Today is both Transgender Day of Visibility and also Easter Sunday. As a Jew, Easter Sunday is not a religious holiday that ought to impact me, but not one Easter has passed in my entire life that I have not been impacted by it in some way. So it is for all non-Christian minorities in countries where Christianity dominates, and in particular in the United States, where is influence is everywhere. It is the ultimate colonial holiday and its ubiquity reflects the ways in which we continue to live in a Christian world, aligned with Christian holidays and values, and organized according to a Christian calendar.
Easter Memories in the “Bible Belt”
I recall living in Kentucky, and each year having to talk to public school teachers as to why reenacting the “Passion Play” was not a safe or appropriate activity. Jewish students would get recruited by their evangelical classmates who were encouraged to bring them so that they could watch the story of how Jews killed Jesus (not historically accurate/the non-Jewish colonial power against which he railed was to blame). Jewish children would then get proselytized to accept Jesus and atone for their sins. Needless to say, this caused great psychological harm and spiritual distress to many.
Conversionary/colonizing practices are everywhere and they are designed to make us feel badly about ourselves. The belief that we are inherently sinners goes against everything Judaism teaches. We are each created in the Divine Image and deserving of the same rights and protections. The Bible is clear and this was Jesus’ message. Sadly, religion has been weaponized and it was his anger at its hypocrisy that led to his persecution at the hands of those who sides with the Greco-Roman Empire and its colonizing ways. For more about “who killed Jesus”, please click here.
A Jewish understanding of Jesus
I realize that it is important, when a rabbi is talking about Jesus, to explain a few things that may not be understood in a world where evangelical Christianity funds missionary (conversionary) groups like “Jews for Jesus”. Jews do not believe that Jesus is Christ and for more about what Judaism teaches about him, please click here. The word “Christ” comes, not from the Hebrew, but from the Greek, and with it, a whole set of associations that reflect a very different set of assumptions, that are not Jewish. Like so much of conversionary/evangelizing/colonizing strategies, the loss of the original language enables the ability to supplant the original meaning of the word with new words. For more on this, from a Jewish perspective, click here.
Fundamentally, the word “messiah” in Hebrew means “anointed one” and refers to the ritual of anointing that was common to the establishment of kingship in ancient biblical Israel, which is a topic unto itself. It refers to a person, not a deity. It is considered contrary to Jewish thinking to assert that one person is incarnating G!d or that only one person is the child of G!d. From a Jewish perspective, everyone has a spark of G!d’s divinity implanted in them (called “Shechinah” or the Female Indwelling Spirit) that breathes Life into each of us. We are each G!d’s children: what is needed is for us to awaken to these truths and begin to act like it.
In Judaism, there is this teaching that each person is a potential messiah. There are actually multiple teachings about the messiah that can be read further here. Of all the diversity of ways of being Jewish, the one unifying belief is that the messiah has not yet arrived, because otherwise there would be peace. Since there is no peace, we continue to await the messiah. Many teachings describe this in more detail, but there is an idea of the “lamed vavnicks” or the hidden righteous ones, who exist in every generation, and teach words of wisdom that, IF we ALL followed them, would lead us to a time of global messianic redemption. The idea that everyone might possibly be a “hidden messiah” is also a recipe for redemption: if we treated each person as if they had something powerful and sacred to teach, then we would perhaps have a world filled with peace and G!d’s Presence shining brightly everywhere and in everyone.
Reform Judaism has further adapted this teaching to explain that we await, not for a person, but rather for a messianic era, to which we all must contribute. While this is beautiful, it loses the deeper mystical teachings of the hidden ones. I believe that the marginalized and voiceless are the ones to whom we should be looking in order to understand the missing pieces that are lacking in our current approaches to world peace. The more we can see beyond what we consciously know is true, the more likely we are to reach a more comprehensive understanding that can lead us past what has been done, to doing something different…. which is what can lead us to a different outcome.
Ultimately, the vision for global healing and redemption is not new. Every religious teacher, Jesus included, tried to translate these enduring principles into new words. I used concepts like restorative justice and decolonizing healing, because they are newer terms that reflect a new way of doing things that have not (yet) been coopted to maintain the status quo, instead of destabilizing it in order to achieve the kind of Jubilee liberation that the Bible describes and that our world desperately needs. It would take turning everything upside down for the messianic promise and biblical prophecies to come true: the lion and lamb lying down together and the beating of the sword into ploughshares. Interpreting this literally is not the enduring wish, but the idea of war ending and enemies coming together: this remains my daily prayer.
Jesus: the first Reform Rabbi?
Of course, Christianity has a different way of reconciling the teaching that Jesus is the messiah and that the world is not yet at peace, as they pray for Jesus’ return. Like every religious difference, they are just like different languages and world views seeking to express the inexplicable. It has been said that Jesus was “the most influential rabbi in history”. I like to think of Jesus as the world’s first Reform rabbi and chaplain-social worker. Most humans tend to read themselves into the stories they read, so it is not surprising I suppose. He spoke out against the injustices of his time, advocating for the marginalized and excluded. He lived during a time of significant transition, growing inequality and urbanization: the biblical practices of the ancient Temple sacrificial system no longer made sense when people lived in cities and did not have first fruits or flocks from which to offer their gratitude for their harvest. The money changers of his era are not very different from some of the fiscal practices of many organized religious institutions of our day. People do not practice what they preach in our day either, and those who speak truth to power are often silenced.
It is tragic to me how deeply mistranslated and misinterpreted are his messages, which were fundamentally, reaffirming the spirit of the Torah (Love your neighbor as yourself) and translating them for a new era (that also means displaced newcomers like the Samaritans/those who lived in Samaria aka the West Bank). On this Easter, which happens to also be Transgender Day of Visibility, I reflect upon this human tendency to take the most powerfully redemptive insights and coopt them for personal gain and population control.
Sadly, this is true for every world religion: for every inspiring sacred scripture there are people who will interpret it in ways that are contrary to what I believe was its intent. In many ways, studying religion requires an ability to think critically and interpret the original intent to the context within which it was first articulated, and then apply these insights to our own way, doing so in such a way as to align with our own deep ways of knowing and being. This is the essence of progressive stances of all faiths: but it is not new. The early rabbis developed complex and nuanced ways of interpreting biblical texts so that they could continue to evolve with them- informing their spiritual quest without shackling it.
I have written previously about this phenomenon and it remains deeply relevant. For those of us with marginalized identities we may already be used to doing this. Phenomena like “code switching” hone this skill for many of us. Mi’kmaq Elder Albert Marshall speaks about Etuaptmumk (two-eyed seeing) as a way of describing this adaptive response. It is never either/or, but rather healing truths come when we can put the pieces together to discern the whole. Many of us have multiple intersectional lenses that can sometimes lead to seemingly contradictory stances, but our task is to journey from the broken to the whole. Every religious tradition has their own version of teaching related to this, but for Jews, we call it “tikkun olam” (the healing of the world). We understand that the broken imperfection of this world, wherever we find it, is our Call to do what we understand needs to be done to bring it to completion and healing wholeness.
Religious Reflections on Transgender Day of Visibility
It has been so heartwarming to be part of the growing Queer Interfaith Coalition that has been organizing to reclaim the religious voice that has been weaponized over the centuries. Dozens upon dozens of religious traditions, some as individual clergy, some as faith communities and even entire denominations have joined forces to assert that our respective religious traditions call upon us to advocate for the human rights of every person. Fighting queerphobia is a sacred mandate so we can speaking out against hatred and misinformation, in order to save lives. Today, clergy across the Canada posted on their social media pages why Transgender Day of Visibility is an important time to be public, intentional and explicit in their welcome and embrace of transgender, intersex, nonbinary, agender and gender-diverse people. Those of Christian denominations posted about why Easter’s message of the resurrection of Jesus inspires them to advocate for the sanctification of every life.
For those of us who have a literal interpretation of ancient sacred texts, 2SLGBTQIA+ rights may seem to be out of alignment with their (mis)reading of the biblical text. Isolating verses and mistranslations can lead to very dissonant outcomes. Ultimately, every religion asserts that the essence of our inherited faith comes to teach us one thing: the “golden rule”. Loving our neighbor as ourselves is a common thread that runs through every religion. Any religious teaching that does not lead to Love for every person is missing important information that can lead to problematic misinterpretations. The biblical text, and my own religious training, have taught me to call such doctrines: idolatry.
No less than in Jesus’ day, many organized religious communal voices are more invested in maintaining the status quo and supporting those in power than in aligning their practices with the deeply radical principles that can lead to the upheaval of the current world order in order to enable the messianic redemption for which we all pray, but toward which few of us actively labor. Intersectional bias means that we often fail to see the Divinity that is implanted in each of us, and given the current weaponization of gender and sexuality in all religions, in different ways, and the continued rates of gender-based violence and gender-related injustices in our world impacts each of us in unique ways. Gender and sexuality have been weaponized as a colonial strategy to oppress us, using sexual violence through war and other practices to ensure intergenerational trauma. For more on this dynamic, please read this.
Over two thousand years ago, the Talmud described eight genders. Many other Indigenous communities have a similar understanding of gender-diversity which also aligns with the natural world (animals and plants etc). It is colonization that sought to transform Jesus’ message and weaponize it: while it is pervasive and most people don’t know that gender has been colonized (also evident in the rampant gender violence and inequity). Most of us only know what we have been taught: this is not anything to feel badly about.
The question is: what do we do when our lived experiences do not align with what we were taught? Do we choose people or doctrine? This is not just an abstract philosophical debate, but one with lifesaving or lethal implications. The deeper meaning of the Jewish idea of the thirty six hidden messianic teachers (who *according to some* can be of any religion) is the idea that each of us has our purpose and needs to do our part, because we are part of something much larger than ourselves. Rather than give up, we have to do what we can to add what we can to the larger whole, and to look to one another with reverence and a desire to learn. Fundamentally, we are called, over and over, to choose people over doctrine. This is what can lead us to peace- for everyone.
There is no such thing as peace for only a few: we must want for everyone what we want for ourselves. Love your neighbor as yourself: all the world religions teach a variation of this. Anything else is missing the point, as beautifully articulated recently in Michael Moore’s plea to Pope Francis, as part of his own efforts to do what he can to make this world better. Sadly, while we all say we believe this, our words and actions still do not align. Walking the talk and practicing what we preach: this is hard. But more and more, thanks to therapy and self-work, more and more of us are understanding that “we can do hard things”. And so, it is more important than ever to continue to work toward our collective healing and the advocacy of the rights of the most vulnerable and voiceless: for indeed, their voices contain the seeds of peace and redemption for our whole world.
Crucifixion(s)
The co-occurrence of Transgender Day of Visibility and Easter Sunday is an important opportunity to reflect upon these seeming inconsistencies, and to choose compassion as our organizing principle. As so many of us across the world continue to deal with the consequences of current evangelizing interpretations of Christianity, the ways in which Jesus’ crucifixion continues to haunt us all requires some reflection.
Many of us were born in the intergenerational trauma that hides in the shadows of the cross, and are held hostage by a misinterpretation of his message that chooses narrow judgmentalism instead of expansive compassion and empathy. Perhaps it was survivor guilt from his disciples that caused them to focus upon the death rather than the recognition that all religions seek to teach: we are spiritual beings having a temporary human/physical experience. Whatever helps us make this world a better and kinder place is what we are supposed to do. It does not need to be complicated.
Decolonizing theoretical frameworks understand that complications are strategies of dissimulation and distraction. But the Christian message of Spirit triumphing over the body and death is a deeper Wisdom that almost every religion shares. The Hebrew Bible further talks about “Shechinah” as the female indwelling Holy Spirit that is inside of everyone. It is so sad that the gender-based hate that is rampant in this world means that people do not understand that the biblical text is describing a level of gender fluidity for Jesus, and indeed for each of us, that our world of “toxic masculinity” is scared to acknowledge. This gender fluidity is also reflected in the Talmudic references to eight genders of Jesus.
Paul and Constantine
Scholars note that Paul is responsible for the misogyny, disavowed of the flesh and antisemitic sentiments that were amplified in Constantine’s colonial adaptation of Jesus’ message. For more on this topic, please click here. I often wonder if Paul had had some therapy, perhaps he might have understood that he had some unresolved issues of his own that he was projecting onto others.
This reflection on Paul is, of course, really a reflection on myself. Psychodynamic theory explains that most of our statements about others are really reflections about ourselves and our unconscious. If more queerphobic people understood that their hatred and prejudice tells the rest of us how unresolved their own stuff is, perhaps people would follow in Jesus’ footsteps instead of Paul or Constantine…
Sadly, colonial trauma have created a crusading perspective that has evangelical/conversionary consequences. Only this can explain the ways that messages of Love, hope, unity, compassion and peace can be reinterpreted to become the weapons of destruction that are responsible for so many adverse religious experiences and rampant queerphobia/judgmentalism.
My own journey
But I understand how this happens because I have had my own jagged trajectory to coming out. I knew when I was a toddler that I did not identify as female, causing a preschool teacher to try to help me understand and a variety of other conversionary incidents until I did begin to come out of the closet. Sadly, my time in seminary preceded its current openness to gender-diversity, as it remains, to this day, rather reflective of American/evangelical tendencies. And so, I consciously decided to go back in the closet to be ordained and to serve G!d. This led me to worse conversionary practices as I lived in the Bible belt.
Interrupted gender transitions are sometimes heralded as success, and terms like “de-transition” are used to describe this phenomena. Scholars and those of us with lived experience explain that in fact, such interruptions are caused due to the massive transphobic factors that make it so difficult to come out. While it looked like I had successfully “de-transitioned”, in reality, I had succumbed to conversionary/transphobic practices and was suffering under a mask of femininity that made me want to dissociate from myself to tolerate being in the wrong body and being misgendered constantly. I did not feel safe or supported to transition in a world where queerphobia was rampant and where I did not have equal rights (the Supreme Court of the USA only legalized gay marriage a few years ago, and gender equity remains a distant dream). My “interrupted gender transition” meant that I was unable to be true to myself, which led to a whole host of other problems. Sadly, repression/oppression will always lead to complicated problems. For myself, there were unconscious gaps in my own thinking that led me to make decisions that did not reflect my values. I also began to suffocate in my gender closet of shame and oppression, old traumas amplifying my dissociative trauma, leading to suicidal ideation.
It took the suicide of one of my former congregants, who identified as transgender, and my own return to Canada (which, while colonial, is abundantly more trans-affirming and inclusive) for me to finally come out of the closet. While I began tip-toing out of the closet several years ago, such partial emergence was not adequate. I needed ample oxygen after a lifetime of repression, and in particular, I needed to be liberated from being in the wrong body. Dissociation from one’s body means dissociation from one’s gut instincts and the feelings that make life worth living. And, indeed, life did not feel worth living, but rather a burden: no less than so many people who misinterpret Jesus’ message seem to feel.
The triumph of the Spirit
From what I have studied and from my years of learning from my Christian colleagues, I understand the deeper message of Easter is the resurrection: the triumph of the spirit over death. The crucifixion was supposed to represent- not a template for how to treat the marginalized, but rather an end to all marginalization. Sadly, the exact opposite has happened more often than not, in history and even in our own day. This is especially true for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, perhaps because Jesus’ own gender fluidity has been suppressed. Basic psychodynamic principles assert that anything that is repressed will come out through unconscious mechanisms. The contemporary church’s queerphobic fixation reflects the ways that many people’s unresolved gender and sexual issues continue to haunt us all. This reflects the message of the scapegoat, which is described in the book of Leviticus, but which has earlier antecedents, including the story of Abraham and Isaac.
Father Richard Rohr said it beautifully when he stated: “The central message of Jesus on love of enemies, forgiveness, and care for those at the bottom was supposed to make scapegoating virtually impossible and unthinkable. Many Christians, with utter irony, worshipped Jesus the Scapegoat on Sundays and, on the other six days of the week, made scapegoats of Jews, Muslims, other Christian denominations, heretics, sinners, pagans, the poor, and almost anybody who was not like themselves. […] Scapegoating depends upon a rather sophisticated, but easily learned, ability to compartmentalize, to separate, to divide the world into the pure and the impure. […] It gives us a sense of order, control, and superiority”.
It seems especially powerful for Transgender Day of Visibility to fall on the same day as Easter. Both are opportunities to assert the triumph of the Spirit over the body, and the ways in which compassion must replace judgment if we are to ensure redemption. So many people continue to suffer in repressive/oppressive closets of conversionary trauma. The amplification of hate and misinformation, in the name of someone who sought to preach Love, is tragic. Sadly, this is not unique to Christianity: all of us humans are wounded by intergenerational trauma and crusading legacies. The only question is if we can recognize this and grapple with it honestly, or if we will react defensively and point our fingers.
Transgender Liberation: from death unto Life
This week has been especially important to me, in terms of my own sense of liberation. It has been one year since I (finally) decided to exit my own gender closet, and six months since I had my gender-affirming (=lifesaving) surgery, I am constantly stunned at how truly redemptive this decision was. It literally feels like I have been reborn. I think that this true for everyone who finds the courage to choose life and become themselves in the face of total rejection and condemnation. It is incredibly hard to live authentically and messily in a world that worships perfection and false binary constructs, but the reward is a sense of Joy and aliveness that I did not know was possible. It literally feels like putting on glasses after a lifetime of not seeing, but not understanding how much I was missing, because I was stopped from becoming myself when I was a toddler. I felt almost dead for so long that I did not even understand what it meant to truly feel alive and want to live. The liberation that comes with finally being true to one’s self is completely indescribable to one who does not know what it is like to live in the closet.
Regardless of what one represses about one’s self, psychologists tend to agree that this act of self-betrayal forms the basis of the election of the “false self” that leads to many of our contemporary mental health challenges. The anxiety that comes from not being able to trust one’s own instincts ensures that we are easy to manipulate. This is the way that colonization functions: our unstable sense of self then relies upon external messages for reinforcement and self-esteem. Capitalism then further reinforces this by trying to sell us advertising so we purchase products we don’t really need.
But for those of us who are pushed to the brink, no less than those who have experienced near death experiences, we have come to understand the true impermanence of these time-bound and external factors. Ultimately, there is only one truth: it is not the body and it is not this world… it is the triumph of the Spirit. Those people who have rejected me because they were attached to a body that I knew was not me or who disapprove of my choosing not to kill myself: they never knew me or cared for me. I now realize that I never should have attached importance to what others thought: while I dealt with condemnation as someone queer and Jewish, the level of hatred and social judgment involved in coming out of a gender closet is indescribable. Suddenly seeing is powerful: there is both grief and liberation… and at the end of this tumultuous year, I can affirm that everything is becoming infinitely more clear than I knew was possible.
One year ago I chose to come out of the closet. One year ago I chose to not die. One year ago I chose to stop asphyxiating in a gender closet of shame and fear. If I thought coming out as queer was hard, the gender closet is indescribably harder but also even more amazing because the gender identity journey is a much earlier identity: we learn who we are far before we figure out who we are attracted to… and if we are stopped from becoming ourselves early, the rest of our life we will feel “wrong”. Thus, the healing that I have had to undertake this year is more profound than I ever anticipated.
Six months ago, I had the surgery for which I began praying when I was three years old. And here I am… despite profound grief over a world filled with war and injustice, the blessing of not feeling estranged from my body/my self/my Self is a Joy that is so very profoundly liberating, I am still in awe at how healing it is…
Joy and Redemption
Redemption. Salvation. Euphoria. Joy. A desire to live and a sense of being alive that I did not know was possible. I have learned that Life is something you have to choose for yourself. Thus saith the Bible (Genesis): You have to “lech lecha” as Abraham did: “go to yourself”. And so I did… like him… in search of blessings and indeed, the blessings have been overwhelming. To suddenly see yourself in the mirror and recognize yourself: this was an experience I only began to feel in December. But the Joy: this is the secret to healing I think: follow your Joy. No matter what. And let others find their Joy. This is everything.
And in the words of Rebbe Nachman (song below): v’ha’ikar- the most important thing is to not be afraid. Our whole world is just a very narrow bridge… let’s make our time here together as pleasant as possible. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Why would we waste our time here with fear, shame or hate? Let people be who they were created to be… let them love who they love.. let them live and help them to live… help them to want to live… be kind and choose Joy. Let everyone find their Joy so long as they don’t hurt anyone: let people define that for themselves. That is it. The whole Torah on one foot.
All I know is that choosing Joy has been lifesaving and redemptively healing. I am grateful for the blessings that came with choosing Life gender-affirming care is lifesaving care. This is my truth. I pray that everyone who is born “wired like me” is given the opportunity to become who they were created to become. And I pray that everyone can be liberated from the colonial fears of this world that seek to keep us trapped in closets of repression and judgment.
No one should be forced to go through life trying to “make the best out of a bad situation” if there are better alternatives. Whether it is a job or a relationship or an identity: life is short and fear is temporary. What matters is simply this: will we make this world better than we left it? If we are unhappy, we will leave a legacy of unhappiness. If we are joyful, there is a much higher chance that the world will be a happier place too.
As Rebbe Nachman taught: this world is just a “gesher” (a bridge): the most important thing is to not be afraid. Fear closes us off and makes us rigid, eventually cutting off our oxygen supply from the One who is Breath and Life. We are spiritual beings having a human experience, and whatever bodily form it takes for us to be able to journey through life in a way that ensures that we can love our neighbor as ourself… which is to say, that we can love ourself so we can love our neighbor… then this is what I understand to be our sacred obligation. From Eternity to Eternity: we are placed here to learn, to heal and to live in such a way that Love becomes visible (incarnate as my Christian siblings might say). Where there is Love and Joy, Blessings will abound.
May this Easter be blessed for all who celebrate, and may this Transgender Day of Visibility be the beginning of an understanding of what our respective faith traditions are calling us to do: may we do all that we can to ensure a complete healing redemption for every living being and our planet more broadly… May Spirit triumph and Eternal Life shine through each of us…
Emerging Torah as Rabbi Nachshon emerges 