Profiles

SHIFRA’S STORY

I suspect that some people reading this blog would assume that transsexual people with frum backgrounds are few and far between. This is simply not true. The distribution of Gender Identity Disorder is roughly even across different cultures including people from yeshivish and chassidish backgrounds.

Any non-transgender person from the Yeshivish or Chasidish world would automatically assume that even if someone did suffer from gender dysphoria, it could be controlled by being involved with learning and through self-control. I also thought this, until I realized it could not be done. The feelings of living in the wrong gender are overwhelming, and eventually drive people to seriously consider suicide, r”l.

This is not to say that I didn’t try very hard to “rid myself” of these feelings. During my teens I “fought” my gender dysphoria by learning endlessly- to the tune of 13 hours a day. Still, it was very often that I cried myself to sleep. I eventually overcame my very intense fear of talking about the subject with a rav, and actually spoke with a chassidishe Rebbe about it. He told me to go to the mikvah every day, learn chassidishe sefarim, force myself to get married and above all daven to Hashem that he take away this nisayon from me.

I followed the rebbe’s advice to the letter, resulting in a very short, unhappy marriage. And eventually I could not deal with my feelings of being in the wrong gender to the point where the fear of being rejected by everyone I knew, being kicked out of my house, etc. even were not effective deterrents. I was lucky enough to have my father’s understanding and relative support, given my very difficult situation, but many are not as lucky.

Many transsexual people are kicked out of their homes. I cannot even begin to explain how difficult it is for people who come from frum backgrounds to adapt to the non-Jewish or non-frum culture, which is like being a new immigrant in a new, alien country. This adds to the usual difficulty transgender people have finding work, and some end up without any means of support, as do many other non-Jewish transgender people.

For someone raised in an atmosphere of Torah this must be incredibly difficult, and I was lucky enough never to be in the situation where I did not have a parnasah, but not everyone is so lucky. Even when people don’t end up without any income or home, and even when they don’t become estranged from their families, it’s very often that people lose all their connection to Yiddishkeit. The result is that they don’t fit in the Jewish world that rejects them, nor in the non-Jewish world they don’t understand, an incredible feeling of loneliness and isolation.

I consider myself to still be frum, I keep shabbos and kashrus, daven every day, learn every day and dress according to what would be considered tznius (modesty) in a native female.

Still, I have lost all kesher with the people I knew before transition. I’m too afraid to talk to my old rebbeim from yeshivah, to my former friends, classmates, etc. even though after so many years I do miss them a lot. I have gone anonymously to shul where people don’t know me which has been an incredible chizuk. I long to be once again part of a heimishe community, but the idea that eventually people would investigate where I came from and find out about my transsexual status has been just too scary.

Another common misconception in the frum community and elsewhere is that transsexuality is about sexual attraction and self-control issues. It’s not. I was never sexually active before my marriage, nor have I been sexually active since, to this day.

If I could ask the people in the frum community anything, I would ask them to please find it in their hearts to be lomed zchus on people like me, and thus not to exclude us from the community, whether it be by asking us to leave, through harassment or through extreme indifference. I would never have the chutzpah to tell rabbanim how to pasken on something, or to imply chas veshalom that the Torah should change in deference to me. There are, however, the teshuvos of the Tzitz Eliezer, as well as the very strong argument and reality of pikuach nefesh which should at least be enough for a limud zechus.

Shifra