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On Transgender Day of Remembrance, Jews join in to show support

For most, the experience of growing up as the Jewish child of a transgender father is recognizable only as the plot of the television series “Transparent.” But for Jackie Malie Mason, that was her childhood.
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November 22, 2016

For most, the experience of growing up as the Jewish child of a transgender father is recognizable only as the plot of the television series “Transparent.” But for Jackie Malie Mason, that was her childhood.

“Before my father rose from her ashes [as an out transgender woman], my relationship with Judaism wasn’t very passionate,” she said. But watching her mother’s Jewish family accept her father “with open arms,” even when her father’s own non-Jewish family didn’t, showed her that Judaism is a faith of “love and acceptance — and horseradish on Passover.”

Mason spoke on a panel to a group of some 70 people gathered on Nov. 20, Transgender Day of Remembrance, at the West Hollywood headquarters of JQ International.

Love and acceptance were the day’s watchwords at JQ’s Trans Equality Brunch, the largest gathering ever focused on transgender issues for the organization, an alliance of the Jewish and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities.

Guests were given nametags and asked to write their names and preferred gender pronouns, and then gathered on a small, open-air patio at JQ’s office on Santa Monica Boulevard for a brunch of lox and bagels. Inside, the men and women’s restrooms were papered with signs reading “whichever.”

“What an amazing moment this is in our history — and herstory, and theirstory,” Rabbi Rachel Bat-Or, the director of JQ’s call-in helpline, said as she introduced the panel that followed the brunch.

During the panel, Mason, along with two transgender women and one transgender man, took questions from moderator Laurie Tragen-Boykoff, a social worker who works in the transgender community.

Transgender Day of Remembrance is a nationally recognized event calling for empowerment of transgender individuals and their allies as well as reflection on lives lost to suicide and assault, both endemic in that community. 

The transgender panelists were invited to share their experiences with the crowd, many of whom came from sponsoring congregations Temple Beth Am, Temple Kol Tikvah, Beth Chayim Chadashim (an LGBT congregation), and the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue.

“How many of you have tried to keep an inflatable beach ball underwater?” said Mike/Michelle Dennis. “It’s really hard, right? Well that’s what I did for 50 years.”

Dennis, who is 74, said she uses both names to foster questions that lead to understanding.

Jake Hofheimer is a more recent initiate to the transgender family. The 17-year-old is a senior at the New Roads School in Santa Monica and a member of Temple Israel of Hollywood. He said at the event that both communities have proved very supportive of his transition.

But support from the Jewish community has not been monolithic. On a trip he went on with the Religious Action Center, the social justice arm of the Reform movement, a teen from Oklahoma began making demeaning comments toward transgender people, calling them disgusting and mentally ill. When Hofheimer said that he was transgender, the teen was surprised.

“He said, ‘Oh, I kind of thought you were a normal dude,’ ” Hofheimer recalled. “‘I was like, ‘Well, what is normal?’ ”

After the panel, many participants headed around the corner to a vigil at the West Hollywood Library. Despite televisions that flanked the stage showing flickering candles, the atmosphere was festive: Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” played over the sound system as a couple danced in the back, and behind the stage members of a mariachi band tuned their instruments. 

Rain fell steadily; in the covered plaza of the library, though, spirits were high. Hosted by West Hollywood’s Transgender Advisory Board, a first-of-its-kind government panel, the event drew some 300 attendees, who sat in folding chairs and cheered raucously for statements of solidarity and calls for transgender empowerment.

But when the day’s speakers addressed the crowd, their message was somber, recalling the memory of the transgender individuals who died this past year. 

Taking the stage, Hofheimer told the crowd how he was continuously humiliated at his all-girls middle school, even facing physical harassment for being a “tomboy.”

Many speakers referenced the presidential election earlier this month as cause for concern. Mention of Vice President-elect Mike Pence drew loud boos.

“Especially now — what’s happening in national politics — it’s more important than ever to come together, because we really are stronger together,” West Hollywood Mayor Lauren Meister told the Journal as she prepared to go onstage.

Meister said she’s motivated by her personal identity as a Jewish woman to ally herself with the transgender community.

“Knowing our history, we have to stand with minorities who are trying to get to equality,” she said.

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