About the Project
“Halakha has the potential to be liberatory and revolutionary, even if it hasn’t always felt that way.”
When we gather in trans Jewish community, we can revel in the potential, possibility and creativity needed to imagine new ways of living and doing halakha.
In 2021, we launched the Trans Halakha Project to honor and highlight this creative possibility. Through publishing halakhic literature and curating ritual and liturgy, we seek to catalyze and nurture euphoric and dignified embodied Jewish expressions for trans Jews, by trans Jews.
Why halakha?
Halakha—Jewish practice and is surrounding discourse—is the way Jewish tradition moves seamlessly between our theoretical commitments and practical behaviors. The Trans Halakha Project recognizes halakha as both world-building exercise and a spiritual language that empowers us to bring our stories, commitments, and lived realities into conversation with the tradition we’ve inherited.
Our work primarily about lifting up the new ways that Torah and Jewish tradition come to life when witnessed and experienced by trans people, rather than centering the places where trans people do not fit within cissexist, binary understandings of our tradition. While our central goal is to engage trans Jews in crafting halakha that can bring holiness into our lives, we expect that revealing halakhic frameworks and expressions that reflect trans-ness specifically will undoubtedly create and uncover new halakhic realities that speak to all people.
We hope our work will also provide onramps for other historically marginalized Jews to develop their own halakha. We know that when those who have not had a seat at the table begin to create and shape halakhic expressions, halakha is made better for all of us. If we’ve done this work right, halakha will be transformed by the fact that we’ve come together and breathed new life into this Torah.