Uncategorized
Queer yeshiva to publish first-ever collection of Jewish legal opinions written by and for trans Jews
(JTA) — In the midst of writing a 13-page analysis of a complex area of Jewish law, Rabbi Xava De Cordova found something she wasn’t expecting to see in the medieval-era sources: flexibility.
De Cordova is transgender and had long wondered whether she could feel a sense of belonging while studying reams of rabbinic writings on halacha, or Jewish law, which stretch back thousands of years and often prescribe different practices for men and women.
The laws of ritual purity, for example, prescribe specific behaviors for women on the assumption that they all menstruate. Trans women do not. De Cordova said that gap and others had her thinking, “I don’t really know if I can find a place for myself in this literature.”
But after digging into Jewish texts on the topic, De Cordova realized she’d sold the sages short: Medieval European rabbis were asking many of the same questions she was — and their answers reflected real-world complexity.
“I just found that the rabbis and the early halachic authorities’ understanding of niddah was so much more conceptual and vague and fluctuating than I ever realized before I started this particular work,” De Cordova said, using the Hebrew term for purity laws. Her conclusion: “Wow, there’s so much space for me within this literature.”
De Cordova’s realization is one of many that a dozen Jewish scholars and rabbis have had over the last year as they have scoured Jewish texts for guidance on how transgender Jews can adapt traditional rituals to their lived experience. Now, the group is preparing to release a batch of their essays, analyses of Jewish law called teshuvot, in hopes that they can inform the experiences of trans Jews who seek to live in accordance with traditional Jewish law.
The release of the essays comes at a time when lawmakers in dozens of states are targeting trans people and their rights, in some cases instigating fights that have heavily involved rabbis and their families.
In that climate, writing trans Jews into Jewish tradition “becomes an act of resistance because it’s about celebrating lives that are being demeaned and celebrating people who are being dehumanized in the public sphere,” said Rabbi Becky Silverstein, co-director of the Trans Halakha Project at Svara, the yeshiva founded in Chicago two decades ago to serve the queer community. The dozen rabbis and scholars are based at Svara and collectively form the Teshuva Writing Project.
Among the questions they have tackled: How could a trans man converting to Judaism have a bris, required for male converts? Is the removal of body tissue after gender-affirming surgery a ritual matter, given Jewish legal requirements for burying body parts? And is there a Jewish obligation, in certain cases, to undergo gender transition?
Just how widely their answers will be consumed and taken into account is a question. Most Jews who consciously adhere to halacha throughout their daily lives are Orthodox, and live in communities that either reject trans Jews or are reckoning with whether and how to accept them. Non-Orthodox Jewish denominations have made efforts to embrace trans Jews, but halacha is less often the starting point for most of their members. The Reform movement, the largest in the United States, expressly rejects halacha as binding.
Still, a growing number of Jews and Jewish communities strive to be inclusive while staying rooted in Jewish law and tradition. There are also a growing number of trans Jews who are connected to traditional communities, or who want to live in accordance with Jewish law.
“I think individual trans Jews who are not part of communities could use these teshuvot to guide their own decision-making,” said Silverstein, who was ordained at the pluralistic Hebrew College seminary. “We live in a time of religious autonomy in Jewish life, and where trans Jews actually are hungry for connection to tradition. And so they could use these teshuvot to help inform their own conversations.”
Organizations and initiatives such as the Jewish LGBTQ group Keshet; Torah Queeries, a collection of queer commentaries on the Bible; and TransTorah.org have created rituals, readings, blessings and customs for trans Jews, and Svara runs a Queer Talmud Camp as well as intensive Jewish study programs throughout the year. But until now, no collection of Jewish legal opinions has been published by and for trans people.
“Halacha has to be informed by the real lived experiences of the people about whom it is legislating,” said Laynie Soloman, who helps lead Svara and holds the title of associate rosh yeshiva, in an approach that they said the group had adopted from the disability advocacy community. “That is a fundamental truth about halacha that we are holding as a collective and taking seriously in the way we are authoring these teshuvot.”
The teshuvot will be published later this month, and follow a long tradition of rabbis setting halachic precedent by answering questions from their followers. Those answers are traditionally based on an analysis of rabbinic texts throughout history. They can address questions ranging from whether smoking cigarettes is permissible to the particulars of making a kitchen kosher for Passover.
Some Jewish legal questions tackled by the group at Svara had not previously been answered, such as how to mark conversion for someone who is male but does not have a penis. In other cases, accepted Jewish law pertaining to gender can be painful for those who are nonbinary or trans, either because the answer is not clear or because the law does not match up with contemporary understandings that gender and sex are distinct.
“[Those are] areas where trans people are sort of most likely to either feel lost themselves or be interrogated by their community. … And so they’re sort of these urgent halachic needs,” said De Cordova, who was privately ordained by a rabbi from the Renewal Judaism movement. “And 99.9% of the literature about them so far has been written by cis people, about us.”
De Cordova concluded that trans women are obligated in niddah, the ritual purity laws. In her teshuva, she provides several approaches to emulate the complicated counting cycle that tallies the days a woman is considered ritually impure following menstruation. She suggests using a seven- and 11-day cycle originally proposed by Maimonides, the 12th-century scholar and philosopher. De Cordova also suggests that the imposition of a cycle not based in biology means ancient and medieval rabbis had some understanding of womanhood as a social construct.
“There’s many cases in which the rabbis sort of choose to orient niddah around their understanding of women, which I would call the social construction of womanhood by rabbis, rather than observable physical phenomenon or actual women’s experience,” she said.
For De Cordova, the experience of writing about niddah provided her with new insights about some of the oldest Jewish legal texts on the subject.
“They’re flexible enough and sort of responsive enough that I can really find a lot of freedom and space in working with them,” she said of the ancient sources. “And that was just a really sort of wonderful and freeing transition to go through.”
Last year, the Conservative Movement approved new language for calling up a nonbinary person to various Torah honors. The rabbis behind the opinion consulted with groups serving LGBTQ Jews and synagogues centered on them, but acknowledged that they were imperfect authors.
“When my coauthors and I published the teshuva, we wrote in it that we are all cisgender rabbis and that we hope that, increasingly, halachic work dealing with nonbinary and trans and queer Jewish life and identity and practice will… come from queer rabbis and scholars themselves,” said Guy Austrian, the rabbi of the Fort Tryon Jewish Center, a synagogue in upper Manhattan. “And I think the publication of the first batch of teshuvot from the Trans Halakha Project shows that that process is underway, and I think that that can only be a good thing for the Jewish world.”
Scholars at Svara, the queer yeshiva based in Chicago, have served the Jewish LGBTQ community for two decades and are now creating the first written set of Jewish law by and for trans Jews. (Jess Benjamin)
Adding to the question-and-answer tradition of Jewish legal opinions means trans Jews will now have new texts to guide their religious practice, Silverstein said. Trans Jews, the writers of the opinions acknowledge, already have their own ways of performing Jewish ritual that accords with their lived experience. But they say that when it comes to Jewish law, informal custom without a sourced legal opinion is not enough.
“I want cis[gender] clergy to realize that there are resources written by and for trans people that they can turn to when they’re trying to help a member of their congregation,” De Cordova said.
The authors of the legal opinions applied to be part of the collective and come from a religiously pluralistic group, ranging in affiliation from Orthodox to Conservative to Jewish Renewal. They have varying expectations for how far-reaching the impact of the new legal opinions will be.
Mike Moskowitz, an Orthodox rabbi and the scholar-in-residence for trans and queer Jewish studies at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, which serves the LGBTQ community, said the teshuvot could provide a model for observant Jews who are also trans.
“I think it’s significant in modeling what an informed conversation can look like, which hasn’t really happened in Orthodox publications,” said Moskowitz, who was not part of the collective that composed the teshuvot on trans Jews’ practice. “I hope this models what can be done in other movements. What’s been tricky is that every movement has a different understanding of what halacha means.”
Even within Orthodoxy, conflicting opinions already exist, in a reflection of how halacha has always operated. For example, Talia Avrahami, a transgender Orthodox woman, follows the opinion of the late Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, known as the Tzitz Eliezer, who ruled that a trans woman who undergoes gender affirmation surgery is a woman according to Jewish law. But Avrahami was told she could not sit in the women’s section of her synagogue, because the rabbi who the synagogue follows does not accept Waldenberg’s opinion. Months earlier, Avrahami had also been asked to leave her teaching job at an Orthodox day school after students and parents learned that she was transgender.
Avrahami declined to comment on the new teshuvot, citing restrictions set by her current employer.
Silverstein says some Conservative rabbis have expressed interest in using the opinions to guide practice in their own congregations. But he is less sure if they will be adopted in the Orthodox community, which is the target audience for most traditional literature on Jewish law.
“When it comes to the Orthodox community, I’m not sure I am bold enough to dream that these teshuvot specifically are going to be adopted,” Silverstein said. “I’m not even sure I know what that means. But it is my hope that they will permeate throughout the Jewish community, at least through the Modern Orthodox community.”
The scope of the opinions written by the collective extends beyond the trans community. The first batch of answers, for example, includes an opinion about how to increase physical accessibility to a mikvah, ritual baths used to fulfill some requirements of Jewish law.
“Judaism thrives and Torah thrives when people are bringing their life experiences to the text and asking their questions of the text,” Silverstein said. “That’s how new Torah is uncovered in the world. And that’s how Judaism and Torah has stayed alive through so much of Jewish history.”
—
The post Queer yeshiva to publish first-ever collection of Jewish legal opinions written by and for trans Jews appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
California Democrat Scott Wiener Accuses Israel of ‘Genocide’ in Sharp Reversal Following Debate Backlash
California State Sen. Scott Weiner. Photo: Screenshot
California State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat seeking to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the US Congress, announced on Sunday that he believes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza meets the definition of “genocide,” a sharp reversal from a recent debate in which he declined to use the term.
Wiener’s declaration came after a contentious candidate forum last week in San Francisco, during which he declined to answer a direct question about whether he believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. That hesitation was met with jeers from the audience.
In a video posted Sunday on the X social media platform, Wiener, who is Jewish, said he had “stopped short of calling it genocide, but I can’t anymore,” citing the “devastation and catastrophic death toll” in Gaza as justification for using the term. Weiner also accused Israeli officials of making “genocidal” statements while justifying their military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and claimed that Israel schemed to “destroy Gaza and push Palestinians out.”
The state senator also acknowledged the emotional weight the word holds for many Jews, given its origins in describing the Holocaust.
For years, I’ve condemned Netanyahu and his extremist government and the devastation they’ve inflicted on Gaza. It’s why I’ve been clear I won’t support U.S. funding for the destruction of Palestinian communities. I’ve stopped short of calling it genocide, but I can’t anymore. pic.twitter.com/71nIt6K527
— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) January 11, 2026
Denying accusations of genocide, Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Wiener’s accusation of genocide marks a complete reversal not only from his recent debate answer but also from a new profile of him published in The Atlantic, in which he denied accusations of genocide lobbed at Israel and decried the weaponization of the war in Gaza as a “purity test.” He compared such ideological mandates to medieval attempts to divide the Jewish community between “good Jews” and “bad Jews.” Weiner also argued that Jewish liberals are being pushed out of progressive spaces if they don’t demonstrate sufficient hatred for Israel.
“If part of your Jewishness is, you know, that you support the homeland of the Jews and the home of one-half of all Jews on the planet, then that makes you a bad Jew,” Weiner said. “If you’re not willing to use the exact language that we want you to use, then you’re a bad Jew.”
The article came out on Sunday, the same day of his social media post accusing Israel of genocide.
Weiner has been a frequent target of anti-Israel demonstrators. In October, a group of agitators confronted the state lawmaker and accused him of supporting “genocide.”
Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Michigan, similarly lamented that accusations of “genocide” against Israel are becoming a “purity test” within Democratic primaries. She argued in a new interview with Detroit Public Radio that there exists a “broadly shared goal among most Michiganders, that this violence needs to stop, that a temporary cease fire needs to become a permanent cease fire, that Palestinians deserve long term peace and security, that Israelis deserve long term peace and security.”
However, the candidate argued, “I also feel like we are getting lost in this conversation, and it feels like a political purity test on a word — a word that, by the way, to people who lost family members in the Holocaust, does mean something very different and very visceral.”
McMorrow, who has previously claimed she agrees that Israel committed a so-called “genocide” in Gaza, suggested that some candidates in the race are “using this as a political weapon and fundraising off of it.” Abdul El-Sayeed, a progressive Democrat in the Senate race, has condemned Israel for committing “genocide” and has called for an arms embargo on the Jewish state.
Uncategorized
Megyn Kelly Gushes Over Nick Fuentes: ‘There Is Value to Be Derived From That Guy’s Messaging’
Megyn Kelly hosts a “prove me wrong” session during AmericaFest, the first Turning Point USA summit since the death of Charlie Kirk, in Phoenix, Arizona, US, Dec. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin O’Hara
Megyn Kelly expressed her sympathies for white nationalist Nick Fuentes and antisemite Candace Owens, two Holocaust deniers who are rising in popularity among millennials and Gen Zers, in a video interview with fellow right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson published last week.
Immediately following the murder of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk last year, Owens began promoting the conspiracy theory of Israeli involvement, sentiments likewise promoted by Carlson.
“And then came Candace Owens. And she really drives people crazy. She drives them crazy,” Kelly said, provoking snickers from Carlson. “Very angry. I didn’t call her out for Israel possibly being involved with Charlie Kirk. Well, I didn’t call her out because I was totally fine with those questions being raised.”
Kelly then raised her open palm to her face and declared, “And still am!”
Carlson cackled again in response and Kelly continued, insisting, “But I am. I’m sick of this bulls–t. I’m allowed to have questions about what if anyone aligned with Israel or from Israel might have had to do with Charlie’s death.”
Kelly: “I am sick of this ********! I am allowed to have questions about what if, anyone, aligned with Israel or from Israel might have had to do with Charlie’s death.”
She’s gone, folks. Stop giving her the benefit of the doubt.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) January 8, 2026
In October, Florida state Attorney General James Uthmeier announced charges against Nicholas Ray of Spring, Texas for alleged death threats made with a “zionistarescum” X account against Jewish conservatives identified online by Owens as allegedly involved in Kirk’s murder.
There has been no actual evidence showing Israeli complicity in Kirk’s murder, for which Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged. He was romantically involved with his transgender roommate, and prosecutors have reportedly argued that Kirk’s anti-trans rhetoric was a key factor that allegedly led him to shoot the Turning Point USA founder.
Kelly also praised Fuentes during her conversation with Carlson.
“He’s very interesting and he’s very smart,” Kelly said of Fuentes, who has praised Adolf Hitler. “And on a lot of things there is value to be derived from that guy’s messaging. I’m sorry, but he actually has a lot of things he talks about that you’re like ‘that’s not a bad point about our country.’”
Adopting a mocking affectation, Kelly said, “I won’t condemn and say that Candace Owens is hateful. They want me really, really badly to condemn Candace Owens. And I’m sorry to break it to them but I am responsible for what I say. Not for what anybody else says. I am not Candace Owens’s policeman. And by the way they’re kidding themselves that if just one more voice will say something nasty about Candace she can finally be controlled.”
In response to right-wing X influencer Ian Miles Cheong (who has 1.2 million followers and reportedly posts from Malaysia) sharing a clip of this statement, Kelly raged back: “You’re a pathetic misinformation whore. I was explaining why young white men are listening to Fuentes & made clear that while I believe he makes interesting points about the govt etc I was not speaking about his thoughts on Jews, women, blacks etc. F–k you & your lies.”
In December, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) released a report analyzing online support for Fuentes, suggesting he has received a major boost from inauthentic amplification by anonymous actors in foreign countries such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia. For example, the research revealed that “in a sample of 20 recent posts, 61% of Fuentes’s first-30-minute retweets came from accounts that retweeted multiple of these 20 posts within that same ultra-short window – behavior highly suggestive of coordination or automation.”
Earlier this month, Owens blamed Zionists for inspiring US President Donald Trump to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
On Tuesday, Fuentes wrote on X in reference to Venezuela: “Your oil, our choice. Forever [American flag rmoji],” a reference to his infamous popularization of the phrase “your body, my choice” among his Groyper followers.
Fuentes described his views on Venezuela on Jan. 3, explaining that while he thought the military action “initially seemed like a solid operation to cleanly, bloodlessly, and quickly remove Maduro from power last night” he thought “this new policy of ‘running Venezuela’ with US soldiers sounds like a massive over-commitment. I have zero confidence in nation-building. Big mistake.”
The next day Fuentes continued on X, articulating his foreign policy vision of banditry, fantasizing, “Now that Venezuela has been liberated, we must send every single Venezuelan illegal, refugee, and criminal back home. Take the oil, remigrate the foreigners.”
On Sunday, Fuentes promoted another conspiracy theory, asserting that “the chaos in Iran is totally astroturfed by Israel and the US for regime change. This was always their endgame after over a decade of industrial sabotage, sanctions, political subversion, & espionage. Why do you think Iran wanted nuclear weapons? To prevent this exact scenario.”
Uncategorized
Fundraiser for ICE agent who killed Renee Good includes antisemitic attack on Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey
(JTA) — Supporters of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot and killed Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis last week are flocking to an online fundraiser to, in its organizer’s words, “Defend the Agent Who Stopped a Deadly Attack on America’s Border Enforcers!”
Included in the fundraiser’s pitch: antisemitic language directed at the city’s Jewish mayor, Jacob Frey.
After stating that Good had engaged “in a blatant act of domestic terrorism aimed at killing or maiming the men protecting our borders from the endless invasion,” the description continued: “But this didn’t happen in a vacuum — it’s the direct result of anti-American traitors like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (who is Jewish) fanning the flames of resistance.”
The description went on to call Frey a “sanctuary city traitor” and states, “His rhetoric empowers violent agitators, turning Minneapolis into a warzone for our heroes enforcing the law and deporting the hordes that weak leaders like him protect.”
The fundraiser was posted Jam. 7 on GiveSendGo, a crowdfunding website popular with right-wing causes, and has raised more than $186,000 of its $200,000 goal as of Monday afternoon. The co-founder of GiveSendGo, Jacob Wells, has promoted the campaign extensively and claims to have corresponded directly with the ICE agent, Jonathan Ross.
“God bless you all! Keep sharing,” Wells wrote on the social network X, receiving positive responses from the actor Dean Cain, among others.
After being circulated online and verified by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the clause “(who is Jewish)” was removed from the description of Frey late Monday.
The campaign’s organizer is named as “Tom Hennessey,” and appears to have launched the fundraiser before Ross himself was identified. The campaign does not name Ross.
An account named “TomHennessey69” on X who has claimed credit for the fundraiser bills himself as a “white independent journalist” and “soap enthusiast.” In addition to a stream of anti-immigration rhetoric, Hennessey has also made several antisemitic posts, including one on Monday that blamed Jews for the recent Hanukkah mass shooting in Australia.
“Notice the pattern? Jews arrive in Australia, flood it with non-Whites. Non-Whites rampage—eventually turning on Jews. Jews then push new anti-semitism laws aka free speech bans, gun control to disarm Whites, and ban White nationalist groups for noticing,” Hennessey wrote, adding, “Australia, not a good look for jewish diaspora, many such cases.” In another reply to his post, Hennessey endorsed a neo-Nazi account’s pro-Hitler message.
Hennessey has also used similar language as the fundraiser’s to describe his own Jewish opponents.
Online, the GiveSendGo link has been promoted by figures including Turning Point USA pundit Jack Posobiec and Minnesota-based right-wing journalist Liz Collin.
It is not the only fundraiser to have been set up by self-proclaimed supporters of Ross since Good’s killing. A separate campaign without antisemitic language launched on GoFundMe, a more mainstream crowdfunding website, has raised more than $467,000 to date since its launch on Friday.
The largest donation to date on the GoFundMe fundraiser, $10,000, came from Bill Ackman, the Jewish activist investor who has become a prominent advocate against antisemitism.
“I am [a] big believer in our legal principal [sic] that one is innocent until proven guilty,” Ackman wrote on X over the weekend, in a post about why he donated. He added that he had “intended to similarly support the gofundme for Renee Good’s family” but that “her gofundme was closed by the time I attempted to provide support.”
Comments online suggest that the two fundraisers for Ross may be linked and may have a direct line to Ross himself.
In a Sunday update, the GoFundMe campaign’s organizer, Clyde Emmons, wrote, “the creater [sic] of the givesendgo fund has direct contact with Johnathan! so I am in contact with him gave him my number and he said he would pass it onto John himself so I can finally add him as the beneficiary so he can get these funds he deserves.”
On X, Collin wrote that she was in contact with both organizers and that the GiveSendGo campaign is “now the preferred method to donate to the ICE agent.”
The fundraisers for Ross were launched partly as a response to a GoFundMe for Good’s family, which raised more than $1.5 million before its organizers closed donations.
“Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole,” that campaign’s organizers wrote.
Comparisons between ICE agents and Nazis or the Gestapo have grown since the agency has stepped up its presence in American cities under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans. Some Jewish communal leaders, including several in Minnesota, have vocally criticized ICE’s actions, with a few linking them to the memory of the Holocaust.
Since Good’s killing, Frey has vocally criticized ICE’s presence in Minneapolis, using an expletive in a press conference as he urged the agents to leave. The fundraiser’s description of the mayor notes this, also blasting Frey for his executive orders.
“These agents are the tip of the spear in reclaiming our country from the illegal invasion—deporting criminals, invaders, and threats that politicians like Frey invited in and shield,” the description states.
It concludes: “Stand tall: Donate today to send a message that we back the men removing illegals and invaders from our soil, no matter the sabotage from mayors who put foreigners over Americans. No apologies, no retreat—Mass Deportations Now!”
The post Fundraiser for ICE agent who killed Renee Good includes antisemitic attack on Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey appeared first on The Forward.