Passover

 I was going to wait till tomorrow to post this--because I know, four posts in one day--but I could not wait any longer to write about Passover: the biggest combination moment of my religious and gender journeys.  Additionally, I knew I had the time to sit down and create this post now, and I wanted to tread carefully with this one.

Passover begins tomorrow evening at sundown.  It's a momentous eight-day festival commemorating the Exodus from Egypt and our beginnings as a Jewish people.  (Don't get me started on whether Biblical stories are factually accurate.  363 days a year, no.  The seder evenings beginning Passover, ritual magic happens: for those evenings, yes, it's real.)  We begin the festival with two sedarim, singular seder: ritual feasts with an order of steps to recreate the Exodus narrative.  For days before Passover, we are cooking, cleaning, and buying food; on Passover, for the entire eight days, we do not eat any leavening.

Passover also marks the beginnings of my freedom in my gender.  The day before Passover is the Hebrew anniversary of my realizing I am nonbinary (gender fluidity is a subtype of nonbinary identity); a Passover seder was my first Jewish event as a nonbinary individual.  I owe a lot to the synagogue I was attending at the time, and with whom I celebrated that Passover seder.  They are an LGBTQ congregation, and without them I would not be standing on my own two feet as the Jew I am today.

Each Passover since has been special, and different from the one before, as my understanding of my gender and how I wish to express it evolves.  This year I am really enjoying exploring and welcoming my feminine side; most likely I will wear fancy dresses, with jewelry, both nights.  And yes, Gabriel who wears dresses is startling to some, and I commonly get people thinking they must have misheard my name when I introduce myself; and no, I really do not care.  My gender expression is about me.

I know God welcomes me in all of my complexities; I know God created me, gender fluidity and all.  Not that this was at all an easy conclusion to come to; there have been moments in the past few years when I all but lost my Judaism as I grappled with being religious and gender fluid.

I look forward to celebrating my Jewish and gender freedom with God.