Whole Self Movement

Brook Wilensky-Lanford interviews Rabbi Becky Silverstein for Guernica Magazine

The transgender rabbi on religious rituals, gender fluidity, and the language of LGBTQ inclusion.

The first thing you learn about Rabbi Becky Silverstein is that despite the “Becky,” he uses male pronouns. Upon meeting him, you might see what he calls “a female-bodied person” wearing clothing typically associated with men: jackets, slacks, a snazzy tie. That Becky is a “he” is the occasion for a small instant of cognitive dissonance. For Rabbi Silverstein, it’s appropriate that this moment is generated first in language, as that’s how his own process of identifying as a genderqueer person began, during conversations with mentors at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.

For Silverstein, it’s also fitting that gender identity begins with semantics, because the work of a rabbi is one of active engagement with the rich canon of Jewish texts. The Torah, as well as the countless scholarly commentaries about it, wrestles deeply with the problems of language. A rabbi must embrace such debate, parsing differences in meaning between Hebrew and English, as well as between ancient cultural conceptions and modern ideas. In Silverstein’s view, conversation is a crucial tool for contemporary American Judaism to fully recognize, understand, and welcome transgender Jews into the community, starting with the same talks the nation is having about gay and transgender rights, as well as women’s equality. All of these battles for inclusion, he argues in the interview that follows, are linked: “Misogyny is at the root of all homophobia and transphobia. It’s no surprise that a movement that still struggles with the place of women would also struggle with the place of LGBTQ-identified folks.”

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Duo Benches Today’s Bentsher

A new egalitarian, LGBT-friendly version of the little post-meal book

By Brigit Katz for Tablet Magazine

 David Zvi Kalman and Joshua Schwartz are on a mission to restore a little booklet to its former glory. When bentshers, small scale pamphlets containing the Hebrew Grace After Meals, were first printed 500 years ago, they were large volumes lovingly adorned with woodcuts, engravings, and intricate drawings. Today, they have mostly been reduced to flimsy little things doled out as party favors at Jewish weddings.

“Jewish weddings are the worst thing to ever happen to bentshers!” according to Kalman. “Because bentshers are now mass-produced, there’s a push to make them smaller, and a push to make them cheaper. They’ve become much more utilitarian texts, and much less an object of beauty.”

At the end of October, Kalman and Schwartz—doctoral students at Penn and NYU, respectively—will release the second edition of Seder Oneg Shabbos, a visually arresting, meticulously designed bentsher that harks back to an earlier time in Jewish history. The book also contains a modern twist: “egalitarian and queer-inclusive language.”

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Finding LGBT pride in Chanukah

by Ryan Torok for JewishJournal.com

 Fifteen years ago, Stephen Sass and his husband, Steven Hochstadt, consecrated their commitment to each other during a religious marriage ceremony that took place during Chanukah. The timing was intentional.

“Chanukah has always resonated deeply for me as a Jew and as a gay man, since it commemorates one of the earliest fights for freedom of conscience, and celebrates the right to be different and to express one’s individual and communal identity as a member of a minority group within larger society,” Sass said.

The holiday of Chanukah celebrates the Maccabees’ military victory over the Seleucid rulers of Judea during the second century B.C.E. It also commemorates the miracle that occurred when the Jews rededicated their Temple, and a vessel of consecrated oil — enough for only one day — somehow lasted eight.

Perhaps less known are the ways that the holiday — with its themes of pride, identity and fighting for your right to be who you are — has connected with the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community. On Nov. 18 and 19, the New York-based transdenominational Big Tent Judaism/Jewish Outreach Institute held classes locally that, among other things, highlighted the connections between Chanukah and the LGBT story.

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Stories for Love

A blog for the global LGBTQIA+ community
 

“I was born female and raised as a girl. My Jewish history is kind of complicated, but from the age of six on, I grew up in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community. That community is extremely binary. You are either a boy or a girl, and you sit in your designated place at synagogue, school, or camp. So I grew up in a very segregated community where I was always with the girls. I felt from a very young age that I should have been a boy, and wished I was a boy. I didn’t know that it was even a possibility because I was very sheltered from the media; though back then there wasn’t much in the media anyway about LGBT at all. When I was 21, I met a transgender person for the first time. He was actually also a Jew. Someone told me “that person used to be a girl,” and my mind was blown. I realized that I would be transgender if I wasn’t orthodox. I really believed that god doesn’t make mistakes, and this must be the thing I have to work through and force myself through in my life. That was the message I was always given growing up. I went to therapy, and my therapist who was an orthodox Jew encouraged me to get manicures on a weekly basis and we did a lot of inner-child work and talked about the possibility of sexual abuse. All these things are okay, but at the end of the day it didn’t change the fact that I had gender dysphoria and felt uncomfortable in the gender I was assigned at birth. Between the ages of 20 and 25 I essentially came out as bisexual, and was perceived to be a lesbian because I looked really masculine. I was then out for a little while as gender queer, and then finally came out to myself as transgender in 2007. I began the process of transitioning that summer, and have been living happily ever after even since.”

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Two Hanukkah Children’s Books for the Jewish LGBT Community

From Cheril N. Clarke's Blog


Chances are if you’re a gay or lesbian Jewish couple, you will be hard-pressed to find books that reflect your family—especially children’s stories and young adult fiction. You may find two or three titles if you’re lucky, but certainly not much more. This holiday season LGBT publisher My Family! is introducing two new history-making books that will accelerate the process of building a virtuous library (and legacy) for Jewish LGBT families.

The first of the two books being released is “The Wonderful Adventures of Benjamin and Solomon,” a tale of two scholars who get more adventure on one snowy night than they could dream of. Set in medieval Europe, this fairytale is penned by new author, Elena Yakubsfeld of Greenwich, CT. This book is for young adults.

“Benjamin and Solomon are not just students,” says publisher Cheril Bey-Clarke. “They are two young men whose intimate love for each other is as strong as any other couple. On their quest to recover a stolen prayer they trek through a magical forest, encounter dragons and confront angry knights in a towering castle. They are essentially gay, Jewish heroes and quite frankly there is no other story like this. We’re thrilled to work with the author to bring it to the community!” Accented with lively illustrations and playful dialog, this title explores Jewish history, devotion to God, and non-traditional ideas of family.

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