A lot of people didn't know me before my transition, so not everyone knows that the name Ariel was given to me by my parents at birth. Before birth, even: my parents chose the name Ariel before knowing if I was going to "be" a girl or a boy - either way they were going to give me the name Ariel. What bizarre happenstance! I sometimes think God gave the name to them. When starting my transition I wanted to change my name. I felt like it was just something one does when going through a gender transition. But I thought and I thought, and I realized there was no name I liked better for myself than Ariel. It was kismet. But it wasn't easy growing up with a Hebrew name in an English-speaking country, especially since I was born just one year before The Little Mermaid came out. I got so used to people mispronouncing my name, that I ended up settling: a less incorrect version of my name was preferable to a more incorrect version. I noticed if I said it correctly, arr-ee-EL, people would only hear the EL, and mispronounce the first syllable. Air-ee-EL, they would repeat, trying hard to match the emphasis, only to have me correct them. And sometimes we would go back and forth, me saying it one way, them saying it another way, unable to hear the difference. It wouldn't be until I said ARR-ee-el that they would understand why I was correcting them. Then that would be how they pronounced it. After enough of this, I unconsciously decided to skip that often futile step. I began to say my own name wrong. I remember I was in middle school. I had had friends over, and they had all just left, when my mother approached me. "Why do you let them say your name wrong?" she asked me. "What are you talking about? None of them say air-ee-el!" I snapped back defensively. "No, but they all say ARR-ee-el. Or worse, ARR-ee-UL. Why don't you tell them how to say it properly? Your name is so beautiful, it should be said properly." I remember I clicked my tongue. "You can't expect so much from people, they can't hear the difference. As long as I'm not the Little Mermaid I'm happy." Please don't misunderstand, I don't blame anyone in my life for saying my name as such. I introduced myself that way. I decided it wasn't worth it to go over and over exactly how to say my name. I probably made this decision by 9 or 10 years old. I spent most of my life introducing myself with an anglicized version of my name. I made that decision myself, and it made introductions easier for me. I remember in high school I knew someone with the name José. He introduced himself with the Spanish pronunciation, but most people said it with an anglicized pronunciation, saying the "s" with a "z" sound. I said his name the way he said it. One day we were joking around, when he paused and smiled at me. "I like the way you say my name," he said. At first I didn't understand. "Do I say it funny?" I asked. "No, you say it like a Mexican," he said. "It's nice. It reminds me of home." After that, sometimes when I got close to someone, I would tell them the more correct pronunciation of my name. Most people picked it up, not understanding what was so difficult about it, or why I didn't introduce myself like that to everyone. Other times, people would insist that was how they already said it. Of course, there have always been people who use the most correct version of my name. Family, family friends, people who have known me all my life, people who are familiar with Hebrew pronunciations. But outside of them, I got used to most people not saying my name the way my parents would. I got used to having to repeat it, spell it, explain how what I was saying was different from what they were saying. I feel like it is really silly, but I think my favorite part of living in Israel is the way people say my name. They know the name. They know MY name. They know how to say it. They know how to spell it. They don't ask me to repeat myself. I actually had to get used to letting myself say it correctly again. I had gotten so used to amending how I said it when introducing myself. They say it so effortlessly. I used to feel like it was a burden to ask people to say my name the way it was given to me. I used to feel like I was asking too much of people. I used to feel like I would be "being difficult" to ask English speakers to attempt a Hebrew pronunciation. My mom tried to encourage me to not be ashamed of having a name some might consider difficult, and I didn't get it. Hearing the way people say my name here, how everyone says my name here, I sometimes have the urge to thank them for the way they say my name. It's nice. It reminds me of home.

Sometimes people ask me how things are going for me, with regard to me being a trans rabbinical student. And I really appreciate the question, firstly because it's an important question and it makes me feel visible and valued, but secondly because people tend to be surprised with the way that I respond. Of course I experience transphobia. I experience overt and covert transphobia in virtually every space I'm in. I have experienced transphobia that people are shocked to hear about, because even to their uneducated ears it is so obviously offensive. But those examples are not what I respond with. They are relatively uncommon, and though they hit me to my core, they are not the worst. When they happen I am able to understand and validate my emotional response, and if I were to tell others about the incident, they would also be able to understand and validate my emotional response. That isn't so bad. The worst part about being a transgender rabbinical student is, for me, the fact that I'm the only one. It is so lonely to be the only one. It isn't that I crave socializing; I crave understanding. Sometimes microaggressions can pile up. They happen constantly. I don't want to get into what anti-trans microaggressions can look like, and the point of this post is not to educate people on anti-trans microaggressions. But when people constantly make statements that exclude me and people like me, that suggests that I either don't exist or I am less valid than those mentioned. And this can happen multiple times in a day, and I can feel very alone by the end of it. And sometimes, the way to make me feel less alone, is to be alone. The most lonely feeling is when you try and talk to someone about your experience, and they try and tell you that you're wrong. You might say, "Hey, I'm kinda feeling a certain way, because this thing happened. That is actually a microaggression, and it really hurt my feelings." And it is not uncommon for the other person to respond with, "Hmm, I think you're misunderstanding/misinterpreting, I don't see it that way at all. I think it's actually ______, and you shouldn't be upset by it." This is an extremely common response, but it is generally only said by people who do not have many (or any) close friends who are trans and/or nonbinary. Cis people who are around trans/nonbinary people often have generally learned that the trans/nb person understands gender microaggressions more than the cis person. Being around these people can be a relief, because even if they can't personally identify with your experience, they can understand why it was upsetting. The only thing more lonely than being the only one like you, is being the only one who understands people like you. One thing I really like is when I tell this to people, and they respond with a time when they were the only one of their kind in some situation. I really like this because it is a way that they can understand how I feel and what my experiences may be like, and because it is a way in which I am not alone in my feeling of aloneness. If you were the only lgbq person, or the only Jew, or the only person of color, or the only disabled person, and you were speaking about your experiences, and people tried to argue with you about what you were experiencing, how did that make you feel? Being the only one of your kind, experiencing oppression/discrimination/phobia for said identity, and having your peers "disagree" with your assessment of your experiences feels the same, regardless of the specifics of the experience. It is hard to deal with transphobia, cissexism, microaggressions, erasure, etc. But having dealt with those problems for 7 years now, and only recently joining a community where I'm the only trans person, I can tell you my take: the transphobia is hard, but the hardest part is the slow, soul-grating ache of isolation.

Language that we use holds meaning and weight. We categorize things based on the words that we use for them. Without each of their meanings and significances, words in our language wouldn't add anything to our ability to communicate. Because of that, when certain words are being used for purposes that don't match their meanings, it can be really confusing or misleading. But what happens when we don't have the words to communicate the meanings we wish to evoke? Well, the great thing about language is, it's all made up. Regardless of what the word is, it came from somewhere, and from someone. As much as we might feel like language is a God-given entity that already exists in its entirety, and does not need editing, language is the most human creation, and it is constantly evolving. In English, we have seen a great shift in language throughout the centuries. As many of us realized when we had to read Beowulf in school, Old English can scarcely be categorized as the same language we speak today. Language has evolved so much, dependent on the time period and culture of the people who speak it. One adaptation to the English language has been the reemergence of the singular "they" pronoun. The singular they pronoun has actually been around for centuries, used by writers such as Shakespeare, so it is no way a new adaption. If there were a situation in which you wanted to speak about an individual without gendering them, you would use the singular they pronoun. For example, Shakespeare wrote, "Now leaden slumber with life's strength doth fight; / And every one to rest themselves betake, / Save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds, that wake." Shakespeare was so fond of the singular they pronoun, that he even used it when the gender of a person was known: "There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend." By the way, at the time of Shakespeare, "you," or "ye," was still considered to only be plural, with the proper singular form being "thou." So the singular "they" is actually older than the singular "you," and yet we don't bat an eye when switching between singular and plural uses of "you." This shows how language evolves. "He" unfortunately came back into fashion as a gender-neutral singular pronoun after Shakespeare. With femininism rightfully calling out the gendered nature of "he" pronouns, this has been edited in many instances to "he/she" or "his/her." "They" or "their" is not only easier to say/write than "he/she" or "his/her," but as we know now, it is also more inclusive. There are people who are neither male nor female. For some of these people, it was obvious as soon as they were born. Intersex people are unable to be categorized into a binary sex. Many of these people receive "corrective" surgeries to "make" them one gender or the other. There are also nonbinary people, people who don't identify within a gender binary. We have these people in our Jewish tradition. With the six genders in Judaism, four of them are seen as "outside of male and female," and two of those four are unable to even be classified as "masculine" or "feminine." For people who don't fit into the rigid categories of "male" or "female," the singular they pronoun can help them feel respected, seen, and validated in who they are. It can be harder with Hebrew. The way our Jewish texts dealt with the binary aspect of the language, when dealing with nonbinary individuals, the text reverted to "he/him" equivalent pronouns, and at times would use female language in conjunction with male language. For example, it was written, "An androginos (one of the nonbinary genders): he is a being unique unto herself." They found no other way to describe these nonbinary individuals, so they used both feminine and masculine language. Luckily in English, we already have a foundation for gender neutral pronouns, and we all already use the singular they pronoun, whether we realize it or not (https://tinyurl.com/y6bfk7ca). "Who was the last person in the bathroom? They left the light on." "Did someone leave their jacket at my house?" "Someone is at the door, can you let them in?" Because of this, although other gender-neutral pronouns exist, the singular they pronoun is the most commonly used pronoun among people who use gender-neutral pronouns. My partner is one of those people. With love and support from myself, family, and friends, my partner has come out as nonbinary, and now uses they/them pronouns. While we have the language to express these meanings in English, this becomes more complicated in Hebrew. As we saw with our text on the androginos, the way the rabbis dealt with this was to mix feminine and masculine language. While this is possible and is something that is still being done, people wanted a more uniform way to refer to people in a gender-neutral way in Hebrew. And because language is entirely constructed anyway (especially with modern Hebrew, which arguably was created by Ben Yehuda in 1881 - which makes it significantly younger than the singular they pronoun), a young nonbinary college student studying Hebrew decided to do something about their lack of options to refer to themself in the Hebrew language. Along with their Hebrew professor, they came up with a grammatical system to conjugate verbs, nouns, and adjectives in a gender-neutral way. This became known as the Nonbinary Hebrew Project, and it has received international attention. Nonbinary people in Israel have been discussing this possibility for years: they had the identity terminology to refer to themselves (אי-בינארי, which means nonbinary in Hebrew) but not the formula to change the meanings of the everyday words we use. Words like "walk" and "tall" and "teacher." With the Nonbinary Hebrew Project, that is now possible. My partner and I celebrated our one year anniversary in February. As someone who prays regularly, I realized months ago that it didn't make sense for me to thank God for love without thanking God for my partner, who makes me feel so loved on a daily basis. So I wrote a prayer thanking God for them. With the Nonbinary Hebrew Project, I have been able to write this prayer in Hebrew, without using words whose meanings (binary gender) don't match my partner (nonbinary gender). בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה אֶת יְדִידֶת נַפְשִׁי Blessed are you, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who created my soulmate. We use language to communicate with each other. In using particular language, we can manipulate what exactly we are communicating, and how we relate to those we are communicating with. By using this language for my partner, I am able to both express myself, and validate their identity. As a congregant succinctly said to me at my last visit: it's not political correctness, it's respect. The Nonbinary Hebrew Project can be found at www.nonbinaryhebrew.com. You can familiarize yourself with / practice using the singular they pronoun here: https://tinyurl.com/y2hjn5gv

As I pack up my LA apartment to relocate to NYC for the summer, I'm remembering this time last year when I was leaving Israel and the life I had made there for the previous year. Israel was such a trip. I knew I was going to fall in love with rabbinical school; that was not a surprise to me. What floored me was how hard I fell in love with Israel itself, and with a very special person I met there. It was so hard to leave Israel last year. Being in a place where I felt connected to my Jewish culture even just ordering a coffee, where I didn't feel like a minority (even though I still was one in many other ways), where I felt a sense of camaraderie with everyone around me (except for the Women of the Wall visits where I would get attacked by Haredi elementary school children), where nobody mispronounced my name. I'm remembering one particular event that happened about a year ago. I was on my way from Jerusalem to Yaffo to stay with my family before going to the airport to fly back. I had all my stuff with me, including my cat, so I took a cab instead of a shuttle. My cab driver had dark hair and light blue eyes, just like me. He spoke Hebrew with an accent that told me his first language was Arabic, but he used many Jewish Hebrew expressions, like "Baruch hashem" - thank God. I didn't take too many cabs in my time in Israel, so I didn't know that this was a thing. We got to talking, and although his English was probably better than my Hebrew, he told me it was important for me to speak Hebrew, and we spoke for the whole trip in Hebrew. He spoke slowly and enunciated to help me understand. He told me he was born in Kuwait and his wife was born in East Jerusalem. They now live in Jerusalem together with their whole family on a compound, over 100 people living together in separate houses in the same area. It was Ramadan, and he said he was not a very religious man, but he loves Ramadan, because it was not hard to fast when you get to have a beautiful feast every night surrounded by everyone you love. He told me about the lights, the music, and the food - so much food, everyone felt like kings. He said over and over how blessed he was - Baruch hashem. We also talked about cats. He saw mine and was so excited. He said he never owned a cat, but that there were dozens that live on his compound, and he feeds them and takes care of them. He said there was great joy when one let you touch it. He said he doesn't let them in the house, because his wife thinks they're dirty, but to have a cat hang around your house is very very good luck. And that it was probably good luck for me to keep one as a pet. He asked me why I was moving back to America. I told him I had to for school, but that it is also hard to live in Israel. He said he understood, but Israel "will be here" for me when I return. I was unsure how to respond to a non-Jew seemingly advocating for my "Right of Return," but I accepted it as a very warm and welcoming gesture from someone who also loves the land, and had lived in it longer than I had, but was also not a native. The jacarandas have bloomed in Southern California and are beginning to drop their flowers. The jacarandas in Jerusalem reminded me of California. The jacarandas in California remind me of Jerusalem. I'm reminded of taking walks around the city with Ze'evi, pointing out all the plants I could identify. Going to Jachnun Bar and having to remember how to say "cauliflower" in Hebrew because the server, seeing that we mostly knew Hebrew, wouldn't let us order in English. I see the purple petals and I crave malawach and the sound of Hebrew and the soft slippery steps of Jerusalem stone. My heart has been full of longing -- איזה געגוע -- for the person and the place I fell in love with last year. And while it will be a while yet till I return to Jerusalem, my heart is full knowing I will be with my person, and there will be new plants for me to identify for them, and new places for us to discover together.

Ze'evi and I went to pride wearing our pride kippot, and I had on a Jewish queer pride flag. Throughout our day/evening, multiple people came up to us to talk about us being visibly Jewish and visibly queer. At first we got comments from non-Jews, telling us how nice it was to see people like us there. And then we got approached by Jewish people. Some came right up to us and said "Queer Jews!" or "shavua tov!" Some gingerly approached us to ask us about our kippot, and to tell us about their first time seeing a queer Jew. It was all the same story: I didn't know there were people that were openly queer and openly Jewish, until I met one. Honestly, I was worried about showing up in LGBTQIA+ spaces in kippot and a Jewish queer pride flag. I had prepared answers in my head for if anyone questioned me or my identities. But every single interaction we had was positive, and we could see how for some of these individuals, seeing someone be unapologetically queer and unapologetically Jewish gave them permission to allow themselves to exist within those dual identities. For many of us, if we didn't have a queer Jewish role model, we didn't how to exist in Jewish spaces as a queer person. For many of us, that meant stepping away from Jewish spaces. One of the queer Jews who approached us told us they had never seen someone with a rainbow kippah until they went to their first pride Shabbat service a couple days ago. They didn't know such things existed. Another person told us that growing up, the president of their synagogue was a trans guy, and seeing that someone could be trans and active in Jewish life was what he called a "formative experience." If you go long enough in a space without seeing anyone like you, it's easy to get the impression that people like you don't belong. Ze'evi and I showed up and refused to compartmentalize our identities. We are queer, trans, and Jewish, and those identities are not dichotomous. What we didn't realize is how much it would impact others to see us being our full Jewish queer selves. As we were leaving our last event of the evening, a person saw us heading out and literally ran over to us. "Can I just say, before you go, you two have been giving me so much life all evening. Can I hug you?" We consented, and got a giant squeeze like we were long lost friends. We thought we were just going to show up for ourselves, but we ended up showing up for everyone who has felt like these two identities of theirs can't coexist. חג גאווה שמח Chag ga'avah sameach -- happy pride!

I knew rabbinical school was going to be difficult. Ancient and Modern Jewish history, Torah chanting, Hebrew grammar, learning all the prayers and their meanings. Learning about difficult lifecycle events, like illness and death, and how we might be a pastoral presence during these difficult times. I knew it was going to be hard. On Monday, for Liturgy, our class on prayers, our professor sat down and passed out some papers for us. “I apologize,” she said, “but we will have to delay our planned lesson for today. There are more pressing matters. I did not think that I would ever have to do this, but it seems that it is necessary. I need to teach you the blessing to say when Jews are murdered in public for being Jews.” ברוך אתה ה׳ אלוהינו מלך העולם אשר קדשנו נמצותו וציונו לקדש את שמך ברבים Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu, l’kadeish et shimcha ba’rabim. Blessed are you, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe, who makes us holy through his commandments, and has commanded us to sanctify his name in multitudes. We made a covenant with God. We told God, if you will be our God, we will be your people. And this is us holding onto our covenant. Oh God, we will be your people, no matter what. We Jews have a blessing for everything. The pessimist in me says it’s because we’ve experienced so much hardship, so much pain, so much suffering, that maybe we had to bless everything, or else we’d never be able to experience joy. I said this to my professor. She held me in her gaze, the comfort of a sad smile and soft nod. She then furrowed her brows in a thoughtful expression, looked at me in earnest seriousness, and said, “It hasn’t all been sad.” We Jews have a blessing for everything. Our early rabbis gave us a blessing for hearing bad news. Baruch da’yan haEmet. Blessed is the true judge. This has also become what is said after hearing that someone has died. What is the rationale behind this? The rabbis said, “A person is obligated to bless upon the bad just as they bless upon the good.” Our Torah portion this week is called the Life of Sarah, and it begins with Sarah dying. In the very first sentence, it recounts how long Sarah lived, and in the second sentence it confirms that she has died, and Abraham mourns her and weeps for her. Why is it that a chapter about the death of Sarah is called the Life of Sarah? Because a person’s life cannot be fully measured until it ends. Although we can get stuck on the end, the true meaning is all that came before it. Sarah’s story is not just about her death, but about her life, about all the things she did and all the people who loved her. Sarah was lucky. She lived a long, comfortable life, a life full of love and joy. Sarah went peacefully in her old age, and still Abraham mourned and wept for her. It is never easy to lose someone, even under ideal circumstances. Every human life is so precious. We all have that divine spark within us, and each time a soul is taken, the world gets a little darker. Abraham and Sarah had a pretty ideal life. Sometimes the Jewish people can see ourselves as Abraham and Sarah, living a life of comfort: with land, with wealth, surrounded by family, without anything at all to fear. But at other times we see ourselves as Miriam and Aaron, and the Hebrew slaves of Egypt: downtrodden, despised, and oppressed. As of 2017, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 902 individuals, 22.5% of whom were Jews, although the total Jewish population is less than 0.2% of the world's population. This means the percentage of Jewish Nobel laureates is 11,250% above average. – Despite being strangers in strange lands, we have excelled! In Lithuania in 2016, 23% of Lithuanians said they would not accept a Jew as a fellow citizen. In 2017, 23% of people in the UK said they would not accept a Jew as a member of their family. In 2017, we saw a 57% increase in antisemitic attacks in the United States. We are less than 2% of the population of the US, and yet a whopping 54% of all religiously-motivated hate crimes in the US are against Jews. Those statistics weren’t just numbers this past weekend. They were names. David Rosenthal, Cecil Rosenthal, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Irving Younger, Daniel Stein, Joyce Fienberg, Melvin Wax, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, and Rose Mallinger. The Jewish people are a family. We are the children of Israel. When our people are being oppressed because they are Jewish, when our people are being killed because they are Jewish, each one of us feels it in our hearts, in our guts. Just as we all stood at Mount Sinai together when God gave us the Torah, just as we all stood at the shores of the Red Sea together as God parted the waters and we walked on dry land to freedom, so too were we all in that synagogue, the shock, the fear, the horror, the overwhelming sadness. When Jews suffer at the hands of antisemitism, we carry the weight of the loss of a member of our extended family, and we carry the weight of the fear knowing that it could have been us. As a Jew growing up in a post-Holocaust world, I was told as a small child, “That could have been you.” Since growing up and recounting these memories, I’ve been told that is a horrific thing to tell a small child. I wonder then, what do we tell our children? I was in Lithuania last spring, on a trip with school, to learn about what Lithuania was like before and after the Holocaust. What a thriving Jewish community Vilna had, and how virtually none of it was left in the wake of the Shoah. I did not just see the antisemitism in the derelict synagogues and closeted Jewish community, I felt it. Even with a beanie covering my kippah, the locals could tell I was Jewish by the way I looked. I got stares and dirty looks. One day we were learning about the center of the Jewish quarters, when a woman who now lived where the great yeshiva once stood opened her shutters to yell at us. She called us evil, said we had a dark aura, and demanded we get far away from her. She was recording us on her cell phone. We couldn’t understand why. Did she actually think we were witches? That act of antisemitism stung us all. Stunned, we sort of scattered in different directions, not wanting to draw attention to our Jewishness, each of us looking more Jewish next to the others. As I was walking away, I heard the voice of a stranger. “Shalom Aleichem,” he said. “Peace upon you.” A formal Jewish greeting. I turned and saw a man standing behind me. Neither of us had on any identifiably Jewish markings. My heart was beating fast. Was he friend or foe? “Shalom,” I said, cautiously. Both, “hello,” and, “peace.” He smiled. I relaxed, and I smiled too. He started speaking to me in Hebrew. Where was I from? I told him I was from America, but I was currently living in Israel for school. He told me he was from Russia, but that he didn’t speak any English, so we continued in Hebrew. He told me he was on a Jewish tour of Lithuania. He said he hoped to go to Israel one day. He asked what I was studying. When I told him I was going to become a rabbi, he didn’t have any words. He raised his eyebrows and smiled really big, like when you’re surprised by joyful news. He clutched his heart and nodded at me, and I nodded at him, and for a moment we just held each other with our expressions, and then we went our separate ways. The neo-Nazi who shot up that Pittsburgh synagogue would call me a globalist. If I can go to Lithuania and have a conversation with a Russian who doesn’t speak English because we both speak a little Hebrew, and if we can feel as if we have an automatic kinship despite never having met before, and share an honest human connection, and that makes me a globalist, then I’m glad I have the largest extended family that spans all across the globe, and I’m glad I have a connection to them. The fact that it could be any of us doesn’t just mean we’re connected in our fear. It also means we’re connected in our joy. It hasn’t all been sad. We Jews have a blessing for everything. It is so hard to want to bless God right now. My heart feels heavy, my soul feels tired, and I don’t want to be uttering praises. But I think our rabbis understood something. We cannot let our fear, our anger, our sadness, turn into curses. We cannot let them turn into resentment at God. We are commanded to bless upon the bad just as we bless upon the good. We are commanded to experience joy on Shabbat, even if we are not joyful in our hearts. Our life is a precious gift, and we must appreciate it, even when it is so hard, and we are in so much pain. It hasn’t all been sad. Having allies to support us in the wake of this tragedy is proof that love is a powerful motivator. An old friend I hadn’t spoken to in years reached out to me to tell me that she was thinking of me and my community. Many of the Jews in this room have been contacted by non-Jewish family members and friends with words of love and support, and all the non-Jews in this room are here to show their love and support. We are all children of God, we are all made in the image of God, and we all have the divine spark within us. Everywhere the Jewish people have been, we have had allies there beside us, helping us in whatever ways they could. It is in part because of these allies that we are still here as a people. We thank you for standing up in the face of hatred and saying, “You don’t speak for me.” I’ve had a hard time knowing how to respond to the tragedy. At first, I cried. I cried a lot. And then I hugged people I loved, and I cried more. And then I talked about my feelings, and I cried more. But our tradition reminds me: bless even the bad. So now I say a blessing, and I praise God, the giver of life. Because although this story began with death, it is really about life. The Life of Sarah – the Life of David Rosenthal, Cecil Rosenthal, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Irving Younger, Daniel Stein, Joyce Fienberg, Melvin Wax, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, and Rose Mallinger. Baruch Dayan HaEmet. Blessed is the true judge. Zichronam Livracha. May their memories be for a blessing. Let us remember them in life, and bless all that is good in their honor.

I've been thinking about something lately. I know I talk a lot about being trans. And some people who haven't known me very long might be wondering why. The truth is, as it stands today, if I didn't out myself, people most likely wouldn't know. When I meet a stranger, they see a guy. They don't question it. When we think about who we are, we didn't just arrive at the present. Who we are is every moment in our lives stacked up on top of each other to make up what we have become. Sometimes things change all at once. That's kinda what happened with me. Things changed so painfully slowly for so long, so slowly that I felt like nothing was changing at all, I felt like nothing would ever change, and then suddenly everything was different. A year ago I was stuck in two worlds. My family knew I was trans. My synagogue community knew I was trans. My friends knew I was trans. But, outside of that, I was being read as female almost all of the time. It was to the point that if someone else gendered me as male, it would make my whole week. I was learning Hebrew at the university. I had been on testosterone for a year at that point, but had only been on a couple of months when I first started. I remember the first day of class. I tried to look as masculine as I could. I was so anxious about it. It can be so nerve-wracking wondering if someone will gender you wrong, or, maybe to put it in a better way, when they will gender you wrong. Sometimes in English, if people aren't sure they might avoid using gendered pronouns altogether. That is quite impossible in Hebrew. Everything is gendered. And on that first day of class, my professor gendered me female. And I said nothing. I said nothing for a long time. I had a lot of feelings about it. I was embarrassed, I was uncomfortable, and I was scared. Most of all, I was scared. The fear was so great, sometimes it made me feel so small in comparison. At one point, a couple years earlier, I wasn't so afraid. I used to introduce myself with my pronouns, I used to correct people when they used the wrong ones. Nothing terrible happened. No one beat me up, no one threatened me. But there were people who laughed. They laughed at me, they refused to use my pronouns, and they made a point to let me know exactly how stupid they thought transgender identities were. I was never a "sticks and stones may break my bones" kinda guy. Words have always hurt me. I didn't tell my Hebrew class until I legally changed my gender. It's silly, but I felt like if I waited until it was legal, no one could tell me that I wasn't really a guy. They couldn't tell me I'd always be a girl. And if they tried, I could say, "Not according to the state of Minnesota." My professor was so kind and understanding. I had to miss class to go to court, and she told them on that day. I returned the next day, and my professor used different pronouns for me. I know someone who once told me he used to be overweight. Standing in front of me I only saw a thin person, as he said, "It stays with you, you know? I'll always feel like the fat kid, no matter what I look like." I sometimes feel that way about my gender. I got so used to being read as female, that even though it doesn't happen anymore, it's like I'm waiting for it to. It was maybe 10 months ago that I started getting read as male more than incidentally. And maybe 8 months ago that I started getting read as male regularly. When I started at HUC 6 months ago, I was getting read as male all the time. But it was still so new to me, I was still learning how to process it. It's easy to get in your head about the whole thing. I kept thinking, what will I inevitably do that will out me? I also wondered what this newfound privilege might do to me. Would it change me? Would I forget where I came from? Could I ever erase that little girl who made me the man I am today? Would I want to? Not every trans person gets the opportunity to hide that they're trans, or be "stealth" as they say in the trans community. Not everyone gets the privilege of walking down the street knowing strangers are going to read you the way you want them to. Some people need to be stealth, for work, for safety. I decided back before I "passed" as male, that if I ever did, I did not want to be stealth. I want to be open because some people don't get to make that decision. I want to be open because I don't want to forget where I've come from and what I've gone through. And I want to be open because I don't want to be afraid anymore, afraid of what people might say if they knew. I want to look that fear in the face and say, "I'm bigger than you. You will never make me feel small again."

I hate the term "brave space." I understand that no space can completely be a safe space, and most spaces in the world are not safe spaces, but I think that is exactly what the term is speaking to -- an understanding that most communities do not go out of their way to create an environment that is actively supportive. The term "safe space" is an acknowledgement that the world is not a safe place. Brave space puts the onus on the vulnerable person. It asks them to be brave and put themselves out there without knowing whether or not their courage will be accepted. It's asking vulnerable people to make themselves more vulnerable, without providing any support or encouragement for them to do so. It does this by shaming the concept that someone wouldn't feel safe in a certain space, and ignoring the validity of how silencing unsafe spaces can be. This does not help vulnerable people share their vulnerabilities. All this does is encourage those who already take up too much space to take up more space, and then allows them to pat themselves on the back for being "brave." Safe space puts the onus on the community. It acknowledges and understands that in most aspects of our lives, the vulnerable have no support. By creating an intentionally supportive environment, it encourages those who don't feel brave to still feel safe enough to come forward. I want to illustrate this point with a story. I have been in so many classes where professors have used cissexist language that has hurt me. This is language that indicates vagina=woman and penis=man. There have been times when I have tried to voice these concerns to professors, and was shot down. Because of that, I stopped voicing my concerns, and let myself feel hurt. I am currently in a class where the professor has voiced repeatedly that she wants us to come to her if we have any concerns at all, and she wants to be sensitive to our needs. We cover difficult topics in this class, and today we were talking about miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death. Throughout the class, when referring to the person who gives birth, she regularly used the word "mother." Because she had established a culture of support and sensitivity, I felt like she might be able to hear me. I went to her after class and said, essentially, it hurts me to hear repeatedly that someone who gives birth is a mother, since I would like to give birth, and I will not be a mother. I then asked if she would be willing to try to use the term 'gestational parent' instead. She heard me and responded positively. She thanked me for coming to her, made a promise to try and change her language, and gave me permission to interrupt her if she makes a mistake. And then we had a wonderful conversation about the evolution of Jewish law as societies and cultures evolve, and how that tension between tradition and inclusion can actually be a very beautiful space to lean into and exercise Jewish values. I did feel nervous coming to her, and it was brave of me to do so, but I didn't go to her because I was brave. I went to her because she had created a safe space for me to do so. I had an expectation that I would be heard, and that she would be sensitive to my needs and concerns. She had created that supportive environment that signaled to me that my courage would not be in vain. It was such a positive and validating experience for me, and it reminded me of how important it is to put in the effort to create spaces that are safe for the vulnerable members of our communities. Yes, most of the "real world" is not a safe space -- and that is exactly why we need them.

The government's attempt to roll back trans healthcare protections is personal to me. Between 2014-2015, I spent an entire year trying to get access to hormones so I could begin medical transition. I was living in Orange County, California. I had health insurance. My health insurance included specialists, such as endocrinologists, which were the only doctors writing prescriptions for hormones at the time. However, neither my insurance nor I could find a single doctor in Orange County willing to discuss hormone treatment with me. Office after office I called, people either responded with laughter or disgust. So I tried in LA. Los Angeles was considered one of the largest, most liberal cities in America, and yet I could not find a single doctor that would take my insurance and write a prescription for hormones. I called Planned Parenthood. The receptionist literally laughed at me when I asked if they had someone who could write me a script. When I asked why they advertised trans healthcare if they don't provide hormone treatments, they responded, "because we will not turn you away from regular medical treatment just because you're trans." It was a sobering reminder that other places could legally let me bleed out and die. "Providing trans healthcare," to PP, meant an assurance that I would at least be seen as a human being. I would not be given the specific care I needed, but I would not be murdered, and this was radical enough for them to advertise. Think about that for a second. It used to be so commonplace for doctors to refuse ANY medical treatment to trans people, even life-saving treatment, that simply being willing to treat a trans person was worthy of advertisement. I ended up finding one place that would write me a prescription. It was in LA and I had to take off work for my appointment. The doctor showed up an hour and a half late. He misgendered me the whole time. He didn't take insurance, and the visit cost $150, and the hormones cost $150. If I wanted a regular prescription, I would have to repeat that process every other month -- taking a full day off work and spending $300. I couldn't afford that. I ended up moving to Minneapolis, partly because they offered trans healthcare there. I needed to live in a place where I had access to trans medical care, where I could use insurance for my medical care, and where I could trust the doctors to respect my identity. California is better now than it was when I left in 2015. They now offer trans healthcare, and I'm not experiencing the difficulty I did before. But I remember what it's like. To the gay people who think this is about you: when was the last time you were refused medical care? When was the last time you had to move states to get access to healthcare? I have a trans friend who has likened trans people to the canary in the coal mine -- which I think is a good metaphor. Once they start taking away protections for trans people, the most hated of the LGBTQ community, the LGBQ people are certainly next. But not yet. This does not remove protections for sexual orientation. It only removes protections for gender identity. This is specifically targeting trans people. I keep seeing headlines and posts saying, "Trump removes medical protections for LGBTQ people." This is not about the entire LGBTQ community, not yet. This is about the trans community. Trump is removing protections for trans people. Please don't erase us in this. Please call this what it is -- Trump trying to take protections away from trans people. Trans people have been refused medical care because they're trans. This would make it legal for a doctor to allow me to die in their care because their religion disagrees with my existence. This is going to result in real people dying. Most likely those people will be black trans women, the most vulnerable and attacked within the trans community. I remember what it feels like to have doctors laugh at you, tell you they won't treat you. I remember what it feels like to be told I should be grateful to receive any healthcare at all, because that is not a given for trans people. I remember what it feels like to pack up everything I own and leave, because healthcare is not seen as a right for trans people. Trans people are scared we're going to lose access to our medical care. We're scared we're not going to get hormones or surgeries or other trans-specific care. But we're also worried that we're going to get in a car accident, an EMT is going to find out we're trans, and they're going to make fun of us as we die in front of them. We're worried medical professionals will kill us through neglect, and it will be their legal right to do so. As a white transmasculine person, I'm among the more privileged members of the trans community. But I've already had to uproot my life because of healthcare. I know what it's like to not have access to healthcare, to have doctors refuse to treat you. This is serious. And it is specifically trans-antagonistic. This is attempted murder of trans people. Please, help us.

Anyone who has been in love knows how otherworldly the feeling is: the out-of-body feeling of weightlessness, the in-the-body feeling of groundedness. For so many, love is the most natural thing in the world. But for others, to experience love feels like a direct contradiction of nature. You might have seen people say that queer love is revolutionary. In a society constructed to set up cisgender men with cisgender women, to deviate from expected pairings is to create new pathways of love. For many queer people, creating these new pathways is new and takes more effort than their heterosexual counterparts. But the air is ripe with possibility. When I saw myself as a cisgender queer person, I too felt like the possibility to pave my own love path was within my grasp. It was not inconceivable that someone would love me. While I knew that it would not be easy, that it would take time to find someone and it would take compromises within the relationship, I didn't doubt that it was a possibility. Things changed when I came out as trans. It seemed like even in my small queer pool, all of my prospects for partners vanished. The queer people I had been in community with previously now saw me as a member of a different queer community, one that did not involve them or their love. Their newfound refusal of me was a "preference" that I needed to respect. Even as a bisexual person, my options felt pessimistically low: straight cisgender women wanted straight cisgender men, queer cisgender women felt weird about our relationship appearing heterosexual to strangers, and gay cisgender men did not consider me a viable option because of my anatomy. While I'd heard of straight cis women or gay cis men dating trans people, I had never personally met one. Even the bisexual people I met tended to be afraid or at least apprehensive about dating a trans person. So I mostly dated other trans people. Trans people are somewhere between 1-3% of the population. Not only was my dating pool so small, but within that small sliver of the population, I still had to find someone that liked me, and would accept me as a religious Reform Jew. I tried for many years to meet someone. I was active on dating sites, I was serious about meeting new people, I read books and articles about how to meet the one. I went on a LOT of first dates. People either had problems with my gender, my politics, or my religion. I couldn't catch a break. Then I found someone who was accepting of my gender, my politics, and my religion. After trying to find someone for 5 years, I decided that this was good enough. Being accepted was enough, since society had told me no one would accept me. Years of seeing first hand how no one wanted to date me made me desperate. I had to have a serious consideration: is it better to be with someone you don't love, or to be alone forever? For a while I thought the former. And I was in an unhappy relationship. I needed to come to the realization that I would rather be alone forever than to be in a relationship with someone I didn't love. I developed the self love necessary to accept that I shouldn't be punished for society not accepting me. I shouldn't have to settle for less because society says I'm undesirable. I shouldn't settle for stability just because society has said happily ever after doesn't include people like me. I broke up with the person I was dating, and I focused on loving myself. When Ze'evi came into my life, ze entered as a friend. I told zem a bit about my struggles as a trans person dating, and although ze wasn't out as trans yet, ze understood me. Ze had tried to come out, but was discouraged from living zer truth by a partner who was scared of what that would mean for them. Trans people everywhere, closeted or out, are being told that our identities are difficult for those closest to us. We get it of course from family, friends, and co-workers, but we also get it from partners. How our identities might affect them, or be difficult for them. About how they never saw themself with a trans person, and are unwilling to adjust. How they never asked for a trans partner, and therefore all the difficulties that come with being trans should be suppressed for the benefit of the partner. How the partner is making a sacrifice just by being with a trans person, and so the trans person should bend over backwards to make it easier for their cis partner. I was done with feeling lesser than, I was done with feeling like I should be grateful for a neutral experience, I was done feeling like otherworldly love doesn't happen for people like me. If I couldn't get that feeling from someone else, I was gonna give it to myself. Ze'evi and I have said to each other that us finding each other and falling in love was nothing short of a miracle. Yes, people find each other and fall in love all the time. But for most of those people, the odds are not against them. Queer people have it harder than straight people, but with dating apps, clubs, and a growing queer community, as a cis queer person, I never felt like it was impossible to meet people. As a trans person, I had to resign myself to the possibility that I would be alone forever. Ze'evi had resigned to the possibility that ze would never come out, because ze wasn't sure ze would ever have a partner who would accept zem. We found that in each other first as friends. To have that COMPLETE acceptance: I see you, I acknowledge you, and I accept you for all that you are; to have that complete acceptance, beyond just your identity but encompassing your whole soul, to have that complete acceptance is that same feeling of weightlessness combined with the most stabilizing groundedness. It is exponentially expansive. It is like a sudden wind filling your soul balloon to capacity, and finally being aware of how large your soul could swell. Never again will you feel tiny or small, with this expansive soul energized and enlargened by acceptance. Queer love may be revolutionary, but trans love is miraculous. In a world that tells us we are lucky to be alive, we have elevated each other to move beyond our gratitude for existing in a hostile world. We can strip away the prejudices and expectations, and sit with each other in our own sincerity, and connect as humans. I don't know that everyone will find this. But I want to say, if any trans person reading this has felt like they had to settle for someone just because that person accepts your trans status: you are so much more than your trans identity. Others may not have even accepted that, but you deserve to be accepted as a whole human. If someone can accept your identity but not accept your soul, and you accept that, what are you telling yourself about your own worth? And to the cis people reading this, who might have preferences of your own, how does it make you feel to see that accomplished, kind, intelligent people feel utterly unlovable because their identity deems them undatable to most people? How can you say people like me deserve to be loved, if you yourself wouldn't be willing to give us a chance? Until society changes, many trans people are going to be alone, and most cis people won't understand the loneliness and self-hatred that often comes with being told you're not what someone is looking for over, and over, and over, and over... But as we push society forward, and more trans people find solace in each other, let it be declared with pride and purpose: trans love is miraculous.

Shanah tovah umetukah lekulam! A good and sweet new year for everyone. When I was younger, I thought of teshuva in the traditional sense -- atonement, repentance, preferably with some form of self-flagellation. When I started learning more, especially learning Mussar, it became clear to me why we use a word meaning "return" for our concept of "repentance." Each of us has within us a pureness, a brightness, a goodness that cannot be corrupted. Over time, as we experience hardships, as we are faced with difficult decisions and behave in ways that do not align with our values, clouds form over our light. But the light itself is not changed, just hidden and obscured. Behind the clouds our light cannot shine on others, and when it is hidden enough, sometimes we ourselves can't feel its warmth anymore. But every year we are reminded of who we are at our core. We are good, pure people who have made mistakes. We've missed the mark. We've acted in ways that do not represent us. Our behaviors have not matched who we are. We need to spend some time on ourselves to clear out our clouds, to feel the warmth of our own light, and to share its brilliance with others. Teshuva is not about being a bad person. It's the opposite of that. Teshuva is about being a good person who has not always behaved that way. Teshuva requires self-love, it requires the understanding that we are at our core good, pure, valid, and deserving of love and forgiveness. It is an understanding that good people can do bad things, and the best way to prevent transgressions in the future is to return to our goodness, return to the parts of ourselves we ignored when we made bad choices, return to our light to focus our energy to grow our ability to heal and limit our likelihood to cause pain. I hope we all have a moment in these days of awe to experience awe in ourselves, in each other, in our collective goodness, and in the sparks of light we produce amidst the darkness. To a happy, healthy, and bright new year.

It has been a year now since the antisemitic massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news: on the subway train in NYC, sitting next to my partner, first responding with utter shock and showing them my phone, and then the both of us trying not to cry on a train full of strangers. We got off the train and cried in the street, the cold air stinging the tear stains on our cheeks. “Why do they hate us?” we asked each other. “Why do they continue to hate us?” On the one hand, this feels entirely new. On the other, it feels as old as our people. And then my partner asked me, “Do you think we should cover our kippot? Is it safe?” This was the question many of our ancestors had to ask themselves. In our country and the old ones, our people felt like they had to choose: civil rights, or Judaism. Jews were welcomed into civil society, so long as they didn’t look or act Jewish: so we assimilated. While the Reform Movement was at the forefront of assimilation efforts, we had been emerging from centuries of oppression, including forced conversions, ghettoization, mass murder, and barred from citizenship or legal status as humans. When the rest of the world got their citizenship and civil rights, the Jews were excluded, seen as a separate class of people. “How could someone both be French and a Jew?” they would ask. Since Jews are of the nation of Israel, they were not allowed to be members of the nations in which they lived. For some countries, such as Russia, Jews did not gain citizenship until the twentieth century, over one hundred years after the birth of Reform Judaism. We thought that our oppression lay in the fact that we were separate from society – we were in segregated communities, we wore different clothes, we spoke different languages, our religious practices were different, and our cultures were different too. They thought that if the other nations could see us as being like them, then they would cease to hate us. Clearly, this has not been the case. Antisemitism had not even been coined at that time – back then it was just called Jew hatred. Jew hatred would continue to evolve and find new forms, even as we did our best to make ourselves likable. I think the Reform Movement has done many things right – I think the push to modernize Judaism was and remains a good idea – but assimilation has not protected us, and it has removed many people from their Jewish identity markers. Many Jews feel safer living in a world that cannot tell they are Jewish. I wear a kippah because I want to be visibly Jewish. Sometimes this means Uber drivers ask me weird questions like, “How much of Judaism is about Jesus?” and, “Is it true all Jews are rich?” Sometimes it means people pass me on the street and yell, “SHALOM!” and I have no idea if they meant it offensively or not. Sometimes it means a new person I meet immediately asks me about Israel, even though no one brought it up. But sometimes it means when I’m in public and a stranger does something incredibly rude to me, I refrain from acting rashly out of anger or spite, because I know I would be giving the entire Jewish people a bad name to do so as a visible Jew. And sometimes it means a stranger in the elevator on a Friday afternoon says to me, “Shabbat shalom. Where do you go to synagogue?” When my partner asked me, “Do you think we should cover our kippot? Is it safe?” I remember how I responded: “I don’t know if it’s safe. But we shouldn’t cover our kippot. We can’t let them make us hide who we are.