Welcome

BS”D

Welcome to The Dina Blog, an international blog for and by Jewish trans people and their families to share their stories, resources and support. This blog will be geared to trans people and their families who have some background within the Orthodox Jewish community.

Dina was the daughter of the Patriarch Jacob. According to the Midrash (Jewish lore), Dina was conceived male. When her mother Leah realized that Dina would be her seventh son and that she would have the majority of the destined twelve tribes, while her sister Rachel would only have one, she prayed that Dina should be born a girl. A miracle occurred, the rabbis tell us, and Dina was changed to female in the womb.

For that reason, this blog is named after her.

The reason we have created this blog is because of the unique challenges that are faced by this group within the Orthodox community, and the fact that frum trans people have almost no voice or visibility, individually and collectively, for the broader community to experience.

Many of the folks that will be posting here have a deep love for and commitment to Torah, Halacha, the Jewish family, the Jewish community, Jewish culture and Jewish traditions generally. Others may have had experiences that have led them to feel otherwise. Our intention is to provide a forum for open and honest expression of people’s experiences and feelings while remaining respectful of the diversity of experience, feelings, opinions and beliefs of others.

As this site grows, the administrators of this blog hope that people who are both frum and trans, or family of these folks, will share their life stories and experiences for the benefit of the frum trans community and the broader Jewish and general community as well.

We invite the community to contact the administrators of this site if you are interested in contributing (anonymously, if that is where your comfort level is at), with a few words about your background and why you are interested in becoming a contributing author.

Thank you for visiting. We hope that this site will grow and develop so as to be a source of information, support, and understanding.