Trans Day of Remembrance, for the Milwaukee Jewish Federation (2024)
Today is Trans Day of Remembrance, of course, designed to commemorate the many, brilliant, and beautiful lives that are lost in our community every day to violence and hatred.
May our memories be a blessing.
I do believe that remembering our losses is essential to our integrity and to our humanity - and I think too, to our Jewishness.
While writing this, I am thinking… Trans Day of Remembrance has a second meaning. It is also a day where trans people (including non-binary people, like me) - it’s a day designed for trans people (for us) to remember. For us to practice commemorating our lost loved ones. Perhaps also for us to grieve other losses. Maybe trans day of remembrance’s second meaning is a day where we can remember broadly - our loved ones who lost their lives to hatred, violence and exclusion, and our other losses, sometimes of family, community, jobs, or safety, maybe even our break ups, and maybe even other important threads of our lives: our great loves, our loved ones, our passions, our achievements, our reasons to smile, and our bright days.
15 years ago as a younger genderqueer person, and then later when non-binary became a word as a younger non-binary person, I lived and worked with so many trans and non-binary friends and family. Something that my roommates, coworkers and friends used to complain about was that we only had one holiday as trans people and that it was so deeply sad.
We used to try to do special things for one another on TDOR, and the day before and the day after, to sort of brighten the vibe.
We also used to call each other on TDOR pulling our hair out saying “Oh my god I’ve gotten ten or twenty condolence texts from cis people today and this is WEIRD like I am alive and this feels WEIRD.” Eventually, someone came up with the really good idea (I think) that is Trans Day of Visibility and it sort of elevated the vibe. Leveled the holiday field, you know? We got a sad one, we got a celebratory one. I like that. Baruch Hashem.
One time, in my 30s, a younger trans person made a post on the dating app Lex “Hi I’m trans and I don’t know anyone trans over 30 and I can’t picture my life. Are you trans and over 30 and can we have coffee?”
At coffee, I told them about my life and my career and the fixer upper that I had purchased and was renovating. I told them also about all of my trans friends in our 30s, 40s, and 50s - what everyone did for work and what state they lived in and their relationships and about their kids.
And on that day at coffee, I didn’t talk about the trans friends I’ve lost to suicide, addiction, bullying, state violence, and other violence.
When I lose my trans friends (and other people in my life), I turn to my faith. Judaism offers us rituals for grief.
Maia Leonardo, my fellow board member at Trans Lifeline
My grandmother, this summer
When I lose people, I always recite Kaddish:
Glorified and sanctified be god’s great name throughout the world which he has created according to his will. May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and during your days, and within the life of the entire house of those who wrestle with god, speedily and soon, and say, amen. May his great name be blessed forever and to all eternity. Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the holy one, blessed be he, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world, and say amen. May there be abundance peace from heaven, and life, for us and all who wrestle with god, and say amen. He who creates peace in his celestial heights, may he create peace for us and for all who wrestle with god, and say amen.
I would like to recognize a different sort of loss - a unique loss - that I experienced in the past year, as a non-binary person and a Jewish person remembering the very horrifically tragic year that we just lived through together. The unique thing that I lost, in the face of so much grief last year, is a lot of fear.
For one, I feared that my heart would not be big enough to hold the magnitude of the loss and grief our communities experienced last year.
Last year we lost the lives of 320 trans people, and we know that number is bigger than is reported.
Last year I lost my grandma.
Now - let me say - my whole life, I was raised to understand that Jews and Muslims are cousins (like in Torah). Last year we lost the lives of over a thousand Jews and tens of thousands of Palestinians. This really troubles me. I was raised to know us as cousins.
That was a lot of loss in my and in our lives last year. I was afraid my heart would not be big enough to hold all of it.
There is a second fear I lost this year. I’ve feared that the potions of the Jewish community in Milwaukee might turn on me, if I am brave enough to face the magnitude of every life that we have lost. I have been sad, worried, and troubled by the fear that I might be unwelcome in some Jewish spaces if I refuse to value our lives and our cousins' lives differently. I hear from many other Jews that they are fearful of being shunned or exiled by certain people in the Jewish community too.
This second fear of mine is silly. Our Jewish community is strong enough to hold me, in all of my complexity, my empathy and my grief. I believe our Jewish community has become more accepting and more inclusive over my lifetime. I believe our Jewish community has thousands of years of practice wrestling with god and hard subjects. I lean on our Jewish traditions, for coping with loss and for navigating tough conversations, as a non-binary person.
My friend does this thing that I really like where they ask people to hum, as a way of bringing everybody in the room together (and also, back into our bodies).
In remembrance of the tens of thousands of Palestinian, Jewish, and trans lives that I lost (that maybe we lost) last year, I’m wondering if we could all join together in one hum.
[hum]
And once more, in remembrance of the more than 320 trans lives that we lost this past year, I’m wondering if we could all join together in one hum.
[hum]
May our memories be a blessing.