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Yiscah's Holy Story of Jewish Authenticity Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg, Beth Am Synagogue 6 Iyar 5776 ~ May 14, 2016 Parashat

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Yiscah's Holy Story of Jewish Authenticity Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg, Beth Am Synagogue 6 Iyar 5776 ~ May 14, 2016 Parashat Yiscah’s Holy Story of Jewish Authenticity Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg, Beth Am Synagogue 6 Iyar 5776 ~ May 14, 2016 Parashat Kedoshim There’s a teaching of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hassidic Judaism; he explains that each of us is drawn to three particular mitzvot, three sacred obligations that are ours, so to speak. Now you might be saying to yourself, the whole enterprise of Judaism is a communal one – we are, each of us and all of us, obligated to the entirety of the halachah, and that’s true. Traditionally speaking, we are meant to observe all 613 mitzvot! So what gives? Remember the Baal Shem Tov, born in 1700, is speaking to a very different population from our own. The Jewish community there is still reeling from the communal crisis of faith engendered by the advent of Shabbetai Zvi and his messianic movement. When Zvi converts to Islam, donning the fez before the Sultan in Constantinople, the Jewish world is thrown into chaos. Less than four decades later, the Baal Shem Tov is born. The Sabbatean movement had been largely antinomian in nature, so it’s possible the Besht (the Baal Shem Tov) is reacting to that resistance to Jewish law. And certainly, in our day, where the vast majority of Jews are not fully observant, a measured approach, a tiered entry, is pragmatic. Start with three. See where that takes you. But, the brilliance of the Baal Shem’s thinking is that he also understands we all must find our place in the story of the Jewish people. Miriam and I often joke that as an inter-marriage (namely a Reform and Conservative rabbi living together under the same roof), while our practice is quite similar, largely indistinguishable from one another, we have different reasons for doing what we do. But more than that, different mitzvot speak differently to us– some leaving more of an impression than others. But, of course, that’s not just about our movement disparities; it’s about our personal differences. We’re different people with shared values to be sure, but also with different passions and perspectives. And this is what the Besht is trying to say: that’s good. Because it means we each have a place in our collective story; each Jew has particular mitzvot she or he can call hers or his own among the hundreds that constitute Jewish observant life. So, today I had planned to speak about this, about how each of us has these three special mitzvot… and then something happened. You see sermons, like most creative endeavors, often surprise us. You start on a thread, an idea germinates. You think you’re exploring one topic, relearning particular stories, excavating new or more familiar texts – all with an eye toward making a specific case. And something unexpected happens. New information presents itself, and you realize that although the lesson you wanted to teach is still worthy of being taught and learned, the way you expected to teach it no longer seems sufficiently compelling. Why? Because there’s this other story that thrusts itself into the space between the words. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been in this situation? You’re writing or composing or painting with a particular direction in mind and then some invisible force guides your hand elsewhere. I want to tell you why I was resistant to telling the story I’m about to and then tell it anyway, because it has to do with my source for this teaching by the Besht. I learned the teaching while listening to a podcast by a Jerusalem-based teacher named Yiscah Smith. I found the podcast when I was looking for some learning around Pesach and it popped up in my suggestion box, but I didn’t know anything about the presenter. Anyway, I listened to and enjoyed a few episodes and discovered this teaching in an episode about Rav Kook entitled “Can One’s Spiritual 1 Appetite Ever Be Satiated?” Last week, I spoke about anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and Yom Hashoah – important but weighty topics to be sure. Plus I knew, to her credit, Sammie Wittenstein (our Bat Mitzvah) would be speaking about refugees. So, I thought this week I’d do something a bit lighter, something less headline-y, less politically charged, less focused on the national issues of the day. Something more personal. What’s more, I figured we could do something else in the service to mark this past week’s celebration of Israel’s birthday and the fact that today is May 14th, the secular anniversary of Yom Ha’atzmaut. I could devote my own teaching time to another important topic. But, in investigating the source of the Baal Shem’s teaching on mitzvot, I came across several articles about Yiscah Smith, and was surprised to learn that Yiscah wasn’t always called Yiscah. Her name used to be Jeff. Jeff then became Ya’akov. And for many years, Ya’akov lived in Israel until something happened which led him once again to become Jeff. Jeff became Jessica. And Jessica, about ten years ago, became Yiscah. There’s another teaching about the Besht, which I love. He was once walking by a beit midrash when he saw a supernal light emanating from within. “There must be great Torah scholars inside,” he exclaimed, “exploring the depths of our most sacred book!” But when he entered, he discovered two ordinary Jews simply talking to each other, telling stories. And at that moment the Baal Shem Tov realized storytelling can produce the same divine illumination as Torah study. So this is the story of Yiscah. And in a very real way, it is also a story of Israel. Jeffrey Smith was born 64 years ago on Long Island to a Conservative Jewish family. As a young man he met a girl, got married and the two of them became more traditionally observant. They got involved with Chabad, changed their names to Ya’akov and Chava, made aliyah, and raised six children in Jerusalem’s Old City. In fact, Rabbi Ya’akov was the Chabad shaliach to the Old City. For forty years of her life, Yiscah lived a lie- that she was a man who was attracted to women when the truth, as she tells it, is that she is a woman who loves men. Her story isn’t entirely unique. It has many of the hallmarks of other gender identity stories as told by various transgender people. But long before lawmakers in Raleigh were demanding that people like Yiscah use the men’s bathroom, long before the Obama Administration was dictating school bathroom policy, Yiscah was in San Francisco, wearing women’s clothing and trying the ladies’ bathroom for the very first time. And she describes it as if this giant weight was lifted from her shoulders, that she could finally breathe. To her it felt so normal. Because whatever it is women do that makes going to the bathroom a social event (and I must confess, I don’t really get it), Yiscah gets it! And she had been waiting her whole life to feel comfortable, safe and secure doing the most basic of human behaviors – like getting dressed in particular clothes and, walking in a particular way, and talking in a certain cadence and yes, using the restroom. The illuminating moment in Yiscah’s story came in 1990 when Ya’akov and his wife were hosting Shabbos dinner guests. They were walking back to their Old City home Friday night from the Kotel as they often did, when Yiscah found herself crying out silently to God. “Please help me! I can’t take this anymore! Something has to give. I can’t keep living this lie!” Later that evening, as the guests were leaving and complimenting Ya’akov and Chava on a lovely evening, showering them with praise about what a wonderful and beautiful family they were, one of the guests pulled Ya’akov aside. “That was an amazing act you performed tonight. But it was clearly an act, and whatever is wrong, I really hope and pray you get the help you need.” And 2 Yiscah knew in that moment her prayer had been answered. And she told her wife. And she slept better that night than she had in years. The next part of Yiscah’s story is challenging, because the frum Yerushalayim community in which she had been a respected Chabad rabbi, husband and father was about to unravel. Now, this was before Yiscah had transitioned or even identified publically as transgender. At the time she came out to her wife as a gay man which wasn’t really accurate since, as Yiscah explains, she’s a straight woman. Chava was livid, perhaps understandably so. The children refused (and refuse to this day) to have any meaningful relationship with her. The Smiths separated, and word got around the small, insular community. One particularly heart-wrenching reaction was that of a venerated rabbi from the Jewish Quarter. He castigated Ya’akov for his moral depravity and threatened to expose him and publically shame his children unless he walked away from his teaching of men and boys. And so Ya’akov did. He took off his yarmulke, moved to Tel Aviv and then back to the States. Over the next decade or so, Ya’akov (who was once again Jeff and then Jessica) transitioned and became, fully, the woman she had always felt she was. And last year, having fully emerged into herself as Yiscah, published a book called Forty Years in the Wilderness: My Journey to Authentic Living.
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