Montclair resident takes a Hebrew name to mark her identity as transgender woman

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

On Jan. 29, Leslie Farber will mark her 50th birthday with a new Hebrew name — and a new Jewish ritual at the frontiers of gender identity.

Farber is a transgender female, a personal injury attorney with the given Hebrew name of Eliezer Zechariah who only recently began defining herself as a woman.

Farber’s friends will gather to formally welcome her into their midst as a woman with a brit min hadash, a ritual naming ceremony created for the occasion. The Montclair resident and member of the Montclair Reconstructionist synagogue B’nai Keshet will take the Hebrew name Aliza. The former Larry adopted her English name legally in July 2004.

The ceremony — created for her by Steven Goldstein, rabbinical student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and director of Garden State Equality, a New Jersey advocacy organization for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) community — will take place Jan. 29 at Goldstein’s Teaneck home.

Farber’s is not the first transgender naming ceremony to take place, according to Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, religious leader of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, a synagogue for the GLBT community in New York City. There, the synagogue has been offering transgender naming rituals for “six or seven” years.

Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco has been conducting transgender ceremonies for about the same length of time, according to Reuben Zellman, rabbinic intern at CBST and the first openly transgender student at the Hebrew Union College, the Reform rabbinical school.

Such ceremonies vary in content from person to person, but often involve being called up to the Torah using the person’s new name, according to Kleinbaum.

Although Goldstein and Farber are still working out the details, the ceremony is likely to include a minyan of 10 women offering readings, including those referring to the biblical figure of Miriam, and a candle lighting and Kiddush. In addition, Farber will sit in a “Miriam’s chair,” and guests will be served eggs, a symbol of life and womanhood. Throughout the ceremony, liturgy will be recited using feminine forms of address — for example, instead of the traditional blessing formula of “Baruch ata…’, the participants will say “Brucha at.”

The ceremony is based on other creative rituals, in particular the brit bat, a naming ceremony for baby girls, said Goldstein. Of course, he quipped, “Farber is a little too big to be cradled in her mother’s arms for this ceremony.”

Naming ceremonies appear to be just a first step in Judaism for transgender Jews. At CBST, Kleinbaum said, the congregation is moving beyond such rites to focus on larger issues of inclusion at the synagogue. “We’re looking at how to transform the synagogue so that transgender is part of the fabric of the community and not just a ritual here or there,” she said.

Kleinbaum also emphasized that these ceremonies should not focus on the idea of “changing” from one gender to another. “For many people it’s really the revelation of, or coming home to, the true self.”

For Farber, who was raised in Tenafly and attended Temple Emanu-El (now in Closter), Judaism has always been a source of meaning. She has long enjoyed lighting the Hanukka menora and Shabbat candles, and although she is not a regular synagogue-goer, she attends services with her mother on the High Holy Days. On the coffee table in her apartment sit several issues of Jewish Woman magazine.

When Goldstein suggested the ceremony, Farber initially found the idea “cool.” But, she said, the more she thought about it, the more she came to regard the ceremony as “sealing a spiritual bond with Judaism.”

The idea occurred to Goldstein while he and Farber were at a birthday party about a year ago. Goldstein said he asked Farber, “What’s your Hebrew name?” When she told him “Eliezer Zecharia,” he said, “‘Okay, but what’s your woman Hebrew name?’ ‘I don’t have one,’ [she replied]. And I could see the thought process start in her head.”

“I had never thought about it,” said Farber. “It was like reconnecting to another part of my identity.”

Farber began to gradually come out as a woman about 11 years ago but said she made the switch to being a woman full-time about a year and a half ago. A solo practitioner, she said her clients’ only concern was, “Will this affect my case?”

Farber was motivated to join a synagogue shortly after moving to Montclair in February 2004. “I feel very recognized and welcomed at B’nai Keshet,” she said. “I could be myself. The idea of being accepted in my religion was great.” When she spoke with B’nai Keshet’s Rabbi Elliott Tepperman about her identity, she said, “It was a total non-issue for him.”

“That’s true,” said Tepperman. “B’nai Keshet is a welcoming congregation to gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals. Personally, a key theological tenet for me is that all of us are created in the image of God. We are all reflections of the Divine Spirit, and that’s not hard to see with Leslie.”

As defined by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, transgender people are individuals of any sex whose identity or behavior is perceived to be gender “atypical” or falls outside of stereotypical gender norms. According to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the term includes individuals who have, and those who have not, undergone sex reassignment surgery. GLAAD prefers “transgender” to “transsexual,” although it acknowledges that the latter, a medical term, is preferred by some transgender people.

For Farber, issues about genital “equipment” miss the point of gender identity.

Recognition of gender identity varies among the Jewish movements. The Reconstructionist movement recognizes the gender of a person as the individual defines it, as does the Reform movement, which accepted Zellman into its rabbinical program in 2003. In the same year, the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center issued a statement saying it was a strong advocate for GLBT rights.

The Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards recently issued a policy paper written by Rabbi Mayer Rabinowitz recognizing the changed gender identity of people who have undergone full sex reassignment surgery, and suggesting that a new name should be given through a Misheberah, a traditional prayer formula asking for God’s blessing.

The Orthodox Union declined to comment for this article, but a widely accepted teshuva written by Rabbi J. David Bleich takes the position that gender is fixed at birth and that any medical operation to change it violates Jewish tenets against mutilation.

According to Goldstein, part of the purpose of the naming ceremony is to raise the level of acceptance of transgender individuals within people’s families and across the community. “This is about dozens of friends not just accepting her but celebrating her,” said Goldstein. “It’s not different from a gay couple getting married. In each case, family members see all the love in the room. They will all see that this is right and proper.”

And he added that it’s also about celebrating life-cycle events within Jewish ritual. “Why shouldn’t she have the right to celebrate her life’s milestones?” said Goldstein. “We in the GLBT community have the right to have simhas just like straight people do.”

Johanna Ginsberg can be reached at jginsberg@njjewishnews.com.

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