Tu B’Av Ritual to Celebrate Transgender Transition

3. READING & REFLECTION

 

Ritual Leader:

MitzrayimLit. Egypt. Because the Hebrew word for narrow is tzar, Mitzrayim is also understood as "narrowness," as in, the narrow and confining places in life from which one emerges physically and spiritually.sgender and genderqueer folks search for ourselves for many years, hoping one day to find a place in our bodies, in our lives and in this world where we are free to live a life gendered with all of its opportunities & promise. A Promised Land. The entry into this place is different from the miraculous coming out from Mitzrayim. In order to live our lives, we have had to find freedom, and often free our friends and family along with us, from narrow views of a G-d, and of a people created in G-d’s image as static and unchanging, male or female. Like the Israelites who stood at the base of Mount Sinai, although we received the Torah, we are not fully free to integrate and enact it. We search and we wander and sometimes it seems we won’t make it. Today, we celebrate (transitioning individual(s)’s) making it.

 

[Ritual Leader invites the transitioning individual(s) to join hi/er to speak about hi/er journey to transition, if desired. Instead of or after a personal reflection, a friend or important person in the life of the transitioning individual may be invited to share a reading or a poem with the assembled group. It may be particularly powerful to invite someone who has served as a trans guide or mentor for the individual. For a suggested reading, see the poem “Girl In a Bottle” by Joy Ladin in her book Coming to Life.]

 

GIRL IN A BOTTLE by Joy Ladin
You may have lost hope
But you are definitely a girl
Hope hasn’t lost.  The almond, orphaned scent
Of adolescence braids
Your life with unwanted features,
Shaving your head,
Raising the shades
That kept you nice and protected,SinaiAccording to the Torah, God, in the presence of the Jewish people, gave Moses the Torah on Mount Sinai (Har Sinai).> Celebrating
Your TorahThe Five Books of Moses, and the foundation of all of Jewish life and lore. The Torah is considered the heart and soul of the Jewish people, and study of the Torah is a high mitzvah. The Torah itself a scroll that is hand lettered on parchment, elaborately dressed and decorated, and stored in a decorative ark. It is chanted aloud on Mondays, Thursdays, and Shabbat, according to a yearly cycle. Sometimes "Torah" is used as a colloquial term for Jewish learning and narrative in general.of being nude, a crystal skull
Extended to full-size
For everyone to see.
The restless young light
That is always on
Pearls the little secrets
Of your body, misting the habits
That strand you
In the mirror.  Reality
Lines up to smooch,
Bites your fingernails,
Whispers the secret signs
That can get you into the best parties –
Or are they anxieties
That only look like parties? –
Bullying, taking full advantage
Of your metamorphosis
Into a girl you don’t even know.  It’s time
To fill in the blanks.
Which makeup will you choose?
Which conscience?  Which version of family
Will take your breath away?
Your arms, your legs,
Whisper the world you always wanted,
Fashioning conscience
From your body’s vulnerability.
You vowed to conceal
The hope whose strands
Made you real,
But you have been born
Into the streaming light of history,
A shyly confessional bliss,
Because you didn’t have to live,
Girl in a bottle,
And did.

4. OLD CLOTHES

 

Ritual Leader:

 

 

The dead do not praise G-d, nor do those who go down into silence.
But we will bless G-d from now until forever, halleluyah. (Psalm 115)

 

Today we remember those who did not make it to the Promised Land and symbolically we reenact your rebirth, (Transitioning Individual(s)). We interweave your story with the story of our people, who, according to rabbinic legend (Lamentations Rabba, Prologue 13), would enact a ritual of death and rebirth each year for the 40 years when we wandered in the wilderness. On the eve of the 9^th of Av, Moses would send a herald throughout the Israelites’ camp and announce: Go out to dig graves. The people would go out, dig graves and sleep in them. In the morning, Moses sent another herald saying: Separate the dead from the living. Then the people would arise and find their number diminished. In the last year of the forty years, the people enacted this ritual once more but found in the morning that none had died. Believing they had made a mistake in counting, they did thYahA name for God, as in "halleluyah" – praise God. Some people prefer this name for God as a non-gendered option.ame thing on the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, but still no one died. When the moon was full, they said it seems that the Holy One has annulled the decree from all of us, so they made the fifteenth a holiday.

 

On this 15^th of Av, (Transitioning Individual(s)) symbolically prepares the final grave of hi/er wilderness travels to bury the old clothes that do not suit the woman/man/person s/he is becoming. As (Transitioning Individual(s)) takes hi/er old clothes and spreads them out in the box we have set aside for donations to charity, for teveEve, according to the book of Genesis, is Adam's wife, the first woman to be created.akah, we join arms together anMosesThe quintessential Jewish leader who spoke face to face with God, unlike any other prophet, and who freed the people from Egypt, led them through the desert for forty years, and received the Torah on Mt. Sinai. His Hebrew name is Moshe.chant to pray for hi/er complete rebirth. When s/he has said hi/er final goodbye to those clothes, we welcome (transitioning individual(s)) back into our circle.

 

 

Ritual Leader and Transitioning Individual(s):

Eternal One, my G-d, I cried out to You, and you healed me. (Psalm 30)

5. BORROWED/NEW CLOTHES