This week’s Torah commentary, written by Hebrew Seminary Rosh Yeshivah Rabbi Jonah Rank, has been sponsored anonymously.
* * *
The 20th century philosopher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel argued that the entire Hebrew Bible is an extended affirmative answer, a resounding yes, answering Cain’s cruel question to God: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
We are commanded not only to advocate for our own safety, but to notice—and to respond to—any community facing baseless hatred. Our obligation to empathize with those who have been marginalized becomes increasingly obvious when we recognize how many Jews easily identify with yet another group frequently subjected to vicious prejudice.
In an age when the culture wars of the United States have led to a barrage of new laws that strip away from trans individuals rights that American law had protected only one year ago—all people dedicated to empathy must recognize the fragile morale of trans Americans right now. Whether the message comes from schoolyard bullies or from elected legislators—any suggestion that trans people somehow do not belong among the living is a lethal insult. The mental health of trans people—and really of all people—is a matter we should handle delicately and lovingly. Banning anyone from using bathrooms, receiving medical treatment, or affirming on an ID card their identity—trans or not—leads to undue harm. Far too many trans lives have ended due to the violence of ruffians, and far too many trans lives have ended in the despair of self-harm.
In November 2023, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation reported that the epidemic of transphobic violence had led to the reported deaths of at least 33 trans or gender-non-conforming Americans since November of the previous year. Meanwhile, a peer-reviewed article published in September of 2024 in the journal Nature Human Behavior has linked an increase in laws discriminating against trans Americans to an increase in suicide attempts by young Americans who are trans or non-binary. With the American Civil Liberties Union having tracked more than 500 anti-trans bills that have been proposed (or even passed) this year in the United States, it is no wonder when trans people in our country feel that they are under attack. In June 2023, the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law reported that more than 40% of trans adults have attempted suicide.
Although I am not trans, it makes utter sense to me why, for more than 15 years, every Jewish communal space where I have worked has been a refuge for trans or non-binary Jews. Religious Jews across the world sing in Hallel’s psalms of praise about “the stone that the builders rejected but became the cornerstone” of the Temple. Jewish sacred spaces have always been a draw to people from the margins—people who have been misunderstood, who have been rejected, who have been persecuted, who have been forgotten. We all know someone for whom a synagogue or some other Jewish community has become their sanctuary from a world that is deficient in empathy.
In its 33 years of existence, the rabbinical school that I head, Chicago’s pluralistic Hebrew Seminary, has never rejected an applicant based on orientation, gender, or any other manifestation of LGBTQ+ identity. Our full name—Hebrew Seminary: A Rabbinical School for Deaf & Hearing—signals to anyone on the outside looking in that we do not simply tolerate those who have historically been excluded; we have always embraced the rising Jewish leaders who approach us: Deaf or hearing; partnered to Jews, intermarried, or single; those in their 20s and those with age peers who are retiring. Today, 40% of our rabbinical students identify as trans—a reminder that trans Jews are not an abstraction, but our friends, teachers, and clergy—present and future.
Because we stand in solidarity with trans people navigating the burdens of surviving a moment of heightened transphobia and we know the moral importance of facilitating a space for remembering trans people whose lives were ended far too soon—Hebrew Seminary has partnered with 11 other Chicagoland Jewish institutions to convene a Trans Day of Remembrance evening of prayer and study this Thursday evening November 20. With Anshe Emet Synagogue hosting our communities for the evening and the support of Jewish United Funds’ Young Adult Engagement Grant—we will be expanding upon last year’s offerings, when some 50 members of Chicago’s Jewish community gathered during Trans Day of Remembrance last year.
In November of 2024, many of us were alarmed by then President-elect Donald Trump’s anti-trans rhetoric (even the slogan—“Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you”). Now, one year and several anti-trans executive orders later, we know how precious it is to declare our presence for each other—and to affirm that our gift of life is not about claiming superiority over one another but accepting our ethical obligations to one another.
To my knowledge, no rabbinical school other than Hebrew Seminary hosts annual Trans Day of Remembrance gatherings. After all, the primary work of a rabbinical school is to train the next generation of rabbis. But a rabbinical school is only relevant when it serves the Jewish world around it: through placing rabbinical students and ordainees to serve Jewish communities, through producing Jewish learning resources, and through hosting meaningful Jewish programming. At our gathering last year, we checked all of these boxes, and we intend to do so each year until trans lives are no longer at such risk.
Near the center of our Torah, in the Book of Leviticus, our ancestors were commanded not to stand idly by the blood of our neighbors. When the blood of our neighbors is the blood of our loved ones—or the blood of our very own—we do not stand idly by. We show up so that every trans life can be treated with dignity, safety, and love.