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.

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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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The Arrogant Kingdom’s executive order writing trans people out of existence decrees there is such a thing as “biological truth.” Okay, darlings, so let’s talk about biology and truth. The truth of the body is linked with the mystery of the purpose of Creation, and it all centers around what it means to build a dwelling place for the Presence of God.

Sources brought in this episode: the Maor vaShemesh on Parshas Terumah, reporting from Erin In the Morning on the University of Cincinnati's “biological” bathroom signs, Lexi’s Gashmius essay “A Lesson from God in Trans Visibility,” Jennifer Finney Boylan on Shania Twain’s Man, I Feel Like a Woman! and the shadows of a section from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble that didn’t quite make the final cut.