Trans/Genderqueer?
Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in the Jewish Community by Noach Dzmura
Nehirim is a diverse community that welcomes participants from all across the gender spectrum(s). We have trans and genderqueer folks at most of our retreats, and work hard to ensure trans visibility and representation on our faculty, staff, and board of directors.
Most of Nehirim’s programs are pan-gender, and we work hard to ensure inclusivity and visibility of transgender, genderqueer, and gender-nonconforming folk among our participants and on our faculty. We are proud to build a community of people across the gender spectrum, and welcome you to become part of it.
At our gender-specific retreats (i.e. men’s and women’s), we invite people to self-define their gender. If you identify as a man or a woman, please come to the right retreat for you. These retreats are organized by gender, not by sex or anatomy. If you identify as neither a man nor a woman, you are welcome to come to the retreat, with the understanding that we’ll use the pronoun “we” to refer to the community of men or women (as appropriate) and hold that gender identity in common.
Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey between Genders by Joy Ladin
At all our retreats, we include guidelines on creating safe space (assumptions, pronouns, consent, privacy, etc.) in our retreat packets, and have a zero-tolerance policy for transphobia. That’s not to say that every retreat participant lives up to our ideals; probably at least one person will say something inappropriate at some point, at which point our retreat staff would be happy to engage that person in a supportive conversation about inclusion.
Beyond inclusion, we are interested in celebrating the distinctive perspectives and gifts of genderqueer folk to the Jewish community. We’re proud to have faculty members like Noach Dzmura and Dr. Joy Ladin. For more information about trans Jewish life, check out their books below. If you are genderqueer and planning to come to a Nehirim retreat, we encourage you to offer a workshop or share your story with our participants.