Beshalakh / בשלח

This is a weekly series of frum, trans, anarchist parsha dvarim. It's crucial in these times that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns or, worse, is Judaism. Our texts are rich—sometimes opaque, but absolutely teeming with wisdom and fierce debate. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance. I aim to offer comment which is true to the source material (i.e. doesn't invert or invent meaning to make it more comfortable) and uses Torah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

Content note: Discussion of transphobia and fascism; mentions of Nazis, AIDS crisis, the genocide in Palestine, hunger

An appeal: My friend Areej and her family have finally been allowed to return home in Central Gaza after living in an IDP camp tent for months, but their house was partially destroyed by the bombing. If you can donate even $5, please do. May this be the start of a lasting and meaningful peace as we all rebuild and move toward a free Palestine.

This week, NYU Langone and Mt. Sinai hospitals in New York have completely halted healthcare for their trans patients under 19, capitulating to an Executive Order which threatened to end federal funding for institutions which provided trans youth care. The CDC has instructed its researchers to remove any newly banned terms from their work, including "gender", "LGBT", and "transsexual". Many federal websites on HIV/AIDS, trans issues, and climate change have gone dark, and others like the federal travel advisory website have dropped the T in LGBT. I'm trying to avoid the news because it makes me unproductive and sad; these are just the thing I've heard about organically. People are scared.

I fear that this attack on trans people is a distraction tactic: dozens of cruel Executive Orders are signed in rapid succession and we're left scrambling in reaction while something even more sinister—we don't know what, which by design—is brewing. Or maybe all the horrors are bald, fully revealed, and it's enough to overwhelm us with too many things to do, too much unconstitutional legislation to challenge, too many things to protest.

Parshas Beshalakh chronicles the parting of the Red Sea and the 40-year wandering b'midbar (in the wilderness). The Israelites sing of their deliverance while Miriam dances and plays the drum, but soon they face the immediate problems of hunger and thirst. Hashem provides water and the people grumble for food. Hashem provides manna and some of the people fail to obey instructions on how and when to gather it, so it goes rotten and full of maggots. Moishe worries about the viability of his leadership. We are instructed to hold Shabos: not to gather food nor cook nor travel. We will remain b'midbar for some time.

Time is something like a spiral. We are reliving the exodus. We are reliving the Nazis' early years: the first book burning of the Institüte für Sexualwissenschaft, the first (and at the time, only) center for trans healthcare and community. We are reliving the early AIDS crisis in the 1980s: Reagan refused to fund CDC research while millions died, and instead funded the racist mass incarceration event called the "War on Drugs" and increased American military meddling in the Middle East. I have spent so many hours imagining the lives of my ancestors through these times. It is an almost unbearable tragedy that I can never truly know what it was like to be a transfag Jewish anarchist in these eras of flourishing-and-death, but about the stresses of fascism I no longer have to imagine.

Some people say the wilderness purified the soon-to-be Jews: not only taking them out of Mitsrayim, but taking Mitsrayim out of them. Their slave mentality and general grumpiness needed to be purged before they could accept the yoke of heaven. I don't like this read. Metaphor or not, the desert is not a spa or a fast or a juice cleanse—it is a cruel and liminal place. We don't know how far we've gone or how long we have to go. The environment is hostile. Survival is taken day by day. Everything feels urgent.

Even when—maybe especially when—we're shleping ourselves b'midbar, we need to rest. Even in times of food and water scarcity. We must resist the urge to constantly work and—

Is this the advice I'd give to the trans people of Wiemar Germany, the Partisans, the AIDS activists? "Remember to rest"? For them, and some of us now, rest is simply a luxury that we can't afford. Rest invites death. I assume that most of you reading are not in such dire situations, and neither am I. But I sometimes feel like my rest comes at the expense of another's death—that if only I was a more effective organizer or fundraiser, I could save more lives. It's grandiose but having been on the receiving end of life-sustaining mutual aid, I can't diminish its urgency or my moral obligation to do as much as possible (or, if I'm honest, to do more than possible).

Still I rest (or "rest") on Shabos. I don't use electricity or cook or clean or carry or even think about the material world as much as possible—I have a Shlobotomy. Why? Is it restful? I am a single man, which means I spend hours each week preparing for Shabos (no tradwife to do it for me) which is exhausting. Friday night is filled with davening and eating, which is usually lovely. But Saturday I'm often bored, having failed to make social plans. I sleep in, I walk the dog, and then I sleep again until havdolo. I have nightmares about breaking Shabos. Does this restore me from the trials of the last week or fortify me for the week to come? „אַ נײַע וואָך קומט אָנקעגן אונדז!“ If Shabos is a "palace in time", and I do believe it is, then Saturday night we're back b'midbar—back in the wilderness.

Life is not worth living if we do not preserve our cultures. Culture is the lens through which we find meaning. It's what gives life flavor: the art, the food, the language, the mannerisms, the shared priorities, the very way we think. I love that Yiddishkeyt is inherently multilingual and obsessed with the human condition of wandering; I love that we ask so many questions, and we can and do eat raw horseradish. We fetishize suffering but privilege the sanctity of life above nearly all else. We're very literate. We legally require community. Our holidays are "Get so drunk you can't tell good from evil" and "Build a little hut" and "Dance!". And we mandate rest. Yes, we also have disordered eating and horizontal hostility and Zionism (puh puh puh) but I love being Jewish. Abandoning culture for assimilation is a tragedy. I will continue keeping Shabos for as long as it's possible and meaningful for me, through fascism or otherwise. There is no reason for me to live, no world for me to fight for, if I cannot be a transsexual Jew. I will not hide these things or stop doing them. My inability to rest on Shabos is my own failure rather than a flaw in the tradition.

Leftists like the midrash on Nakhshon and the Red Sea: Hashem says that He will part the waters for the Israelites to cross as the Mitzrayim pursue them, but the waters do not part before Nakhshon walks into the sea, water up to his nose in an act of faith. We must dive in and begin before the miracle will occur. But I think the 40 years of wandering is a better metaphor for our times: we will not witness a single, incredible miracle that will keep us safe while drowning our oppressors. Most of us will not be spontaneously brave like Nakhshon, and certainly not immediately vindicated. Instead we will slog through every day for an indefinitely long time, in harsh conditions with no reason to think it will end in our lifetime. Things are bad now but they are not the worst they have ever been, and they can always surpass even that.

And still we are Jewish. And still we are trans. And still we must rest, and do more than just sleep. We must dance.