LGBT Book Readings at the Jewish Community Library

Reconciling queerness with religion has always been an enormous challenge. When the religion is Orthodox Judaism, the task is even more daunting. The anthology Keep Your Wives Away from Them, edited by Miryam Kabakov, takes on that challenge by giving voice to lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jewish women who were once silenced—and effectively rendered invisible—by their faith. It tells the story of those who have come out, who are still closeted, living double lives, or struggling to maintain an integrated "single life" in relationship to traditional Judaism.

How can transgender people live pious Jewish lives when many of their significant life choices might be considered “un-kosher”? How might parenting be complicated, or perhaps, enhanced, when one parent has changed sex? How does it feel to be in “men only” ritual space when you were once defined by your community as female? Balancing on the Mechitza is an anthology by activists, theologians, and scholars, both transgender and non-transgender allies, who share their interpretation of Jewish texts about ambiguous bodies, as well as their sacred and secular stories

                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                               Both readings are free and open to the public at the San Francisco Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE) Jewish Community Library. The library is located at 1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, 94115, between Scott and Pierce on the campus of the Jewish Community High School. There is free garage parking at the entrance on Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. For more information contact Allison at (415) 567-3327, ext 703 or ajgreen@bjesf.org.

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Lambda Literary Awards Jewish Transgender Anthology

Noach Dzmura editor of the anthology, Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community has said, “no matter where you fall on the spectrum of Jewish observance, and no matter where you fall on the spectrum of gender identity, there is a home for you in the Jewish community.”  This message of finding a home for Gender Variant and Trans identified people is clearly one of the overarching messages that made Noach’s anthology a Lambda Literary Award winner in the category of Transgender Non-Fiction this last week.

“The Lammys” or The Lambda Literary Awards, have been awarding published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes since 1988. Although this is far from the first time a Jewish author or Jewish subject received a Lammy, this is the first time that an anthology devoted entirely to the encounter between Jewish life and practice, and transgender bodies has been awarded. Based on my experience working with Noach over the past few years, this book is the summary of his investment towards ensuring that transgender inclusion is an increasingly understood reality throughout the organized Jewish community.

A natural thought leader, Noach is a local Educator and Activist who holds a Masters Degree in both Instructional Design and Jewish Studies.  Together with Rachel Biale, Rebecca Weiner, Karen Earlichman, myself and Ruby Cymrot-Wu as part of our professional Bay Area LGBT Jewish collective, Kol Tzedek, he co-author a Transgender Inclusion Report that led to the creation of the Transgender Task Force at the Jewish Community Federation. Noach started the East Bay Transgender Chevra, has written for the Forward, Sh’ma, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle, Tikkun and Zeek. Through all of his varied local community experiences started the site, Jewish Transitions to help further convey the messages also found in the anthology.

Many of the writers in his anthology like Kate Bornstein, Rabbi Elliot Kukla, Rabbi Reuben Zellman, Charlotte Fonrobert, Maggid Jhos Singer, Eliron Hamburger and Chav Doherty are also active change-makers and thought-leaders with strong roots in our local Jewish community. Yasher Koach, to the leaders and writers from across North America that provided their powerful pieces to the anthology and continue to help navigate the path of transforming our collective understanding of the full spectrum of Jewish lives.

Noach Dzmura and many of the contributing essayists are available to speak with your organization, synagogue, chevra kadisha, ritual committee, or book club in a range of formats. Please connect with Noach at Jewish Transitions to learn more about how to have these important topics brought to your community.

 

tearing down the wall with amos lassen

Image by goldberg via Flickr

life never fails to surprise me. i was on the phone with my niece who is undergoing sexual reassignment surgery to become my nephew when noach dzmura’s “balancing on the mechitza” arrived. i immediately sat down and read it, cover to cover. perhaps “read” is the wrong word, i devoured the book. i would be … Read More

via reviews by amos lassen

 

mechitza

We woke up refreshed and ready to learn on Sunday morning…at least I was, I am proud to say that I was the second person to arrive in our morning meeting rooms at the hotel. This is a first for me to be early in the morning… and on a Sunday morning to be early is simply a shock to everyone who knows me. One of the things about Israel, in contrast to my weekends in the states, is that I really miss having two days of the North American weekend. Here in Israel you get about a day and a half off from work… So as you can see from the photos from Shabbat yesterday, I slept in, missed breakfast, went to the pool and had a nice conversation with my friends, Michael from Australia, Tiffany from New York and Eduardo from Torino, on our feelings about about the Mechitza scandal of the night before.

Edoardo Segre from Italy is a religious man who guards Shabbat each week. He even prepared for Tisha B’Av by not eating meat during the nine days before this holiday commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Before speaking with Edoardo I did not even knew that folks don’t eat meat before this holiday. He was able to explain this and many other traditions that he participates in with genuine mensch′en kindness.

Most hotels and public spaces in Israel have a small room where folks can go and pray. It is Israel so every factor, celebration and conflict of pluralistic identity and diversity come into context when religious folks that are interested in praying in their traditional Sefardi, Ashkenazi or Mizrahi ways are mixed in with a little Americana Trans-denominational led service by our brilliantly talented friend Bodi. So our group was first to arrive in the room and Bodi, Eduardo and a few of the other men from our group began to daven and the women in our group sat on the left side of the Mechitza.

I had no idea what to do in this scene. I did not know where to stand or sit… So in a rescue effort my friend, another incredible mensch, Jonas Herzberg Karpantschof of Copenhagen, waved his hand at me when he saw me looking puzzled. He asked me to sit in the back row of chairs with him. Our leader, Ami Mehl came in after we started to pray and sat next to me on my left.

Framing my experience outside of the gender binary and within the delicate balance of pluralism and tradition was helped by my reading Balancing on the Mechitza before I left for Israel. This book, a collection of deeply personal and theoretical contemplations by activists, theologians and scholars, edited by Noach Dzmura, explores experiences of Jewish worship through a Transgender lens.

Within moments a few men walked in and started arguing with Bodi and Ami that the Mechitza should be behind the men so they can join us in prayer. Behind the men means to me that they could not just have women separated to the left of the Mechitza they were telling us they needed the women physically behind them in order to pray.

The argument was dramatic and loud and before I could really pretend to translate the conversation it was over. I assume that Bodi and Ami won the argument, if that could be possible, because we stayed in the room with the Mechitza simply dividing the room in half. I sat in one of the four chairs in the back where I was too distracted by the scene to daven.

With my friends the next morning near the pool our Shabbat conversations revolved around the mechitza incident the night before and what it brought up for us within our personal constructs of feminism, gender identity, Judaism and Israeli pluralism. Each of my friends mentioned that they were raised within some level of the modern Orthodox movement.

We were four Jews from three different countries on Shabbat listening to each other, learning and validating each of our experiences on how we see balancing the traditions of mechitza within halacha. In the end of the conversation I remember thinking, thank g*d, I can have gender reconstructed dialog with this incredibly brilliant group of people that understand halacha without anyone using halacha to help cite judgement but instead build greater understanding for all of us.