Essie
Favorite Jewish food: My favorite Jewish food are bagels, I love a good bagel.
Favorite Jewish holiday: Passover, actually. This year it’s obviously going to look pretty different than it has in the past, but I’m excited. It’s my favorite holiday, I love that it’s all about liberation and telling our stories over and over and over again. How would you describe your identity? I am a white, queer, able-bodied, trans Jew. Do you feel like your looks and experiences are included in the general picture of what a Jewish person is? Looks, maybe/yes. I think there are plenty of people who look like me in the Jewish community in terms of race and style and things like that. In terms of experience, I don’t think so. I think people don’t think about queer and trans people when they think about the average American Jew. I think the question is really interesting because I also think it’s very context-dependent. Historically, there are tons of queer and trans Jews and there always have been. All the way back to the Talmud, there are six genders mentioned in the Talmud. But somehow we’ve forgotten that today, so I think in America today, it’s a hard maybe/no depending on if you’re thinking about visible vs. invisible identities. |
How does this affect your feelings about Judaism?
I don’t think it’s changed my views or my feelings around Judaism per se. It definitely impacts what Jewish communities I choose to be a part of and how I feel going into those Jewish communities, or communities that are available to me. In terms of feelings around Judaism, it hasn’t necessarily impacted them. If anything, it’s made me feel closer to Judaism. I feel like my queerness and my Jewishness are totally intimately connected, and I’ve also found communities for whom that is also true, and communities that center at the intersection of LGBTQ life and Judaism. In those ways, it has made me feel closer to my Jewishness. Do you feel like you’ve generally been welcomed in Judaism? Why or why not? I have kind of an interesting position where most of the time I’m going into Jewish spaces, it’s for my job. I work for Keshet, which is a national organization working for LGBTQ equality in Jewish life. So 90% of the time I’m walking into a Jewish organization it’s because they’ve paid me to be there and they want to learn from me. In those cases, I would say I’m welcomed because in those cases people are working to be better and more inclusive, so I’m welcome to come and teach about that. But I think there’s a difference between being welcomed and having your needs met, or being welcomed and feeling at ease. While folks tell me I’m welcome, and people like me are welcome, that only goes so far if I go into a building and can’t use the bathroom. That only goes so far if I walk into a building and I’m immediately misgender. I might be welcome in that way, but I don’t feel comfortable or sometimes safe even. Have you felt excluded from other spaces because of your Jewish identity? Yeah. I grew up in a small town in Michigan where there were not a lot of Jews. I was in choir in public school, and for some reason it was okay for the choir to sing songs about Jesus in a public school, so that was a whole thing. Most of my friends weren’t Jewish, so there was a lot of educating about why I couldn’t hang out on Friday nights, and why I wasn’t cool to sing about Jesus at Christmastime in a public school. For sure. |
"But I think there’s a difference between being welcomed and having your needs met, or being welcomed and feeling at ease. While folks tell me I’m welcome, and people like me are welcome, that only goes so far if I go into a building and can’t use the bathroom. That only goes so far if I walk into a building and I’m immediately misgender" |
"Right now, white, Ashkenazi, able-bodied, upper-middle class or upper-class, cis, straight Jews, those are the folks whose needs are being centered, which leaves so many folks at the margins" |
Do you feel like you’ve been able to find communities where your whole identity is accepted?
Yes. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to say yes to that question because many, many, many/most people can’t say yes to that question. Having the privilege I have and living in Chicago where there are lots of queer Jews, and even organizations built around that intersection, I have really wonderful communities, Jewish communities, that are either very inclusive of LGBTQ folks or centered around LGBTQ folks. I’m also fortunate enough to have my full-time job be also centered on those marginalized identities that I hold, so I really feel like I can show up to work as my full self, which is amazing and again, not something I take for granted. What do you think we could do as a larger Jewish community to make our spaces more welcoming for people who identify differently from the norm? Oh my gosh, so many things. I think the biggest thing is looking at whose stories we’re centering, and whose needs we’re centering. Right now, white, Ashkenazi, able-bodied, upper-middle class or upper-class, cis, straight Jews, those are the folks whose needs are being centered, which leaves so many folks at the margins. So it’s a reorientation to how we see the world, it’s a reorientation to how we see our privilege. One tangible example of shifting this paradigm and shifting how we think about it is, obviously in the past several years there has been an increase in visible antisemitism and safety concerns for the Jewish community, so in their response a lot of Jewish organizations have increased their security practices and police presence, centering the needs of those folks who I just listed with all of those privileged identities, not paying attention to the fact that Jews of color, trans people, people who are targeted by police, probably now are not going to feel safe in that community and are going to be very turned off by that. These things that some folks take for granted and think, “Oh, this will make everybody feel safe” and putting those into place, starting to question those assumptions that we make. We make so many assumptions about what people need and what makes people feel safe and comfortable when really we should just ask instead of assuming. |
How would you describe the work you do at Keshet?
I’m the Chicago education and training manager, which means I get to work with any Jewish organization in and around Chicago that wants to be more LGTBQ inclusive, and I help them get there. First we figure out where that organization is in their inclusion journey and we figure out what they need to take the next few moves towards becoming more inclusive. We look at their programming, their policy, their culture, help them think through these big challenges of how to shift culture, it’s a really big question and there are no easy answers. Often it involves me going in and doing a training for their staff, a training for their clergy, sometimes doing community events to educate their community, their congregants, about these issues and some changes they might be noticing in the building or in the organization and why that’s happening. I also get to work on providing resources and online texts and things to learn from. Those are some of the things I get to do. Has there been anything from your work that has stuck out as particularly meaningful or successful? Yeah. Something we talk about a lot at Keshet is that it’s not enough for a Jewish organization to say, “everybody’s welcome”. People sometimes hope that that will be enough, but it really isn’t, and the reason is because of the historic and sometimes present weaponization of religion against LGBTQ people. In the past, and still sometimes today, people use scripture, or the Bible, or tradition to exclude LGBTQ people. For that reason, a lot of us have built up walls or defenses or anxieties around any religious organization, which is really sad. It’s sad to me that lots of people that I love have turned away from Jewish life because they’ve gotten messages that who they are is not okay. To counteract that, we tell Jewish organizations they need to explicitly say that they welcome LGBTQ Jews. Of course, that’s necessary for Jews of color, people with disabilities, all different kinds of folks at the margins. At Keshet, we focus on gender and sexuality. One really exciting thing I’ve seen in my work is when organizations have really taken that to heart, and some of them have added a whole page on their website of what they are doing to be specifically LGBTQ inclusive: all the programs they’ve held, all the trainings they’ve had, all the policies they’ve revisited. That feels to me like the opposite of saying, “All are welcome”, they are being really explicit about who is welcome and what they are actively doing to make it safe and inclusive of those people. |
"That feels to me like the opposite of saying, “All are welcome”, they are being really explicit about who is welcome and what they are actively doing to make it safe and inclusive of those people" |
"I love that we have this rich well of tradition and stories and history, particularly a history of resilience" |
Does Judaism/identifying as Jewish play an important role in your life? Why or why not?
Yeah, totally. It’s my entire life. I’m a Jewish professional, my 9 to 5 job is as a Jewish professional. I’m also a social worker and I run three monthly groups for various populations all within the Jewish community. I’m really passionate about social change in the Jewish community. My social circles and my support networks are also all connected to the Jewish community. I feel very entrenched, in a good way. It is part of my every minute and every hour and every day. What is your favorite part about being Jewish? I love our stories. I love that we have this rich well of tradition and stories and history, particularly a history of resilience. We have so much wisdom in our ancient texts and from our teachers, past and present, of how to get through hard times. Right now we’re in this global pandemic, which is really scary and in some ways feels really new, but also I’ve seen so many people resurface old texts about how to get through hard times. Not everybody has that, and not everybody has that sort of breadth of knowledge in their culture to help them through. I think that’s my favorite. |