When Elliot Kukla, a Reform rabbi, came out as transgender six months before his ordination in 2006, he never imagined how openly the Jewish community would be addressing transgender issues just three years later. This month, he is poised to address a West Coast regional conference of Reform rabbis on the subject, and even the elderly Jews that he works with in the Bay Area are largely accepting of his identity.
"I'm so amazed at the old ladies who will turn to their friends and say, 'Did you meet the nice, young transgender rabbi?'" Kukla said. "Some of that is San Francisco, but that conversation would never have happened a few years ago."
For nearly a decade, Kukla, 34, has been publishing articles and giving talks in the Jewish community on the topic of transgender people. But over the past year, education and advocacy initiatives dealing with transgender rights in the Jewish community have increased to a level never before seen. The conversation in liberal Jewish circles surrounding gay and lesbian rights is shifting, with the spotlight now being trained on the often overlooked - and, activists say, far more stigmatized - matter of transgender rights.
"Transgender issues are really the next set of issues that the Jewish community feels it needs to address," said Gregg Drinkwater, executive director of the Denver-based group Jewish Mosaic, which promotes the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals in the Jewish community. "It's the next wave within the liberal Jewish community, certainly within the Reform and Reconstructionist movements, and in parts of the Conservative world.?
The term "transgender" refers to a wide spectrum of people who fall outside society's gender norms. It includes those often labeled as transsexuals, cross-dressers or drag queens. There are no hard data on the number of transgender people in America.
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