Trans Day of Visibility 2022 🏳️‍⚧️✨

Today is Trans Day of Visibility!

Every March 31, communities around the world mark Trans Day of Visibility, celebrating trans and nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people who expand our understanding of the world and its possibilities.

CBST is particularly blessed to have many trans and nonbinary members, friends, colleagues, and teachers, and we hope you’ll take time today to enjoy the wealth of creativity, brilliance, and opportunities to take action in this email.

Last Friday evening at Shabbat services, we were thrilled to welcome rabbinical student Ariel Tovlev (above) to the bimah with a beautiful drashah for Trans Day of Visibility. If you missed it, we highly recommend hearing Ariel’s words of Torah today, and follow it with this collection of blessings for TDOV from several members of the extended CBST community.

CBST’s Emet: Trans & Nonbinary Team meets on the first Thursday of every month from 7:00-8:00 p.m. to learn together and connect. The next meeting takes place on Thursday, April 7. Learn more and sign up to join!

"Action in defense of trans lives now is an essential part of all movements for justice. The time for mass mobilization in defense of trans lives is now. Trans youth are under attack in states across the country. As efforts to criminalize trans bodies escalate, so must our resistance. Join us this week and always."

This past week, the fabulous people who created Trans Week of Visibility and Action (#TWOVA) have been sharing ways to take action to protect trans and nonbinary youth in states where their rights and healthcare are under attack. If you haven’t already, please take action!

Over the past years, we’ve been honored to host teachings from many amazing trans and nonbinary teachers and rabbis, especially at CBST’s two Trans Jews are Here Convenings! Here are a few of our favorites:

In 2019, Joy Ladin sat down with Rabbi Mike Moskowitz to talk about her most recent book, The Soul of the Stranger, and how her theology has been influenced by being trans and Jewish.
During the 2021 Trans Jews Are Here Convening at CBST, musicians Mya Byrne and Fureigh shared songs and stories as “love letters to community."
Rabbi Leiah Moser has been a guest speaker at CBST several times, and for Trans Pride Shabbat in 2019, she taught about the tribes of Israel in the desert and The Golden Girls.
Rabbi Moser also shared this beautiful drashah for Trans Day of Visibility at the 2019 Trans Jews Are Here Convening.
Also in 2019, Seth Marnin shared this powerful drashah for Parshat Shemini, starting at 1:20.

And this week, CBST’s Ark Immigration Clinic Community remembers our colleague and friend Lorena Borjas, zichrona livracha, the “mother of the trans Latina community,” whom we tragically lost to COVID-19 in the first month of the pandemic in New York City.

This lovely, short documentary is a beautiful introduction to Lorena’s powerful presence and passionate work to protect undocumented trans Latina New Yorkers, and we continue to be honored that she considered CBST one of her trusted communities.

"Atoning for the Spiritual Abuse of Conversion Therapy"

Conversion therapy "doesn’t assist in actually changing a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation," writes Rabbi Mike Moskowitz, CBST's Scholar-in-Residence for Trans and Queer Jewish Studies. "It is harmful and highly effective in converting people out of religion."

"It still remains for religious communities, and especially the rabbis who lead them," Rabbi Moskowitz continues, "to acknowledge and take responsibility for those who have left our communities because of the homophobia and transphobia that we have created." Continue reading here.

📷: Rainbows In Schools