Hanukkah at the Roots: Night 5 - Anti-Trans Hate - R’ Becky Silverstein

Rabbi Becky Silversten is Co-Director of SVARA’s Trans Halakha Project, a Schusterman Fellow, a board member of the Jewish Studio Project, and an incoming board member of The Shalom Center.

The fifth night’s light is an invitation to explore gender euphoria — for its own sake and as a response to the transphobia that permeates our world.

Exploring and experiencing gender euphoria can manifest in several ways, for example:

• The heart expanding feeling of hearing someone use a new name or the right pronouns for you, wearing the lipstick or jewelry or shoes or clothing that make you feel strong and perfectly yourself

• The joy of a high school track star who is also trans being embraced by their team after running a leg of a relay

• The ease of a trans parent taking their child into a public swimming pool without the concern of harassment 

• Opening oneself to accounts of trans people describing their experience, like this podcast from Dubbs Weinblatt at Thank You for Coming Out

• Acknowledging the moments where your gender was constricted and making a plan on how to counteract that feeling next time

• Learning more about the Trans Halakha Project, where we work from a place of halakhic euphoria, a term coined by Laynie Soloman, where “Our task…is to uncover the legal principles that enable us to find the authentic, affirming, joyful, and liberatory expressions of who we are.”

Each of these engagements with gender euphoria provide a glimpse into what the world might look like if the root crises causing transphobia were addressed, if trans folks and their families were able to move freely through the world, without fear or hesitation.

So what are those root causes? A constriction of our imaginations and spiritual lives, an inability to see the places of joy and celebration within ourselves and therefore an inability to see the same in others. This inhibits our ability to envision the world that we all deserve, to consider gender expressions other than the ones we see in front of us, to celebrate each and every person in this world. It keeps us tethered to the misogyny within our religious traditions and texts, and our culture. Instead of celebrating the vastness of gender identities and expressions as a reflection of the breadth of the divine, we limit the divine and ourselves.   

The consequences are real — hundreds of pieces of anti-trans legislation filed across the United States in the past few years and waiting to be filed in 2024, trans folks leaving their homes and communities behind to relocate to safe states, gender affirming books being pulled from libraries, trans individuals wondering if they have a place here, wherever here may be, and others. Many of these consequences are the direct result of an organized and well resourced Christian Right whose power is expressed in so many other crises we are facing. 

All of this is why we must see intersectional trans joy and gender euphoria reflected in the Hanukah lights. Join me in (re)dedicating ourselves to learning about trans experience and anti-trans hate, in confronting transphobia when we witness or experience it, and in elevating the divine by celebrating the divinity in each of us.

— by Rabbi Becky Silverstein

Read/Watch/Listen:

TransLash Media tells trans stories to save trans lives. Check out all their media, especially their podcasts The Anti-Trans Hate Machine and the TransLashPodcast.

Action Items:

Join Thrive, The Jewish Coalition to Defend Trans and LGBQ+ Youth, led by Keshet and SOJOURN. National and local Jewish organizations are joining together to send a clear message: protecting trans and LGBQ+ youth and all LGBTQ+ people are part of our Jewish values and taking action for LGBTQ+ rights is a mitzvah!

Kavannah

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Torah says that women
Must not wear men’s clothes
Nor men wear women’s.
But on Purim it’s permitted
And indeed encouraged
Because delight and laughter
Are the reason for disguises.
So a 21st-century teacher,
Yaela Wiser, taught:
“If cross-dressing
Is permissible for laughter
Surely it is permissible for Truth:
If your gender-truth is Trans
Then wear the clothing
That tells the Truth
About your truest self.”
With this fifth Hanukkah candle,
We illumine Truth and make it whole.

Blessings

midrashic translations by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Baruch atah / Brucha aht Yahhh, Blessed are You, Breath of life, Ruach HaOlam, Interbreathing of the world, asher kidshanu b’mitzvot, vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah, Who makes us holy by connecting with the Breath and with each other, at this moment to kindle the light of Hanukkah to see our cousins.

Baruch atah, <Brucha aht> YHWH {Yahh} Eloheinu, Ruach haolam, she-asah nisim — lo v’chayil v’lo v’choach ki im b’ruchech — l’horeinu bayamim hahaeim baz’man hazeh.

Blessed are You, YHWH [Yahhh] our God, Breath of all life, Who has brought about amazing deeds — not by might and not by power, but by Your Spirit — through our forebears in those days and in ourselves, this very season.

Light shamash / helper candle and Candle 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5 of Hanukkiah.