For a long time I have wrestled with my identity as a “trans rabbi.” In a sense, the case is very clear and unambiguous — I am a rabbi, and I am a transgender woman, no question about that. So why do I sometimes instinctively hesitate for a moment before describing myself as a “trans rabbi?” I suppose it is because I don’t feel like these two things really have anything to do with one another. Certainly I make an effort to publicize my belief that transgender people should be enthusiastically included in Jewish spaces, and in my teaching I like to hold up examples of gender diversity in our tradition, but I feel like this would be true whether I were trans or not. I don’t teach these things because I am trans, I teach them because they are right. 

The thing about being trans that cisgender folks sometimes seem to have trouble understanding is that most of us don’t actually spend a lot of our time thinking about being trans. This is because, despite what the anti-trans bigots out there would like you to believe, being transgender isn’t an ideology, it’s just something we are — like being tall or short, left handed or right handed, preferring chocolate ice cream or lemon sorbet. I don’t think about my preference for lemon sorbet unless I happen to be ordering dessert, and I don’t usually think about my gender much unless someone else is making trouble about it. 

Which brings me to the real issue at hand: Lately I, like many other trans people, have been thinking a lot more than usual about being trans. It isn’t because I want to — I would much rather be thinking about what I want to teach in my next Torah study, or the upcoming season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, or board games. But due to the world having been delivered into the hands of the attribute of harsh judgment (or in less kabbalistic terms, due to the world having apparently lost its ever loving mind), many trans folks, particularly those of us living in the United States and in the United Kingdom, are having to cope with life under a government that actively hates us and wants us to vanish from the face of this earth — more than usual, I mean.

The urgency of this situation has caused me to rethink somewhat my stance on being a “trans rabbi.” I still bristle somewhat at the idea of being pigeonholed like that, because — and I say this hopefully without arrogance — I feel like I have a much broader Torah to offer than what that somewhat limited phrase implies. But I cannot deny that these days I am feeling more like a trans rabbi than ever. 

When I say that, I mean it in two different ways: I feel like a trans rabbi, in that I feel singled out and imperiled in specific ways the majority of my congregants — the ones who aren’t trans, anyway — cannot directly relate to. There is a unique kind of dread that results when you and people like you are being steadily erased from official existence day by day. Like many people around me, I am trying to do everything I can to speak out against encroaching fascism, to protest, to resist — both because it is the right thing do do, and because of the need to model this behavior for those who look to me as some kind of moral exemplar. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a great deal of hesitation to put myself in any kind of situation where I might be arrested — because I am extremely aware that doing so would likely result in my being sent to a men’s prison where I as a trans woman would be in serious danger of getting raped and murdered. That is the kind of knowledge that tends to impact a person’s thinking about resistance.

At the same time, the other way in which I feel more like a trans rabbi these days is in a heightened sense of my own obligation to speak out more forcefully than ever about the inherent dignity and worth of transgender people specifically from a religious standpoint. As a rabbi, I have a very particular perspective on the anti-trans rhetoric of the current moment, which often tends to present itself as being rooted in traditional religious values when in reality it is anything but. It is vitally important, in the midst of the religious right’s attack on our nation’s core principles, not to cede ownership of religion to fascists who misappropriate the trappings of religion in the name of a twisted and hateful ideology. 

One of the worst things about living in a time like this is the way everything tends to get warped in a manner corresponding to the harshness of the times. Even otherwise sane and loving people all too easily lose track of their inner sweetness because a climate of fear and hatred is corrosive to our sense of self. In such an environment, we all need to adapt in order to survive. The challenge before us is how to adapt without losing track of who we really are. For me, that involves hanging on to a belief in the transformative power of rachamim (mercy) in a world which often laughs at simple human kindness. The only way forward, I have to believe, involves stubbornly asserting our own humanity and the humanity of others in the face of overwhelming pressure from the powers that be to get us to stop doing so. To paraphrase Rabban Gamliel: In a place where there is no humanity, how much more important is it to strive to be human.