Crossing the Mechitza: A Transgender Perspective

“Why not?” I asked. “I’m happy to do it. I’m going out anyway.”

“Because you’re a kohen,” he explained. “You’re better than me. I can’t ask you to lower yourself by serving a mere yisrael.”

One sunny day, a few months later, I went to a synagogue I’d never been to before. Nobody said hello. They smiled, and yet I felt unwelcome. That changed after the Torah service, when they discovered I was the only kohen in attendance. After services, a man greeted me on my way out the door: “Good morning, kohen.” That’s what I was to him. A kohen. A man, a priest, whom he’s obligated to respect.

I had so much privilege in Jewish spaces, back when everyone thought I was a man… and not just a man, but a descendent of the ancient high priests. I took it very seriously. I taught college students and retirees how to duchen (to convey the Aaronic blessing) on the holidays. I taught my father how to wrap tefillin. I read Torah, Haftarah, and every megillah. I was honored with aliyot. I led services. I learned in yeshiva. And while women have done all of these things in non-Orthodox spaces, as I often did, too, I also did them in Orthodox spaces… spaces where I will never again have such privilege. Because now, unlike before, I sit on the women’s side.

When I came out publicly as a transgender woman, in December 2019, all of my privilege flew out the window. I’m not complaining, but it’s a fact of life. If I am to remain in Orthodox spaces, then I’m no longer permitted to duchen, wrap tefillin, read Torah, or lead services. No longer do I count in a minyan, nor can I serve as a gabbai or shofar blower. Honestly? I don’t miss all of it. Sometimes, I’m happy to just be a congregant. But life on the women’s side is different. Not worse, necessarily, but oh, so very different.

My first time sitting on the women’s side at my Modern Orthodox synagogue, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought that maybe I’d feel some spiritual surge, either intense discomfort or overwhelming excitement. I didn’t. I felt… home. I felt peaceful. I felt like I belonged. I felt like I was in a space where I had always belonged, where I should have always been, and where finally, after a third of a century, I could at last return.

I bless and thank God that my Modern Orthodox community has embraced me as the woman I am. I moved here last summer, a year and a half into my transition, and not everyone could tell that I’m trans. I look like a woman. I talk like a woman. I dress like a woman. And those who found out, or those whom I told (like the rabbi),

have welcomed me all the same. The rabbi treats me entirely as a woman. He introduces me as a woman, and has given me honors that, in our community, are reserved for women: carrying the Torah on the women’s side during Hoshanah Rabbah; reciting the Prayer for our Country; dancing with the women on Simchat Torah; and leading youth programming on Shabbat and holidays. The other women have embraced me as “one of the ladies,” including a now-close friend who enjoys giving me makeup and jewelry advice in the women’s bathroom during kiddush.

As the weeks wore on, I felt more and more comfortable and heymish (at home) on the women’s side. But then came Rosh Hashanah, one of the few days, outside of Israel, when kohanim bless the congregation. When the rabbi asked the kohanim to proceed to the social hall, where the levi’im were waiting to wash the kohanim’s hands in preparation for the priestly blessing, I felt suddenly gutted. My mind flashed with memories… memories of doing exactly this, as a kohen, as a man, every day in yeshiva in Jerusalem, on holidays at the Western Wall, at campus Hillels and small-town synagogues in upstate New York and Michigan. My mind flashed with vivid memories of teaching college students and retirees how to do it: how to take off their shoes without using their hands; how to wrap themselves head-to-toe in their tallit; how to recite the preparatory blessing; and how to watch my feet as I turned around so they, too, would know when to turn around to face the congregation and, hands outstretched under cover of their tallit, recite the priestly blessing.

The emotions overwhelmed me: never again will I be able to do this. It felt like my world was crumbling. This ritual, which had been such a huge component of my pre-transition religious life and identity, was now forever closed to me, and I had to sit there and watch others perform these rituals as I quietly sat with the women.

I couldn’t stand it. I quickly rose from my chair and fled to the women’s bathroom, ironically the one room in the entire building where I truly feel safe and alone. I sat down on the breastfeeding bench and stared at my makeup-covered face in the mirror. Through welling emotions, I said to myself: “So this is it now. This is my life. My old life is gone. This is who I am now.” I laid myself down, on the verge of tears, and closed my eyes for 10 minutes.

I do not regret my gender transition. My decision to transition was the greatest, most important, and most healing decision I have ever made in my entire life. For so many years, I wrestled with my gender, trying desperately to suppress the