting for.

The Talmud is a book of discussions around Jewish laws, teachings, ethics, and so on. Basically, it’s 2,000 years of records, of rabbis and scholars trying to figure out what the hell the Torah is talking about. That wasn’t news to me, but the way Rabbi Lappe (the woman leading the session) explained the Talmud was pretty awesome.

We Exist in Stories

She first discussed the idea of religion existing as stories of explanation: Why is the world this way? What do we do in this situation? How should people treat each other? More specifically, as long as your story is working for you – as long as your religion answers all your questions – there’s no conflict. The story ‘works’ to explain the world and your place in it, and everything is hunky-dory.

Wailing Wall: Religious site or metaphor for ignorance?

But, Rabbi Lappe claimed (and I’d tend to agree) every story eventually has a point where it crashes. A gap, which doesn’t cover a certain situation, or where an explanation is lacking due to new information. At that point, you have three options:

1. Deny the problem, and wall that (difficult to deal with) story out of the picture. PROS: It’s easy! You get to keep your community, your understanding of the world, and your story. CONS: Usually hard or impossible to maintain long-term.
2. Go to another story, leaving your original story entirely behind. Assimilate. Leave your gay-bashing community to join an entirely queer social circle. PROS: You get a new story that fits your world-view. CONS: You have to leave your old story (and community) behind. And, eventually, every story crashes! (Rabbi Labbe described this approach as ‘throwing the baby out with the bath-water.’)
3. Go back to the original questions prompting your story, pull through what’s good, and retell the story. Rabbi Lappe was obviously pushing this as the most comprehensive approach, and ultimately the most healthy.

I like the general layout of that, even ignoring ideas of religion. I firmly believe in the importance of stories, and of understanding out lives through them. And, for example, when my folks got divorced I could have stuck my fingers in my ears and pretended it wasn’t happening. I could have (and for a while did) go to the story of “My dad is leaving my mom, he’s the bad guy.” But what’s ultimately let me establish the best relationship with both of them was figuring out a new story, in which they both still loved me and were my parents, but were also complicated and flawed individuals.

Meanwhile, back in Judaism…

The Talmud: Commentary on Commentary on Commentary on...

So how does this relate to Judaism, and the Talmud? Well, in 70 CE (Common Era) the Romans invaded Jerusalem and sacked the Second Temple, which had been standing for centuries years. This, understandably, presented a problem for the Jews of the time: How do you deal with being the ‘Chosen People’ if your center of religious life had just been burned to the ground?

Rabbi Lappe went back to her three ways of dealing with a ‘crashed’ story:

1. Denying the problem couldn’t really work. The temple was gone, the city had been overrun by Romans, and God hadn’t exactly intervened to help out.
2. Lots of Jews went to another story: They converted. “Well, clearly the Roman gods are more powerful than ours. Lets go with the winning team.”
3. But some Jews realized they could find a new way of going back to reinterpret and retell the original stories in the Torah, without losing the ‘important’ parts. So they started to keep those records, as the Talmud.

A part of this was a harsh reality: Without a central temple, it was much more difficult to maintain a center for Jewish scholarship. So keeping written records of who said what, and why, and how it applied to the Torah itself, was pretty darned important.

But, for 2,000 years, Jewish scholars have acknowledged that the Torah itself is sometimes lacking in its applicability to the world. It needs volumes of text to be understood as it related to ‘real life,’ dating back to the sacking of the Second Temple.

And yet, in Hebrew School, I knew of the Talmud, but we never really talked about it. The source of learning and understanding was primarily the Torah itself.

Why did I never learn this version of events?

According to Wikipedia:

Reform Judaism [what I grew up in] does not emphasize the study of Talmud to the same degree in their Hebrew schools, but they do teach it in their rabbinical seminaries; the world view of liberal Judaism rejects the idea of binding Jewish law, and uses the Talmud as a source of inspiration and moral instruction. Ownership and reading of the Talmud is not widespread among Reform and Reconstructionist Jews, who usually place more emphasis on the study of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh.

OK, I buy that. And it’s true to how I was raised: We don’t need someone else to tell us what the Torah means, we can figure it out ourselves. Through discussion. Through reflection. Through good old-fashion Jewish arguments. (Two Jews, three opinions.) But that discussion leaves out the really cool thing Rabbi Labbe showed that the very existence of the Talmud acknowledges: The Torah itself hasn’t been read literally, without reflection and interpretation, for 2,000 years! For generation upon generation (for more than half of the history of Judaism!) the Jews have said, “Well, yes, the Torah. But you shouldn’t really take it by itself, on its own. Lets talk about it, first.”

That’s a big thing I feel like my Jewish education was missing: an explicit acknowledgement that the stories and verses we learned may or may not apply to modern life.

But that’s not the really cool part

All of that was really interesting. Eye-opening, even. But what Rabbi Labbe talked about next was what really hit home.

She said the rabbis constructing the Talmud – realizing the literal text of the Torah was no longer enough – came up with five complimentary ways to understand what it means to obey Jewish law:

1. The Verse: The actual text of the Torah. Things like “Thou shall not kill.”
2. Custom. If everyone is doing it, and it seems OK, go with it.
3. Precedent. If another rabbi says they’re doing things this way, and it seems OK, go with it.
4. Declaration. If a learned rabbi says “I understand the text to mean this,” and it seems OK, go with it.
5. Informed Ethical Reasoning. If, even in the face of the first four methods, your informed ethical reasoning brings you to a different conclusion, go with that.

Rabbi Labbe continued, saying The Talmud is the product of rabbis elevating informed ethical reasoning over the text of the Torah itself!

Leviticus 18:22? (“Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”) So what!

Deuteronomy 22:5? (“The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.”) That’s pretty stupid, too.

Specifically, Rabbi Labbe called that concept Svara. From svara.org:

Svara is a 2,000-year-old Jewish concept invented by the Rabbis of the Talmud, to refer to one’s internal ethical impulse informed by Jewish learning. The Rabbis considered svara a legitimate means of figuring out how we should live our lives, in addition to the means they already had—the Torah. But they valued [svara] as so reliable a source of truth that they considered any law that grew out of their svara to have the status of d’oraita (“straight from the Torah”). In fact, according to Jewish law, svara can even trump Torah when the two conflict. Svara has been central to the evolution of the Jewish tradition and underlies the unique nature of Jewish thinking itself, but has been, until now, a “secret” of talmudic scholars and rabbis. The crucial element in turning one’s internal ethical impulse, insight and life experience into svara is learning.

In which I am not entirely convinced

I really want to simply end things here, with a summarizing paragraph about how this has entirely changed my perspective on Judaism, and I’m now happy to step up and claim my Jewish identity. But I can’t.

To some extent, Rabbi Labbe’s discussion has changed my perspective on Judaism. I love that she explicitly called out the absurdity of going to the Torah as a literal source of instruction, without any further examination required.

Lots of questions, not as many answers

And yet….and yet….

And yet I can’t help but go back to my original frustrations with Judaism: If – as Rabbi Labbe seemed to agree – lots of the Torah can’t or shouldn’t be applied to modern life, why continue going to it as anything other than a historical relic?

In some ways, the Talmud – or other biblical interpretations like it – seem as if they could respond to my call for a “Sixth Book of the Torah,” in which God says “Slavery? Out! Women’s rights? In!” But – as important as the Talmud is – it is not being held up as a replacement for the Torah, merely a supplement.

Going back to my discussion about the US Constitution, I don’t want to argue over what the Second Amendment does say, I want to argue over what it should say, and then make the changes to reflect that ‘should’! Similarly, why expand the Torah into volume after volume of commentary, when God could just open up the skies and say, “Yeah, sorry about the mixup.”

And furthermore, why worship or respect a God who so royally fucked up as to require volume after volume of commentary?

I’m getting there

I’m planning to email Rabbi Labbe (we both said we’d like to stay in touch) and see what she has to say. I’m honestly a little frustrated in myself, because I left Limud yesterday (and began this post last night) feeling like I had everything figure out. Like my eyes had been opened and Judaism all made sense to me now. And I’m getting there. I’m feeling more comfortable than I ever have in saying “The Torah contains some really stupid, offensive, misogynistic, sexist, xenophobic parts, all with God’s apparent support and approval,” and feeling like saying so makes me a better Jew, not a worse one.

But I’m still not sure why I want to hold up the historic label of Jew (and the Torah) as an emblem of pride, rather than a book of all that negativity.

The class – a pilot program in its first year – seems really awesome, and I’m jealous I didn’t have something similar when I was at Hebrew School. The teachers set out to lead a frank and open discussion around sex, sexuality, teen and adult identity, By the time I came into the classroom, they’d already covered respect, sex and sexuality, and – perhaps most importantly – how to discuss uncomfortable topics. (I loved their ‘spaghetti rule,’ which said that using any word or language to be mean – even spaghetti, as in “That shirt is so spaghetti” – is unacceptable.)

I came in somewhat skeptical of the teachers’ claims of their students’ maturity, but was pleasantly surprised.

We started off by discussing what it means to be a boy or a girl. Other than the purely biological, genitals, menstruation, pregnancy – there wasn’t anything people universally agreed on. Saying boys were stronger led to an outcry of objections from the girls, and saying girls were smarter let to an outcry of objection from the boys. It was pretty great to see, because even before I jumped in they were already debating gender and acknowledging its complexity.

I used their list as a segue into the Axies of Gender and Sexuality. I got them to agree with me that gender – and sexuality – are pretty complex, and said I was going to make things even more confusing. Using Male and Female as opposite ends of an x-axis, I made four 2-dimensional charts: Physical Sex, Gender Identity, Gender Presentation, and Sexuality. (As a side note, I totally agree that even those axis – much more flexible than many people think of gender – are still artificial restrictions, as is using ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ as opposites. But I needed to start from somewhere, and wanted to focus the two hours on things they’d grasp as quickly as possible.)

We discussed how most people think of the different categories as being link: physical sex is the same as gender identity is the same as gender presentation, all of which impact sexuality. But one of the classroom teachers was openly gay, so we could easily leap into how sexuality isn’t really linked to those gender things. And gender presentation – what you wear, how you do your hair, how you interact with the world – isn’t really either. (Some kids chimed in with boys who had long hair, and girls who had short, but were nevertheless ‘real’ boys and girls.)

I then proceeded to talk about intersex populations, which led to a great little discussion about assigning gender at birth, and how that works. I used the ’1 in 2000′ statistic (which I hope is correct!) as a way of showing that at least a few people at the high school many of them will be going to in a few years are probably intersexed. And, at last, I talked to them about what transgender and transsexual mean, as populations whose gender identity and physical sex don’t align.

At this point, I was already pleased with how they were reacting. Some of them were confused, but none of them were rude, disrespectful, or crude. And I’d much rather honest ignorance than sly disrespect.

I spent about 30 minutes telling my own story, asking lots of leading questions about how it might feel to think of yourself as strange or unusual. How puberty – which already sucks – would feel even worse if your body was changing in ways you didn’t want. One boy let out an audible “Oh no” at that, which made me feel like I was reaching them.

Throughout the conversation I tried to ask them lots of questions, and turn things around on ‘em. My first response to most of their questions – which bathroom did I use, how did family react, what did it feel like to come out – was, “Well, what do you think?” And, impressively, they were usually in the right ballpark.

I also performed a bit from Uncovering the Mirrors, focusing on ritual and Judaism, which I think as helpful to provide more context. That said, we didn’t have a ton of time to talk about gender and Judaism. That’s kind of a shame, but I’d much rather provide them with a firm grounding on the gender issues than spend time discussing religious issues for which they have no context. At the break, one of the teachers said, “Well, I don’t care if the students are learning anything – though I think they are – because I’m learning tons!”

During the break, they were able to write questions they weren’t comfortable saying aloud. One was about bathing suits (easily answered) and a few were about sex (which I only talked about in general terms, discussing how estrogen and testosterone impact sexual experiences), but a few were about regret or friends and family. Those prompted some good discussion on why people may or may not be supportive of a friend or family member transitioning, as well as their own thoughts on what it would be like to transition, or have someone in their life transition.

The question that hit me the hardest was “I sometimes like wearing boy clothing and doing boy things. Am I a transsexual?” I started by saying “Only you can know that.” One of the things I tried to reiterate throughout the class was that there’s no one right way to be anything: Jewish, a boy, a girl, trans, whatever. But that being trans was about how you think of yourself as a gendered individual, not simply what you wear or what you like doing. I opened it up to the class, and we discussed how a girl wearing pants (everyone there – boys and girls – were wearing pants) doesn’t make her trans, even though 200 years ago it might have made her viewed as ‘mannish.’ But we also talked about how it’s OK to be trans, even if it can be scary, and what resources their might be out there. I also talked about how experimenting – shaving or not shaving your legs, wearing your hair short or long, wearing tight or loose clothing – is OK, and part of what being a teenager is about. Likewise, none of those things are forever; you can change your mind.

Another great question – when I talked about not being asked whether I’d prefer a Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah – was “Well, what would you have chosen if the question were put to you?” That led into a good sidebar concerning fear, coming out, and what it means to be supportive of someone who isn’t like you.

All in all, I had a great time, and it made me feel much better about the synagogue as a whole. I certainly didn’t have anything remotely like that when I was in Hebrew School, and I’m thrilled the current rabbi is embracing LGBT issues. (She’s already invited me to come back in April to talk to a high school class.) I admit, it didn’t do a lot to make me feel better as a Jew (I’m still figuring that one out) but it made me feel OK about being part of the Jewish community.

As I [look at my cultural and spiritual history] it strikes me more and more that cross-gender and sexuality is not a matter of sickness, or disturbance, or abuse, as people so often claim, but of passion. The sickness comes from living in the wrong gender. When we cast that off, we begin to live as healthy people. [cut] As long as we tell others and ourselves, “I did this because I was sick,” we cannot become healthy.

[cut] If we acknowledge, or claim produly, that we made these changes as a life-giving act of passion, we risk losing the moral authority given to victims. But victims have no power. Victims can never celebrate their lives. (Emphasis added)

That’s a hard shift to make, from thinking of being trans as something to be treated or fixed – the analogy I’ve used in the past is “it’s like a diabetic needing insulin” – to thinking of it as an exploration and validation of the body’s passions.

But I still have trouble finding passion for Judaism, in an age where God does not answer prayers, except with silence.

This isn’t a new train of thought for me. In Biblical times, God was walking with prophets, appearing in bushes and rainbows and voices from the clouds. I imagine it would have been much easier to believe in God after, say, seeing the Red Sea part. Or watching the Egyptians die of plague. (The Jews always seemed kind of foolish to me to construct a golden calf. Hadn’t they just been saved? How short was their memory?)

If “I am that I am” was written in flaming letters of fire on the face of the moon, I’d have an easier time believing. If prayers were answered by angels – or telegram, or email – I’d have an easier time believing. If I could reconcile the racism, xenophobia, homophobia, slavery, slaughter, and bloodshed in the Torah (both at the hands of God, and in God’s name) I’d have an easier time believing.

But today, you’re lucky to get an image of Jesus (let alone Moses!) on a slice of toast. God sits, silently.  Prayers go unanswered.

Balancing on the Mechitza has some great contributions to the discussion about a silent or vocal God. From The God Thing, by Joy Ladin:

If God keeps old prayers, there must be a special section for those of transsexual children. Strange prayers. Prayers that preceded overdoses of pills and crudely knotted nooses, prayers ravishing in their loneliness: You made me what I am; you, at least, must understand.

How, I wondered, could such prayers fail to evoke a response from God? It didn’t seem like I was asking that much. I would get out of bed in the morning, and standing would be different – my feed would feel the floor, and my hair would be longer, a tickling tumble over my shoulders, and I would stand up straighter, and I would open my door and pad in my new but not so different flesh across the hall to show my parents what had happened – what I had become – what I had always been…

And then my life would begin.

Except that it never did. I know now that it was a wish, not a prayer. A wish can only be answered by action. Prayer can be answered by silence.

The silence was there, but I didn’t realize that it was speaking to me. I only knew that I was trapped, and that God, like a righteous or sadistic jailer, could, but wouldn’t, set me free. (Bolded section added, italicized in original.)

To some extent, I like that idea, the distinction between a wish and a prayer. A wish – for money, for a romantic relationship, for super-powers, and -yes- to wake up as a girl – is about a specific absence. It requires winning the lottery, finding The One, radioactive spiders, divine intervention. A prayer, meanwhile, for health or for security or for calm, seems more inwardly focused. Less necessitating of a response.

At the same time, I like explanations. I have a hard time being told “It is the way it is, simply because it is.” What if you’ve lost your money through no fault of your own? What if you did everything right and your significant other still cheated on you? Or something more extreme? What if they died? And there isn’t a thing in the world you can do to avoid being trans. As soon as you’re born, it’s too late. You can’t save more responsibly, you can’t communicate better and divide up the chores, nothing. In the face of truly divine circumstances, Acts of God, if you will, silence from a deity strikes me as lazy at best, malicious and sadistic at worst. Indeed, the Torah itself  doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that, sometimes, God is a jerk. From Psalm 88:

¹³ But I cry to you for help, LORD;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
¹⁴ Why, LORD, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?

¹⁵ From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
¹⁶ Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.
¹⁷ All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.
¹⁸ You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
darkness is my closest friend.

And the Book of Job! God is being a jackass for what? To prove a point to The Adversary? God constantly behaves as a whiny, insecure, childlike diety, particularly in the Torah (as opposed to the New Testament.)

Why, I ask, are you a deity worth worshipping?

As Joy Ladin could have told me, the only answer thus far has been silence.

And yet…and yet…

Wrestling with God, both literally and figuratively, is not a foreign concept to most Jews. To come out the other side is to have learned something, and to have grown. Hopefully I’ll get there some day.

But, God, if you are listening, inflicting intentional pain and secret tests of character still makes you kind of a jerk.

As a result of all that, though, I’ve been trying to focus on things that have been uplifting: seeing friends, not feeling guilty about eating sweets, looking at ridiculous websites, and just generally giving myself a break from working on my show.

Thinking about overcoming adversity and battling bigotry, my memory goes back to my eighth grade trip to Washington DC, and a trip to the Holocaust Museum.

In eighth grade, I was out to maybe one or two friends, and the idea of transitioning was still far in the future. I didn’t particularly identify as Jewish, and had stopped going to synagogue after my Bar Mitzvah, the year before. At the same time, the Holocaust Museum hit me really hard. Even before coming out or transitioning, I was keenly aware of being an ‘other,’ and the inherent danger that carries. The exhibits and displays on such an institutionalized and expansive example of bigotry hit me really hard; the example railcar that would have taken people to concentration camps, documents and stories from youth victims of the Holocaust, clips from Steven Spielberg’s video archive, and more. I remember a pile of shoes that had been collected at one of the transport stations, taken from victims going off to the camps. A hallway with artistic attempts to display the millions dead. And, most vividly, a final room full of candles.

Doing some Googling, it’s apparently called the Hall of Remembrance:

I sat on one of the benches and, after the power of the museum and the horror of the Holocaust contrasted with the solemnity of the Hall of Remembrance, I began to cry. They were tears for those lost in the Holocaust, yes, but they were also tears for myself. For feeling trapped and pressed upon and unable to break free of the prison of my body.

Someone sat down next to me, an adult. I don’t remember if he took my hand, or put his arm around me, or just sat in silence. And I can’t remember much about his appearance – I don’t remember him being particularly young or old, no distinguishing features that I can pinpoint twelve years later. But, after a moment, he said to me, “You will remember. And your children will remember.” And he put his hand on my shoulder and walked away.

His words have stayed with me, and I’ve pondered their meaning. The idea of remembrance as an act having value in and of itself, outside of any action, is one that’s difficult to grasp. Yet it’s a part of our culture: the phrase “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Indeed, my understanding of the Holocaust itself is so mixed with the phrase “Never Forget” that, even after some extensive Googling, I’m unable to find any hint as to its origin. (Other than the obvious power, particularly when linked with the idea of forgetting something resulting in its repetition. Although it looks like, at least according to Google, “Never Forget” is being co-opted by September 11 memorial sites.)

But remembrance is only important if a context is provided. Saying Nazis killed millions of people is neutral unless its established that the people were innocent and killed for reasons stemming from ignorance, bigotry, and hatred. (And, if you want to get really philosophical, first establishing those things – ignorance, bigotry, and hatred – are bad.) And the real leap is to be able to say “XYZ happened and was bad, so lets make sure similar things can’t happen again.”

I knew, in a way stemming from a Jewish cultural understanding, what that man meant when he said that I would remember, and that my children would, too. I would say most people raised in educated, Western society could understand his message: You remembrance can help prevent this from happening again.

Prevent it, how?

Anne Frank

Stories like The Diary of Anne Frank are important because they help humanize something that seems impossible to understand: the slaughter of 10+ million people. Because, as incomprehensible as it seems, each of those people went through their own personal experience of pain, humiliation, and dehumanization before their demise.

It’s a ridiculously huge leap to compare my minor case of transphobic bigotry to the millions of dead from the Holocaust. At the same time, I do think that having an eye opening and humbling reminder of what bigotry feels like, especially as someone who is in many ways very privileged, helps me better understand why remembrance is so important. Why we shouldn’t forget the crimes and misdeeds of the past, even if we can offer forgiveness or, if that’s not possible, at least attempt to move on with our lives:

Because being dehumanized sucks. It fucking sucks. It, very literally, means someone has judged you as less valuable and less worthy of consideration than someone else. They have questioned your value as an individual, as a human being, and found that value to be wanting. No one should experience that, and I feel lucky that I’ve experienced it so rarely in such a form that was explicitly directed at me.

So I try to take strength in my mantra of Storytelling as Activism. Sharing my own story, that of a trans woman refusing to keep her mouth shut, probably won’t change the world, and may not even change the minds of the people who have made me their victim in this instance.

But Remembering requires not staying silent.

613 commandments and a killer recipe for chicken soup.

I haven’t posted a ton on Judaism, but there have been a few posts over the last couple of years. Many have been about 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 communities. I said at the time I’d like to speak more with the Rabbi who was on the panel, and this past week I finally had the chance.

We talked a bit about my show and queer issues within Judaism (more on that later) but the bulk of our time was spent discussing the frustrations I’ve found with Judaism as a religion. Specifically, the huge amount of tension I feel between horrible acts of slavery, sexism, genocide, hatred, murder, and xenophobia which are exalted in the Torah and the wonderful traditions of social justice, equality, women’s rights, and free-thinking I was taught growing up at synagogue.

In short, how do you reconcile that which seems irreconcilable? And why would you want to?

Rabbi Edwards started off by agreeing that, yes, this is an important and legitimate question, which was something of a relied. Many of the responses I’ve received when bringing this topic up are along the lines of, “Yup. That’s tricky.” (Indeed, at the panel discussion in June, I felt Rabbi Edwards going in that direction once or twice.) He also didn’t try to use what I feel is a real cop-out, that “we need to judge it within the framework of the time it was written.” That’s true, to a point, but I can simultaneously laud the virtues of the Founding Fathers in the US while also condemning them for their racist and sexist shortcomings.

27 ammendments and, surprisingly, another recipie for chicken soup.

Indeed, the US Constitution is my favorite analogy for my troubles with the Torah. The Constitution has sexism and racism enshrined in its very words, but it also has an explicit process of amendments to allow for mistakes to be corrected and changes to be made. Whereas the Torah doesn’t have such a built-in process of updating or revising. As I said to Rabbi Edwards, I’d feel much better about everything if there were a sixth book of the Torah where God said, “Slavery is out, women’s rights are in!”

“But the Torah does allow for that,” replied the Rabbi. “The Talmud is just such a document, and its existence means we are allowed to question and probe the contents of the Torah. This is not an unchangeable code of law; it’s a framework, subject to real-life conditions.” He continued, talking about historical precedent for reading the Torah as a living text, something that connects us as Jews to a historical tradition without imposing nitty-gritty details of behavior or living.

I have to admit, Rabbi Edwards response was the first time in years that I’ve been able to rethink religious Judaism. I don’t feel like anyone else has so clearly said, “Not only are we allowed to interpret the Torah, we’re encouraged to do so!” It’s possible that I never got to that level of academic study in Hebrew School, bailing as I did after my Bar Mitzvah, but I didn’t really feel like that sort of textual deconstruction was something coming around the bend. And the Rabbi openly admitted that he’d never though of the problematic nature of having the Torah hold such a holy place in Judaism if it’s not supposed to be venerated. How can you encourage free thought while also having such pomp and ceremony around the storage, handling, and presentation of the Torah?

(I do think it’s possible to do so, it just requires a more explicit act of encouraging questioning and debate.)

More poetically, Rabbi Edwards encouraging me to think of the Torah as a seed or kernel out of which Judaism has grown and expanded, rather than a constraining or restricting text. He said that even the most Orthodox Jews, considered to be the most strict and literal interpreters or Jewish law, are not going to suggest bringing back slavery, even though the Torah allows for its existence. So, said the Rabbi, even the most literal-minded Jews are still interpreting the Torah and choosing how to live by its teachings.

Which sort of brought the conversation back to a question of what is imposed and what is chosen or interpreted. I said that, above and beyond the religious teachings, Judaism got off on the wrong foot with me due to its imposition of gender at my Bar Mitzvah. That, no matter what it had taught, it still would have been forcing an identity onto me which was not my own. Rabbi Edwards said, “Yes, but doesn’t all culture do that?”

“Absolutely. Which is only why we should work to change it, not why we should accept it.”

Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha’olam asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al ha-milah. Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha’olam asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu lihach-neeso bivreito shel Avraham aveenu.

Blessed are You, O Lord Our God, Ruler of the universe, who has sanctified us with Your commandments, and has given us the command concerning circumcision. Blessed are You, O Lord Our God, Ruler of the universe, who has sanctified us with Your commandments, and hast commanded us to make our sons enter the covenant of Abraham our father. (Source)

Eight days after birth, Jewish boys are supposed to be circumcised as part of the covenant between God and Abraham (in Genesis), as specified in Leviticus. In this way, Jewish boys are supposed to continue the line of the Children of Israel, fulfilling the obligations and duties laid out for them in the Torah.

There are no required rituals or ceremonies to mark the birth of a girl.

Snip snip!

What does that mean for me?

I was circumcised. I did not ask for the circumcision, the gender it carried as baggage, or to enter in any sort of covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but I was circumcised.

According to Jewish law, have I renounced that covenant by transitioning? If a circumcision is a ‘male’ ceremony, one which need not apply to those created from Adam’s rib, is my circumcision null and void by rejecting that male identity? Biblically, will that rejection only be complete if I go through with The Surgery?

All 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, institutionalized, ritualized, ceremonialized, holy gender roles.

Take, for example, the following passage. It’s something I came across while doing some research for this post. From Being Jewish:

It is noteworthy that woman has no similar Commandment. Most things in the world were created before man, so that it would all be completed and ready for humanity’s use when we were created. Woman, however, was created after man. Thus, we find that woman was created at a higher level. Therefore, man needs woman to become complete, and until a man gets married, says the Talmud, he is not complete. Men are required by Jewish Law to get married. A man breaks a Commandment if he doesn’t get married, but women have no such requirement, and do not break the Commandment if they don’t.

Woman is the completion of man, but woman needs no completion herself.

That is why a woman says the blessing, each morning, “Blessed are You, Hashem, King of the universe, Who has made me according to His will.” Woman is made according to G-d’s will, but man is not! (For more about this, see my wife’s letter on this subject.) Man needs woman for completion, man needs circumcision for elevation, but woman needs nothing except what is within her, which was granted her by G-d. The man cannot say that G-d has made him according to G-d’s will. G-d’s will in this case is something that man must complete.

Ah, the midwest. Corn. Farm girls. Circumcised cocks.

That’s pretty fucked up, both in terms of assigned gender roles and in how it highlights the absurdity of circumcision in the first place: how could man possibly not be made to God’s will? How else would man be made? It’s God’s will (apparently) that men go through self-mutilation of their genitals, but that doesn’t mean the foreskin is anti-God somehow. By the creation story (stories, actually) in Genesis, everything is made in and by God’s will.

More to my point, the above passage is a really odd interpretation of circumcision. Its author is saying that women are somehow more “complete” than man, and thus needs no direct covenant with God. Wouldn’t it be a simpler (and less ridiculous) reading of the Torah to say that, biblically, women just aren’t as important as men? So no covenant is needed, by virtue of no one caring what women think in the first place.

Awesome.

I emailed my mom and asked about my own circumcision, how and when it happened, and here’s what she had to say:

Wow!  What a weird question.  Yikes!  I so think of you as female that it’s hard to imagine circumcision for you.  Anywho….. in answer to your question, you were circumcised at the hospital.  I complained because they would not allow me to accompany you.  I couldn’t get out of bed when [older brother 1] was circumcised & [older brother 2] was 6 when he asked for it.  They said that’s how it’s done in the hospital-no parents allowed.  I couldn’t handle the idea of some old guy giving you wine & then using (what in my mind was) a dirty old knife. And your father would not even consider a home circumcision.  That’s the story.

(Yes, her font of choice is Comic Sans. I apologize.)

So it sounds like my circumcision was somewhat religious, but was also done under the auspicious of the medical establishment.

The older I get, the more anti-circumcision I’ve become, at least if it’s done at birth. I don’t have a problem with an adult choosing, of their own free will, to get circumcised. I think it’s kind of silly, but I’m not against it. But I do have very real problems concerning at-birth circumcision, problems related to personal autonomy and the sanctity of one’s own body. If it’s not alright to medically assign genders to children, why is circumcision considered an “acceptable” genital modification?

Fitting circumcision in with my identity as a Jew is even trickier. I already feel Judaism is at best complacent in the unwanted and unwarranted gendering of children, if not an active encourager. To go a step further and surgically mark children assigned “male” at birth really upsets me, and makes me feel violated in the name of a religion to which I’m not sure I subscribe.

And where do trans men fit within the Jewish community? Would it be better for a penis created via phaloplasty to be uncircumcised, so the Jewish man might under go the requirements of the covenant, or already circumcised, a retroactive circumcision? Am I, as a circumcised woman, higher in the Jewish religious hierarchy, or am I already so far outside it by virtue of being trans that my circumcision is irrelevant?

These may sound like stupid questions, but that’s what Judaism is implicitly and explicitly saying I should be thinking about, by virtue of placing so much importance on the penis in the first place.