Fun fact! I’m trans. Wow!
My transness and Judaism directly intertwine. I am so grateful they do.
Hi! I’m Eliana (she/they), and I work with Miranda at The Jewish Education Project as the Education Manager, DEI and Belonging.
Fun fact! I’m trans. Wow! Let me tell you about it, and how it intersects with my Judaism.
I discovered my gender expansiveness in the summer of 2018 during the inaugural summer of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) 6 Points Creative Arts Academy, which is the Reform movement’s newest summer camp. We were doing a staff training with Keshet, an organization that does Jewish LGBTQ+ education, training, and advocacy. At this training, I digested two words for the first time:
Pronouns: the words we use to describe others in the 3rd person. E.g., he/him; she/her; they/them
Nonbinary: an identity one might hold when their gender does not fall within the gender binary of male or female
The following day, we were doing a different staff training, where we were instructed to write our names and pronouns on a name tag so people knew how to refer to us (it was staff week, so we were still getting to know each other). I wrote down my birth name and “he/him” pronouns, stuck it onto my chest, and something… shifted. I took my name tag off, looked at it, and underneath “he/him” I wrote in smaller letters, “they/them.”
It was that summer that I began to explore my gender and came out as nonbinary. My gender journey has taken me far and wide. I currently am a woman of transgender experience and use “she/they” pronouns. Through other moments in my life, I’ve realized that my gender expensiveness has existed since I was a child, but I’d like to go back even further, to the verrrrrrryyyyyyy beginning of creation.
Genesis 1:27 may be translated to read: “And God created man in God’s image, in the image of God God created him; male and female God created them.”
One may read this to mean, “God created man and woman.”
Another way one might read this is to mean that “a ‘male and female God’, a multi-gender God, created ‘them’, nonbinary people.”
Gender expansiveness has been around since the very beginning. MAJOR slay.
As time moves forward, more and more people are realizing their LGBTQ+ identities and coming out. It is not that there are more of us; it’s that we feel more comfortable to share this part of ourselves. Additionally, doing so while holding our Judaism close to our hearts may help us find comfort, as the Divine supports us, regardless of what others might say.
My transness and Judaism directly intertwine. I am so grateful they do.
Happy Pride!
Shabbat Shalom
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Eliana Rubin (she/they) is a queer and trans artist and educator. She aims to help people better understand themselves and the world around them through Jewish, theatre, and inclusive education. Eliana is a proud employee of The Jewish Education Project, serving as their Education Manager, DEI and Belonging. She is a graduate of HUC-JIR, where she received her Master of Educational Leadership. Eliana also received her BFA from NYU / Tisch (ETW). Eliana is a musician (Apple Music; Spotify), playwright and screenwriter, and enjoys intertwining her artistic and Jewish passions through her creation of Jewsicals (Jewish musicals), short musical numbers centered around Judaic texts. She will never say no to a bag of movie theater popcorn. elianashirarubin.com
Bless you