I am honored and grateful for to have been invited to speak at Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s Building Bridges virtual speaker series on the theme of L’dor V’dor: From Generation to Generation. I hope you will join me on Sunday, March 3rd at 3PM Atlantic (3:30 PM NFLD/2PM Eastern/11 AM Pacific Time), on “Our Evolving Understanding of G!d and Gender“. I look forward to sharing my own evolving thoughts on this matter. You can register here for this free Zoom lecture.. A recording of the talk will be provided to all who register.
This talk is sponsored by Kolot Mayim Reform Temple which is located on the traditional territories of the Lkwungen peoples (colonial name: Victoria BC) and co-sponsored with the Reform Jewish Community of Atlantic Canada: Decolonizing Judaism in Mi’kma’ki and Beyond. The Building Bridges Education Program is supported by the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island, which are the traditional territories of the Lkwungen, that traditionally and still to-date unites the Esquimalt and Songhees peoples as one family. My prayer is that this talk will bring healing and unity to us all…
It was almost two years ago that I gave my first rabbinic sermon – as myself. When I say that, I mean: not in drag, by which I mean, the fake/feminine rabbinic uniform that I felt forced to wear for the twenty-plus years that I served as a rabbi in synagogues across the United States (south of the colonial border) where SOGIECE efforts/queer hate are rampant ad only escalating. It took moving North of the colonial border in 2020 (where SOGIECE/sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts/conversion “therapy” practices are illegal) to finally feel safe enough to begin to do what I had prayed to do since I was three years old. The experience was liberating in ways that unleashed my first moment of looking at myself and recognizing myself, after a lifetime of hiding/being forced to hide my true self/who I was created to be. To watch the sermon that I delivered, click here and to watch a brief clip, click here.
It was the first time that I felt a sense of Joy and Hope that perhaps it was possible for me to be me. It was also the first time that I felt what is known clinically as “gender euphoria” which is the Joy at being seen for who one actually is, instead of who society wants one to be. I don’t yet fully know how to explain, to someone who is cis-gendered, the profoundly liberating and healing Joy that comes with not being misgendered- after a lifetime of being seen as someone who is “not me”. Until one has lived in each other’s shoes, we don’t know what it is like to be them, despite the fact that the world is constantly seeking to impose their assumptions or values on others. This is why cis-gendered people should not make decisions about our rights or ability to access health care. Gender euphoria is generally the most accurate clinical assessment that one is needing gender-affirming support, because, cis-gendered people, having someone use a different pronoun for them tends to not generally produce the deep welling happiness that it can be for those of us who have lived with gender dysphoria our whole lives.
Increasingly, the medical world has been using euphoria as a more effective diagnostic criteria than dysphoria. Gender dysphoria reflects a state of unhappiness that is often pretty easy to blame on the many horrible problems in this world, so it is hard to know what the root cause of the despair might be. But euphoria does not happen by accident: it is pretty easy to pinpoint the source of the Joy. With each experience of feeling grounded in one’s true self/Self, the sparks of Joy shine brighter and brighter. Despite all that is horrible in this world, the profound euphoria of being authentic and real is so shockingly liberating that I am still in shock/awe. After a lifetime of dissociating/trying to disconnect from a body that did not match what my brain and chromosomes had known was true for almost my whole life.
This is why gender change efforts are so dangerous: the damage happens early. Unlike sexuality, gender identity develops early. I have known that I was transgender (but without the word or concept) since I was three years old, and had to line up to go to the bathrooms, and my preschool teacher told me I was in the wrong line. Without education and understanding, all I knew was that there was something wrong with me: a fact that got much worse by the time I hit my teenage years. So the dysphoria was rampant and eventually led to despair that became life-threatening. Like someone who has spent years needing glasses but not realizing how poor their vision was, gender euphoria feels like suddenly seeing clearly and feeling grounded in one’s self/Self in a way that is revelatory.
Indeed, this is not true just for gender-diverse folk, but Joy tends to be healing for many people in different ways. It is not just healing for individuals, but also for the world more broadly, because being happy can lead to “sympathetic joy” and the desire for others to be happy too: it is at the root of compassion. It has been said: “misery loves company”. When we are burnt out or miserable, there is strange comfort in not being the only one unhappy. In theory, that ought to inspire us to work collaboratively to make things better, but too often, we turn on ourselves, each other and the larger world. Both happiness and unhappiness can unleash cycles where each feeling grows. Our planet needs to choose happiness desperately, because there is so much trauma and grief in this world. Research increasingly shows that being true to who we are, and learning to like one’s self are two important ways that everyone can become happier and healthier.
In my sermon above, I talk about how “queering is redeeming”. Because when one is in alignment with one’s self (not at war with one’s self), then everything is different. It is like night and day. It takes time to slowly excavate and heal from the overt and covert change efforts of this world, but the Joy is like fuel that keeps making it easier and more rewarding. Despite a world that is at war and deeply traumatizing, the profound Joy and contentment that I feel, finally at home within myself, is unlike anything I ever really knew was possible. It is amazing how, actually feeling alive and not disconnected with one’s self can radically and rapidly transform one’s desire to live. With each step toward excavating my true self and becoming me, I felt more and more alive… This continues to be increasingly true with every passing day.
Despite my profound horror at everything wrong in this world (I will save that for another post), I have begun to understand that “Joy is Resistance”. Audre Lorde taught: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”. If the goal of those who want to colonize is to destroy, dominate and exploit, the each act of Joy is a sacred affirmation that colonization will not win. These colonial powers that seek to extinguish our flame are illegitimate and idolatrous: we were each created in the Divine Image. Joy is the fuel of Hope that keeps our Ner Tamid (Eternal Light/the Sacred Spark of Potential planted within each of us) shining brightly. Everyone was created with their own special gifts and purposes, and our task in life is to learn how to become true to that, by relinquishing our need to please and hide. While early childhood trauma teaches many of us how to have low self-esteem for all sorts of reasons, Joy is liberatory and redemptive. It is, as Rebbe Nachman taught: medicine for the soul.
According to Jewish tradition, we are in the middle of the two month long “season of Joy” which occurs during the first and second month of Adar (Hebrew name for the month we are in now). There is a “double month” during Jewish leap years which happen periodically, including right now. Today, in the Gregorian (colonial) calendar, that is aligned with the birth of Jesus, we are reminded that it is also a leap year. For example, we just celebrate the Bahai festival of Joy Ayyam-i-Ha which speaks about the importance of Joy in the spiritual journey, which is also something that The alignment of the calendars only happens periodically, and this year many other religions’ calendars also seek to bring us into alignment with one another. The universe wants us to be happy, right now: so what are we going to do, today, to make this intention a reality? It might seem wrong to choose Joy, in the midst of war and sadness, but the counter-intuitive truth is that joy gives us a reason to live, which in turn, gives us the courage and resilience to seek out a better life for ourselves and those around us.
Alignment, be it of the calendar or otherwise, can help us be more grounded, and indeed, the Universe is trying to send us messages, even if some of us are too traumatized or distracted or indoctrinated or dissociated or burned out to recognize them. But I am starting to understand that the Universe does want us to be happy… To learn more about the Bahai teachings about happiness: click here. To listen to the Bahai song that first helped me to understand that we were created to learn how to find Joy in this broken world, if only we could give ourselves permission to rejoice: click here. While Judaism’s thousands of years of colonial trauma at the hands of Christianity and its crusades and Holocaust have made it difficult for most of us to feel happy about anything, the great medieval mystical teacher, Rabbi Nachman of Bretzlav taught in his famous book on “tikkun” (healing) that joy is the medicine of the soul. And, certainly, this has been my life experience of seeking out euphoria as the methodology by which I excavated myself from my closet and learned to feel and rejoice.
And so, two years after I first felt a spark of gender euphoria, I now feel Joy burning bright, deep in my hearts and soul. I am therefore super excited to share more about some of what I have learned and unlearned, regarding my reflections on Judaism’s evolving understanding of G!d and Judaism. I pray that the Joy and clarity that is slowly growing in some parts of the world (like where I live in beautiful and unceded Unama’ki (colonially known as Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada). As the sun rises from this most eastern tip of the continent that the Indigenous people of this land call Turtle Island, so too may this growing Light shine brightly upon us all… that more of my queer family can experience the life-saving Joy that comes with gender affirmation.
In case you did not click on that last link yet, about how G!d wants us all to rejoice (especially during this Hebrew month of Adar), I am sharing this happy song once again. And if you did, I bet you will want to click on it again, because it is just a happy song, and these days, the soul needs fragments of Joy to illumine an ever darkening and violent world. This joy is not meant to cause us to not pay attention to what is happening, but rather to give us the courage, hope and resilience to keep fighting for life. Joy is like oxygen for the soul, it is the fuel that makes us want to keep moving forward. And so, I share this again, and hope to see you all on Sunday!
Emerging Torah as Rabbi Nachshon emerges 