A still, thin sound

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“The great shofar will be sounded and a still, thin sound will be heard.” (Unetaneh Tokef)

It’s 7:37 pm on September 21st. It is the 22nd day of Elul.

Today is a day of reckoning and repentance. It is a day for seeking forgiveness, and for opening our hearts. Today – this month – is about t’shuvah. About releasing our pain, about seeking healing in places of brokenness, about repairing relationships that have been fractured.

Elul is the spiritual preparation to get us ready for the High Holidays, when we are to be shaken and awoken to act righteously, to act for justice, and reminded of the consequences.

“I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that both you and your people may live.” (Deut 30:19)

This passage of Torah is read during the High Holidays. It comes as Moses is about to lead the Israelite people to the promised land, and the people are reminded of the obligations they agreed to. They are reminded that they are in a covenantal relationship with G!d and each other, and that there are consequences to their actions, whatever they may be. To say that this piece of text resonates with me is something of an understatement. I have it tattooed on my wrist. Well, specifically I have u’vcharta b’chayim - therefore choose life – on the inside of my left wrist. For me, it represents the ethical framework by which I try to live my life. Choosing life is about choosing to act in the interest of growth, possibility, potential, abundance, and becoming. It is about what I see shining through the Torah – an obligation to act toward justice, to act with compassion, humility, and forgiveness.

So I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week – about obligation and ethics, about choosing healing in the face of brokenness.

And then on Monday, I read a sermon from a rabbi in Cleveland from Rosh Hashanah several years ago, in which he linked this passage from Deuteronomy to choosing gratitude. To choose life, he said, is to choose to recognize blessings and to be grateful. And through that gratitude, through acting upon that gratitude, our actions and relationships are transformed.

I have found gratitude in surprising places this week, and yet I feel overwhelmed by brokenness tonight.

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Choosing Femme: Visibility, Safety, Community, Liberation (part 3)

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This is part 3 of a 3-part series. Part 1 can be found here, and part 2 found here.

Community, Liberation

Boston Dyke March was on a Friday, the week after Philly Trans Health. My friends had thrown together a pre-Dyke March Shabbat potluck, and I spent most of the afternoon and early evening – blissfully – a little distant. As someone who is so often at the center of organizing queer Jewish community in Boston, it’s a lovely relief when things happen outside of my professional realm, and I can just be there. This day in particular, against the backdrop of a beautiful Pride week and on the end of a soul-nurturing stint in Philly, I sat back on my mental heels and watched our community breathing. My friends and colleagues and community members and chosen family and partner came together with food and blessings of abundance. People laughed and sang and ate and celebrated and I loved getting to watch it, but at a bit of emotional distance.

That moment isn’t necessarily obviously connected to the ones that came next, the ones that have something to do with femme identity. However, what does matter to me is that this vibrant, fabulous, loving, thriving, queer community is the backdrop against and within which we’re sorting out things like identity and visibility. And that shapes it. Sometimes obviously, sometimes imperceptibly, but undoubtedly.

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Choosing Femme: Visibility, Safety, Community, Liberation (part 2)

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Part 2 of a 3 part series. Part 1 is here.

Philly Trans Health

The day after the conversation with my grandfather, I landed in Philadelphia for the Philly Trans Health Conference – the largest trans-specific conference of the year. My friend and coworker Asher and I were presenting a couple of workshops, but we had a lot of time to attend sessions, connect with people, catch up with friends, go dancing, and just relish being surrounded by SO MANY trans & queer folks.

This was my first year attending, and it was also apparently the first year the conference featured a number of femme-themed workshops, thanks to JAC (the ever-fabulous Midwest Genderqueer). I’m not sure I knew how much I needed these femme spaces, but I’ve been feeling fuller and more alive since I got back, and I think the conversations we had about femme identity and experience are a huge part of that.

After the last workshop of the last day – a Femme Community Solidarity discussion – I was chatting with a friend from Antioch. We were friendly at school, but not incredibly close. But we have that Antioch thing – we are each other’s people in this particular way that goes beyond allegiance. Maybe it’s because you can’t really emerge from Antioch without having been transformed – and so we share this somewhat painful, powerful, challenging, liberatory, scalding experience that we love to hate, but will defend fiercely if challenged. Regardless, it was so nice to have her in that room, and to be able to remember some of the particularities of femme space (or lack thereof) in this one queer community we shared. We held similar frustrations, feeling like we often didn’t have space, affirmation, or reflection of radical queer femininity as an acceptably transgressive, political, radical identity. Queer masculinity was celebrated – and with good reason, because there were a lot of folks for whom their masculinity had been a source of scorn, violence, and dismissal – but it seemed to be at the expense of femininity. I couldn’t come to femme until I left Antioch, for reasons that were both particularly mine and also about that queer community. But through the course of our conversation, I saw my community now reflected against my community at Antioch, and walked away with such a deep appreciation for my community today.

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Choosing Femme: Visibility, Safety, Community, Liberation (part 1)

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As I start this, I’m on my fifth flight in two weeks, flipping through Micah Bazant’s powerful TimTum: A Trans Jew Zine, and I can’t stop thinking about what is feeling like a theme developing from the last few weeks. There are these snippets of moments that I’m trying to string together to create something cohesive and whole. I’m not sure yet what that whole looks like, but I’m pretty sure it’s about femme identity & chosen queerness, about visibility, passing, and safety. It’s about what liberation looks and feels like, and – appropriately – it’s about pride. This will probably be more than one post, because I’m wordy and because why not kick this blog off with a bang? 

Visbility

My partner (M) and I flew to California (where I grew up) and drove to Arizona for a wedding. The marrying couple were two good friends, one of whom has been one of my best friends since the summer I turned 15. I was excited to be present for such a meaningful and significant moment in the lives of people I love. I have a lot of ambivalence around marriage – and yet some of that ambivalence faded away (although not the critique beneath it) because for this wedding, there is no doubt that it is right for them.

My queerness felt very present this weekend, mostly in affirming and chosen ways. We were one of, I think, 4 queer* couples at this wedding. One of the others is the groom’s mom and partner – who feel, in many ways, like my own family. Then there are the older gay men who are, I think, cousins. Finally another close friend from high school youth group and her partner, both of whom M & I have grown close to – individually and together – over the last 9 months or so they’ve been sweeties. We were sharing a room with the two of them, and it felt a bit like we were a team of trans/queer/butch/femme/genderqueer superheroes bringing a bit of queer glam, finely appointed accessories, fabulous ties, and great shoes to Scottsdale, Arizona.

Every day, and that day in particular, I relish the way that our dates bring queer masculinity into such sharp relief with the awkward constraints of compulsory gender. My high school friends couldn’t stop telling me how fabulous M is, how she’s such a great dancer, and looks so good in a suit. One friend almost says “even for a…” and stops himself. No qualifications needed – she just looks damn good.  (For a what? How would he describe her, had he continued? I don’t know.)

This is my favorite thing about gender play. How for those of us who consciously choose it each morning, we get to make it shine. Sometimes it takes some more finessing, because it’s hard to find that space in between what is limiting about compulsory, normative, gender expression and what’s liberatory about chosen, taken on, bringing-out-your-full-self gender expression. But when our double windsors are neatened and we pull on that impossible-to-find-but finally-perfectly-fitting-suit-with-narrow-shoulders-and-just-short-enough-sleeves; when we slip into and buckle the fabulous heels that we wear not because we need to but because we stand taller knowing how great our calves look, when we slide on mascara so our lashes go on to eternity and brush on our blush not because there is something wrong with our faces, but because we like the aesthetics of decoration – in that moment, our genders shine. They shine not because we’ve managed to “successfully” fit ourselves into someone’s box, or because we’ve done it “perfectly”, but because we’ve managed to mold and form those boxes into fabulously, imperfectly sleek suits that flatter (or hide) our favorite curves and edges – because we can be more ourselves for the tools at our disposal, rather than less for rules imposed on us.

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Taking up [too much] space

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And so it begins. I’ve finally convinced myself to jump back into blogging. Without an attempt or pretext of anonymity, which feels both terrifying and liberating. I will probably be writing about things like Judaism, queerness, gender, liberation, praxis, and the gets-you-stuck-in-the-muck-day-to-day-stickiness that is sort of just how life happens.

First and foremost: I’m a radical queer Jewish femme.

Other things to know about me: I’m a community organizer. I care about collectivity and interdependence. I care about relationships and communities, and the obligations to one another found therein. I care about building collective power, and using it strategically to affect lasting change. I care about dismantling hierarchies. I care about moving toward liberation, rather than simply away from oppression. I care about making the world a better, safer place, a place where every single one of us can bring our most full version of ourselves; a place where we can thrive.

 

Also, I really liked being in this place:
bright orange sunset in nova scotia