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By Rebecca, June 15, 2010 12:08 am

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.

Continue reading 'Ba(r/t) Mitzvah'»

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By Rebecca, December 17, 2008 7:59 pm

I was raised as a relatively secular Jew, and identify alternatingly as agnostic, a secular Jew, and a Humanistic Jew, depending on my spiritual feelings at the moment. (Usually one of the first two, occasionally as the third.) As such, I don’t hold a huge amount of personal stake in what the religious Jewish community feels about trans issues. That is, while I do feel some emotional connection to the Jewish community (how big is as varrying as how I describe my religious identity) how Jewish religious scholars feel about same-sex and trans issues won’t make me change my attitudes on transitioning or same-sex relationships any more than Christian or Muslim scholars would change my mind.

Nevertheless, it’s nice to see TransTorah, a resource which “helps people of all genders to fully access and transform Jewish tradition, and helps Jewish communities to be welcoming sanctuaries for people of all genders.” A friend of mine emailed me the page, and I’ve been exploring it’s (somewhat sparse) resources. I particularly like the Blessings for Transitioning Genders, and will file it away with my secular Chanukah blessing…

-R