My Name Blessing
Our gender, sexuality and how we feel in it is never static, it changes with every stage of our development, age, and our sense of identity shifts with time.
When I found the language and word genderqueer (non-binary) in the work I do and, in my community, it spoke to how I have been feeling in my gender since I started puberty, aged 12. I do think if I had found and understood this language earlier so much would be different in my life today. Whilst the mass media and ‘gender critical’ people today make us feel that gender diverse humans are a new thing and pose danger, we have always been there throughout history and the only danger we pose is to our own safety as we walk through this transphobic world.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in their book “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice” tells us that true inclusivity is going at the pace and speed at which the most disabled person in the room goes. Rabbi Natasha, who went on a journey with me in compiling my renaming blessing, through the rituals of my Jewish faith helped me find how I never need to reject my faith. I just need to find spaces and ways to ensure it is inclusive, so I don’t need to sit on the fringes of my Jewish community, questioning whether I belong. Judaism still needs to learn what real inclusivity is, for me my name blessing marked that Masorti Judaism is on its way there.
I was brought up in a 'Modern Orthodox’ (United Synagogue) Jewish home and community. I came out to my parents as gay (queer) - it felt simpler to explain that I was gay aged 17.
I entered a therapy room aged 19, shy, quiet, full of shame and due to grief having thoughts of suicide as I was losing many friends due to HIV. I asked my therapist “Will I ever able to integrate my gender, sexuality and my faith?” 24 years of working in the LGBTQIA+ community this year and my name blessing celebration marks my achievement with that. It takes time, sometimes it is a roller coaster ride, but it does and has got better.
I have also got to thank my father, as when I came out to him aged 19, he not only wanted me to know he would never reject me, but also at a time when the internet was very new, he found me a Jewish LGBT group and synagogue that was actively inclusive. It even had a Lesbian Rabbi, the late Sheila Shulman, leading it. Through her, I was also very fortunate aged 19 to meet the late Rabbi Lionel Blue (the first ‘out’ Rabbi in the UK). The big steps my father took, that many within the orthodox Jewish community would have questioned, like meeting important lesbian and gay elders in the Jewish community, and my Grandpa Dave being a Holocaust survivor are the reasons my faith remains important to me. Growing up, I always enjoyed the traditions and festivals but not synagogue for very personal reasons. Finding New London (Masorti) Synagogue - that makes every effort around inclusivity and did their first Pride Shabbat evening service in 2022 - has been an enriching and healing experience, even though I know I don’t go often enough due to my access needs.
To any queer person of faith, never has it ever been more important and more difficult in some ways, with conversion therapy still being present, to find ways of bringing our faith, gender identity and sexuality together.
I know as a white queer non-binary Jew living in the western world it is a privilege to be able to say hineini (Hebrew for ‘here I am’). I was able to have a name blessing and celebrate my chosen name, Chai-Yoel Korn. I did so whilst many of my LGBTQIA+ community members are genuinely suffering with their mental health or living situation, facing attack, and literally fighting for their lives across the globe.
When I was last in Israel, I watched same sex couples hold hand on the street in Tel Aviv at night after 10pm. I realised that in London I would not feel safe doing that at night, outside queer areas like Dalston, Soho or Vauxhall, and even then, there will be a risk. We now have laws, social policy and apparently the police to protect us, but that does not necessarily make it safe to be authentically ourselves, or through my own experience, to get the support that we are entitled to.
So, what is in my name? When thinking about my name I wanted to honour that my name is the first gift that my parents gave me, and I give thanks for that lovely gift.
Like they told me recently, they were at my brit (circumcision) and first name blessing. So, I did not want to just get rid of the name they gave me completely. Names are very gendered, as is the Hebrew language. I first asked my parents if my English name was named after someone, or some significant reason. The answer was “no”. I went away and thought some more. I went back and asked, “Could I have your blessing to change it? The answer was, “yes”. At the same time as this. my paper in the journal Non-Binary Lives was getting nearer being published, this became a pressure.
My Hebrew name is after an uncle special to my mother as this is what we do in Jewish tradition: Chaim-Shlomo-Zalman. More pressure. None of these names spoke to who I am today. I put all the English and Hebrew names I had been given on paper, spread out on my lounge floor. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. I remembered I was bullied and taunted using my original name throughout my younger life, which is another reason (aside from gender) that I wanted to change my name. That is when the thought came, ‘let’s neutralise Chaim to Chai and then keep Yoel as the Hebrew word’. Chai means life and Yoel was a happy prophet. So, a happy life, no pressure there at all!
Before I had my name blessing ceremony, I did the ancient Jewish ritual and tradition of entering the mikveh. The mikveh is a body of ‘living’ water that is used in Jewish tradition for the spiritual ceremony of retuning oneself to a state of ritual purity. My Rabbi described this as a rebirthing experience into my chosen non-binary self.
When in the mikveh I recited the psalms and lay in the foetal position, imagining being reborn into my non-binary gender. I let myself dip 3 times as required, each time asking for all gender expectations to be released from me, saying some prayers of healing and sending prayers to my loving family and friends. Judaism is all about separations kodesh v’chol (‘holy and ordinary’): Shabbat (sabbath) holiness from the days of the week, kashrut (dietary requirements) separating meat and milk, immersing in the mikveh is Judaism’s method of separating us from contact with death. This for me a was gender I am not anymore and celebrating life. I came out of the mikveh feeling very spiritually pure and in an embodied way, feeling whole in my gendered body.
At the ceremony I read The Transgender Prayer, by Laurie Wolfe. I did so as I see that non-binary gender is under a spectrum of gender diversity & this spoke to the embodied experience that I wanted to feel in my gender.
The Transgender Prayer
This is the season
for my body to catch up with
my soul.
In this, I rejoice.
Still, my spirit cries for peace.
Help me heal in this time of renewal.
Help me find community,
those who welcome me and invite me to their table.
When I doubt my existence,
Remind me I am yours.
When there is violence,
show me serenity.
When I am treated with unkindness,
help me to be kind.
When I am hated,
help me return to love.
When I am set apart,
help me to include.
When others judge me,
remind me I am yours.
And when I doubt you have designed me,
remind me I am just so in the Book of Life.
May I always
dwell in your peace,
your love,
your understanding,
your light,
your wisdom,
your heart.
Amen
One prayer – the Shema - that I read at my name blessing was particularly important to me. Since the day I received my HIV diagnosis, in 2004 (aged 24), I have said the Shema every night. The earlier parts of the Shema Yisrael are some of the oldest prayers in Judaism. Shama is a Sanskrit word that means “equal,” “even,” “equanimity,” “calmness,” and “peace of mind.” At my name blessing my Rabbi said this about the: Shema: “It is something permanent and traditional, whilst the world around us changes. Jewish tradition always comes with change”. After the Shema I said a prayer thanking G-d “for making me according to their will”. I was (and am) uncomfortable due to my gender identity and sexuality with two prayers that we say in Judaism: One “thanking G-d for making us in their image”, as this has been used against gay people throughout time; and the other, for men, “thanking G-d for not making me a woman” I see this as misogynist.
In any queer person’s life in the period of coming out, whilst close family grapple with the new understanding of our identity, that is when chosen family is vital to our existence and mental health.
At my name blessing party and ceremony, I was lucky to be surrounded by friends, family and chosen family, something that was hard to organise or think would be a wish that would come true in my younger days. The Massorti Movement is my chosen community as they are willing to challenge old traditions and values to ensure inclusivity. Practicing Judaism to me is as much a religion and a process, where we continually question and challenge ourselves to do what is ethically right, to me this meets with my keen interest in social justice as we are all responsible for the world around us. My chosen name is symbolic to where I am and the work I do today in the community with my faith, gender, and sexuality.
There are those in the Jewish community saying they are just ‘gender critical’, that hide their transphobia behind feminist thought and theory. My gender diverse siblings and I have the right to exist safely and without fear, we are not taking anything away from anyone’s right to exist. I agree with Alex Lantaffi who writes in their book ‘Gender Trauma’: “people who embrace TERF [trans exclusionary radical feminist] ideology view trans people as part of the problem and often even as oppressors. Instead of viewing the rigid policing of bodies as the issue, they adopt a rigid conceptualisation of gender based on biology and conflate genitals with identity and experience” (2021). I lived in fear about being public about my name blessing because of these people and because of the hostility my family may face from the Jewish community. For me living in fear or in silence is not a life worth living. My name blessing helped me to continue to find my voice in my faith community.
The things I want to do to feel more comfortable in my non-binary gender are very personal, all I want to do here is to acknowledge that I have begun a process, I am both nervous and excited.
The external debate around transgender and non-binary people, and the transphobia in the world is very hard to not internalise. The gender care process itself brings moments of self-doubt, moments of ‘am I genderqueer enough to do this?’ Every day I tell myself I am enough and need to do this for my own self-care. I often question myself what brings gender euphoria. As you will see from my photo from my name blessing celebration my name blessing was one of those gender euphoria moments.
This blog has been accepted to be published as a chapter in a LGBT+ Jewish Book anthology - details to follow. All words in this article are copyright Chai-Yoel Korn.