In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

301  fifty-nine Liberation and Transgender Jews Passover Ayelet Cohen Jews prepare for the holiday of Passover in their kitchens and in their liturgy like little else in the Jewish year. The holiday is preceded by weeks of special Shabbat readings, building up to the festival, and the traditional dietary requirements of the holiday require intensive spring cleaning. Yet ironically, all the Passover preparation that Jews do is intended to help them remember the last-minute rush that was the Exodus from Egypt. The Israelites left Egypt in such tremendous haste that the Torah had to create a word for it. Nothing before had ever happened in such a hurry, with such trepidation , and with such fear. The Children of Israel were leaving everything they knew for the promise of something completely unknown—and their lives depended on it. The Torah introduces the word chipazon for this intense combination of hurry and fear. This is how the Israelites first tasted freedom. “This is how you shall eat it,” they were told, “your belts fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your walking stick in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly, bechipazon” (Ex. 12:11). Passover is known as “the Time of Liberation.” The Jewish festival of spring, it celebrates the rebirth of the Israelites as a free people after the Exodus from Egypt and their liberation from slavery. The Haggadah, the telling of the Passover story that is the guiding text of the Passover seder, takes participants through an experiential journey from slavery into liberation. Its unusual rituals, interactive atmosphere, and special foods that evoke the taste of oppression and the taste of freedom are all intended to spark questions and inspire conversation about the Israelites’ history of slavery and the nature of freedom. “Why do we carry out all these rituals?” participants will be moved to ask. The Haggadah gives the simplest and most fundamental answer: Avadim Hayinu l’Pharoh b’mitzrayim. Veyotzieinu Adonai Eloheinu misham b’yad chazakah u’bizroa netuyah. We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. And God brought us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. The Passover Haggadah reminds us that in every generation all Jews are obligated to see themselves as if they had personally left Egypt. Jews know Egypt. Jews in every 302 Ayelet Cohen generation have too often experienced “Egypt,” or mitzrayim, narrow places in which they have been enslaved—physically or metaphorically—and silenced for being who they are.1 Gay, lesbian, and bisexual Jews are particularly well suited to fulfill the commandment to remember and personally identify with the experience of the Exodus, for everyone who has left the closet has known Egypt and has left Egypt in his or her lifetime. But what if mitzrayim was not a place or not even a set of expectations or societal norms or religious prohibitions or legal limitations? What if mitzrayim was your own body? And every time you looked at your reflection, every time someone called you by your name, you knew that you were imprisoned, enslaved in a body that was not your home? What if like the generations of Israelites born in Egypt, you were born into that narrow place? And even though you had never known anything else, you knew in your heart of hearts that you did not belong there? For so many transgender people, that is the experience of the world. Every day they are called by names that do not describe them and dressed in clothing that feels foreign to them. Forced by birth or by society to inhabit a body that does not belong to them, they must move through the world betraying their knowledge of themselves or transgressing the definitions and roles of male and female that this culture holds so sacred. Avadim Hayinu l’Pharoh b’mitzrayim. We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. There is no one transgender experience. Each transgender person is coming from a different place, and each chooses a different journey. For no one is that journey easy. For a transgender person every moment can be complicated, and even the most mundane can become dangerous. Which bathroom to choose? Which will be safer, and where will you be less likely to get harassed? There is no one right answer. Every moment might require a different reaction and a different response. Judaism, for better or for worse, loves categories. It likes to know what things are, to name them, and to keep...

Share