A musical setting of Walt Whitman’s beautiful “WE Two Boys Together Clinging.” Enjoy.
Read moreWhy Pride Shabbat?
Queer freedom is everyone's freedom. In a time of authoritarianism, all struggle for freedom is queer. You don’t have to be L or G or B or T or any of the letters. We are in this together. A drash for pride season.
Read moreDoing the Bully's Work
In this week's Torah, Joseph is thrown into a pit, bullied by a gang of brothers, because of his difference. And also this week Sutter Health has similarly tossed to their fate our transgender children, doing the bully's work even before the bully asked them to do it. How will we respond?
Read moreJoseph's Bones: An Epilogue
Joseph is not asking for the transport of their physical bones. Joseph is asking the Children of Israel – asking us – to raise up, to honor, to carry forward with us, their complex and multiple qualities. Their fullness. Their selves. And that is what we are about to do. Even if it has taken 4000 years and 7000 miles to make good on Joseph’s request.
Read moreJoseph's Womb: Gender Complexity in the Story of Joseph
Most striking to me are what seem to be bold hints in the text of Torah regarding an atypicality not only in Joseph’s lived gender, but in his (or their) body. The way that the language of “womb” and “knee” gravitate to Joseph in Torah in ways that they do not toward any other men speaks loudly of Joseph’s difference.
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