8 | The Jewish Press | April 16, 2021
Voices The Jewish Press (Founded in 1920) Abby Kutler President Annette van de Kamp-Wright Editor Richard Busse Creative Director Susan Bernard Advertising Executive Lori Kooper-Schwarz Assistant Editor Gabby Blair Staff Writer Mary Bachteler Accounting Jewish Press Board Abby Kutler, President; Eric Dunning, Ex-Officio; Danni Christensen, David Finkelstein, Candice Friedman, Bracha Goldsweig, Margie Gutnik, Natasha Kraft, Chuck Lucoff, Eric Shapiro, Andy Shefsky, Shoshy Susman and Amy Tipp. The mission of the Jewish Federation of Omaha is to build and sustain a strong and vibrant Omaha Jewish Community and to support Jews in Israel and around the world. Agencies of the Federation are: Community Relations Committee, Jewish Community Center, Center for Jewish Life, Jewish Social Services, and the Jewish Press. Guidelines and highlights of the Jewish Press, including front page stories and announcements, can be found online at: wwwjewishomaha.org; click on ‘Jewish Press.’ Editorials express the view of the writer and are not necessarily representative of the views of the Jewish Press Board of Directors, the Jewish Federation of Omaha Board of Directors, or the Omaha Jewish community as a whole. The Jewish Press reserves the right to edit signed letters and articles for space and content. The Jewish Press is not responsible for the Kashrut of any product or establishment. Editorial The Jewish Press is an agency of the Jewish Federation of Omaha. Deadline for copy, ads and photos is: Thursday, 9 a.m., eight days prior to publication. E-mail editorial material and photos to: avandekamp@jewishomaha.org; send ads (in TIF or PDF format) to: rbusse@jewishomaha.org. Letters to the Editor Guidelines The Jewish Press welcomes Letters to the Editor. They may be sent via regular mail to: The Jewish Press, 333 So. 132 St., Omaha, NE 68154; via fax: 1.402.334.5422 or via e-mail to the Editor at: avandekamp@jewishomaha. org. Letters should be no longer than 250 words and must be single-spaced typed, not hand-written. Published letters should be confined to opinions and comments on articles or events. News items should not be submitted and printed as a “Letter to the Editor.” The Editor may edit letters for content and space restrictions. Letters may be published without giving an opposing view. Information shall be verified before printing. All letters must be signed by the writer. The Jewish Press will not publish letters that appear to be part of an organized campaign, nor letters copied from the Internet. No letters should be published from candidates running for office, but others may write on their behalf. Letters of thanks should be confined to commending an institution for a program, project or event, rather than personally thanking paid staff, unless the writer chooses to turn the “Letter to the Editor” into a paid personal ad or a news article about the event, project or program which the professional staff supervised. For information, contact Annette van de KampWright, Jewish Press Editor, 402.334.6450. Postal The Jewish Press (USPS 275620) is published weekly (except for the first week of January and July) on Friday for $40 per calendar year U.S.; $80 foreign, by the Jewish Federation of Omaha. Phone: 402.334.6448; FAX: 402.334.5422. Periodical postage paid at Omaha, NE. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Jewish Press, 333 So. 132 St., Omaha, NE 68154-2198 or email to: jpress@jewishomaha.org.
American Jewish Press Association Award Winner
Nebraska Press Association Award winner 2008
National Newspaper Association
Editorials express the view of the writer and are not necessarily representative of the views of the Jewish Press Board of Directors, the Jewish Federation of Omaha Board of Directors, or the Omaha Jewish community as a whole.
No allyship without humility MURPHY SCOTT WULFGAR ADL-CRC Communications Director Over one year ago, a young Jewish girl was victimized on a youth school trip in Israel. Among teens she should have felt safe with, the most exposed and vulnerable part of her—her skin—was casually targeted... for a laugh. White kids singing and repeating a word with no meaning to them outside rap music was bad enough, but when a young boy fired off the word one last time in a group chat, this time as an insult (an arrow wrapped in the coward’s cloak: a “joke,”) it found its mark—to inflict pain. No allies came to her aid. Some actually did laugh. No adults stepped up and course corrected. She spent the 20-hour flight home alone and fractured. The enormity of this cannot be overstated. What happened to this strong, bright-eyed young girl fractured her identity in two. How could it not? She is no longer just another Jewish kid. She is now a Jewish kid and a Black woman living in one body. Will she have to choose between the two? How could this episode not make her question that? As a Jew she was safe with other Jews, but as a young Black woman... no?
Unfortunately, upon arriving home, these conflicts have only been compounded. Nearly every adult involved,å or in a position of power associated with this trip, was given an opportunity to help keep her whole. They either failed to apologize for what happened to her, to confront this issue in a meaningful way, or did nothing at all. Whether
this is the result of privilege blindness, fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, trepidation due to longstanding issues between the Black and Jewish communities, “missing the moment” and not knowing how to recover, wishing the problem would just go away, or hubris-- is irrelevant. White privilege and racial insensitivity are not measured by the intent behind them but by the impact they have on those they harm. That’s the problem with privilege. We can know in our hearts that we aren’t racist but if we don’t act when the situation calls for it, what good are the best of our intentions? If our skin tone doesn’t give us away, we can hide behind our good intentions—lulling us into believing that we are actual allies. But simply not-being-a-
racist doesn’t make you an ally against racism. Being an ally requires action. It requires selfawareness and a willingness to enter a space that exposes you as much as the person (or people) you are seeking to align yourself with. It demands vulnerability and humility — particularly from people in positions of power. The young girl on this trip needed allies. She needed them when she came home. And here, one full year later, they are still largely absent. We all have to own that. Even those of us new to this story. It is time we start reframing how we view hate— not by its intent, but its impact. Then, shifting our focus away from “how-something-like-this-couldhappen,” allows us to be fully present for the person it happened to. Maybe then we will see what they need—and it won’t take us a year to get there. In Leviticus we are taught to love our neighbor as ourselves. Further lessons teach us to believe that saving a single life is akin to having saved an entire world. The same must also be said of destruction. We are also taught to forgive, but how can one forgive, or accept forgiveness, until we first understand the power of apology? To the victims of hate, an act of apology is not solely for something we did, but to acknowledge we understand something of what happened to them. This is true humility. And it is the only way to build strong allies.
It is hard to connect to the Torah as a trans Jew. Here’s why I’m trying anyway. DUBBS WEINBLATT This essay originally appeared on Alma, 70 Faces Media’s feminist Jewish culture site. Had you asked me 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even last year (truthfully, last month) if I’d ever quote the Torah in a piece I was writing, I probably would have (respectfully and nervously) laughed in your face. The Torah makes me anxious because I know that it holds the potential to oppress me as a genderqueer trans Jew. And I know it informs so many Jews of their strongly held beliefs, and those beliefs directly oppress me and others. They use the Torah to justify hate and bigotry and embolden some to actively and directly harm people. As Jewish as questioning and challenging everything is, I was never taught to actually do it. So when these particular Jews would weaponize different Torah verses and decide that their one interpretation was the Word of God, that was it for me. Fin. I never questioned it. I just took it at face value. Add the fact that I’d never really seen myself reflected in any of the stories I’d heard, and I never even saw the purpose of trying to connect to the Torah. Still, I struggled. As I work at Keshet, a national nonprofit that works for the full equality for LGBTQ Jews and our families in Jewish life, I am constantly faced with the question of how relevant the Torah can be as I run workshops and teach about inclusion as a Jewish value. I point to our poster of Seven Jewish Values for an Inclusive Community and recite my spiel. I have to admit that when I first started teaching this four years ago, I don’t know that I truly believed what I was teaching; I hadn’t quite internalized it yet. I was in the beginning of my healing journey with Judaism. I’d felt so deeply rejected so much of my life that I didn’t even know it was possible to connect again to Judaism in an authentic way as a queer and trans person. One of the values from our poster that continuously stuck out to me and replayed over and over in my head was “b’tzelem Elohim,” the notion that we are made in the image of God (or the divine) pulled directly from Genesis. As the poster explains, if we see each person as created in the image of God, we can see the humanity and dignity in all
people. True inclusion is built upon this foundation. This made sense to me, yet I still had a difficult time applying it to myself. The questions kept coming: Do I even believe in God? If I was made in the image of God, then why do I need to change my body to relieve my dysphoria and see/be/feel myself ? Why do I even feel dysphoria? Was I a mistake? Am I broken? If God is real, why do humans suffer? And why do humans suffer at the hands of other Jews?
God reaching out to an LGBTQ person in the style of Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam.” Credit: Getty Images
Over the last few years, I’ve been training myself to think outside the binary in more ways than just gender. I’ve been rewiring my brain to think in a both/and instead of an either/or kind of way. Either/or stops a conversation, while both/and invites expansion and possibility. If this is true, what else can be true? Is this the only truth? There must be more to the story. Can two things be true at once? It’s a lot to hold, and it’s not always easy. I’ve never been interested in text studies. I didn’t want to dig into Torah. It felt like I’d be giving too much power and attention to this thing that I kept thinking was my oppressor. Then one day I decided I needed — and wanted — to push myself on this. I wanted to face the thing that scared me as I’d done with so many other aspects of my life. So with my colleague Rabbi Micah Buck-Yael, a trans person who became a rabbi in part to challenge the patriarchy and help carve space for queer Jews, we started chatting Torah. And I pushed back on every single word they said. I asked them a mil-
lion questions. Even questions like: What is the Talmud really? What is midrash really? Then we started talking about the moment we are in now: on the precipice of rereading, reimagining and reinterpreting Torah and doing it through a queer lens. There are many queer and trans folks who have been queering the Torah for years, individually and through programs like Svara, while actively working to make queer Jews more visible. Then it dawned on me: I’d been approaching Torah all wrong. It’s not an either/or. It’s a both/ and. It’s not “either this verse is the law of the land or nothing”; instead I get to decide what Torah means to me. I get to choose which meanings resonate with me. And if none do, I get to create my own. If the sages and rabbis get to, why can’t I? Maybe the concept of b’tzelem Elohim needs an update for those of us who aren’t sure we believe in God. Because whether or not we believe doesn’t change the fact that transness is holiness. I am divine. I find my strength from within and don’t need any outside sources, God included, to be my own constant, my own divinity. I was made the way I am because it’s who I am meant to be. Every move or mistake I’ve made, every lesson I’ve learned, has made me who I am, and I wouldn’t trade any of my experiences to be born any other way. When I’m in Jewish spaces where I’m feeling on the fringes, or have moments when I’m questioning if I really belong or if anyone really, truly sees me, I can dig within and remember that I exist, therefore I am visible — even if only to myself and, ultimately, that’s what matters most. I am b’tzelem Elohim, divine and holy. And the Torah gave me that. Dubbs Weinblatt is the Founder and Executive producer of Thank You For Coming Out, a podcast and improv show showcasing the stories of LGBTQ folks. They’re also the Associate Director of Education and Training for Metro New York for Keshet, a national organization that works for the full equality of all LGBTQ Jews in Jewish life. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
