This is a very special crossover episode with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s project about truth & transformation, with ancient stories serving as mirrors & lights. You can listen to this piece here on the podcast, and you can read it along with footnotes and gorgeous artwork at lifeisasacredtext.com.

Darlings, get ready for this reading of Unproductive Desires: On "Crushed Testes," Transition, Jewish Continuity, and Who's Allowed in God's Community.

Torah for Trans Lives is a Torah Studio podcast, written, produced and performed by Lexi Kohanski. Our volunteer editor is Lis Cardy. Our graphic is “Rivka and Yitzchak” by Rena Yehuda Newman. Our title music is “Lekhabot et haAhavah” by Rabbi Noam Lerman. The script for this episode, plus notes, citations, and artwork are available on Life is a Sacred Text.

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In the wake of the Minneapolis shooting, the Arrogant Government has used the shooter's trans identity to push for greater persecution of trans people as a whole. One trans person shoots up a church school, and all that very real grief and anger get directed at trans people collectively. Like it or not, the names we are called matter. And because they matter, when we take on a collective name, like an identity, or have one put on us, we become responsible beyond ourselves: to the people who share that name, and to the vision that name calls us to live up to. An Elul episode for the season of repentance.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ עֲשֵׂה לְמַֽעַן שִׁמְךָ הַגָּדוֹל הַגִּבּוֹר וְהַנּוֹרָא שֶׁנִּקְרָא עָלֵֽינוּ: Our Mother, our Queen, act for the sake of Your great, mighty, awesome Name by which we are called!

Torah for Trans Lives is a Torah Studio podcast, written, produced and performed by Lexi Kohanski. Our volunteer editor is Lis Cardy. Our graphic is “Rivka and Yitzchak” by Rena Yehuda Newman. Our title music is “Lekhabot et haAhavah” by Rabbi Noam Lerman. The script for this episode, plus notes, citations, and thoughts that didn't make the final cut, are available on the T4Torah Patreon.

This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

What is the purpose of a trans life? As the kinds of embodied trans futures we were promised become harder to imagine, Lexi speaks about the role bodily changes have to play in a spiritual gender transition. Just like the Tabernacle was only as physical as necessary to contain the Presence of God, so too the vessels for Presence that are our bodies must keep the spirituality greater.

The key source in this episode is the Maor vaShemesh on Parshas Vayakhel. We’ve also got two midrashim, one from Shemos Rabbah 34:1 and the other from Chagigah 12a, plus Erin In the Morning and the Human Rights Campaign’s coverage of the House budget’s provisions to defund and disqualify gender affirming care from insurance coverage.

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