Nehirim | Balancing on the Mechitza : Transgender in Jewish Community

How can transgender people live pious Jewish lives when many of their significant life choices might be considered “un-kosher”? How might parenting be complicated, or perhaps, enhanced, when one parent has changed sex? How does it feel to be in “men only” ritual space when you were once defined by your community as female?

Noach Dzmura, editor of Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community, and contributing essayists from the Bay Area will discuss their stories, experiences, and the complex issues of the book.

Balancing on the Mechitza, winner of a Lamda Literary Award, is an anthology by activists, theologians, scholars, and others, both transgender and non-transgender allies, who share for the first time in a printed volume their interpretation of classical Jewish texts about ambiguous bodies, as well as their sacred and secular stories of Jewish prayer, ritual, and social life.

Co-presented by Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, Keshet, and the LGBT Alliance of the Jewish Community Federation, Nehirim and the University of San Francisco’s Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice.