Bryan Schwartzman: From my home studio, welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. Laynie Soloman: We don't create this project as an inclusion project that attempts to change how other people see us. This project is for us and by us. And this work sees the transness that is our essence, as a gift. Bryan Schwartzman: I am your host, Bryan Schwartzman. Today I'll be speaking with Laynie Soloman, who is a teacher and Torah lover who seeks to uplift the, this is in quotes, "Piously irreverent, queer and subversive spirit of rabbinic text and theology." We'll be discussing their Evolve essay, Euphoric Halakhah: The Trans Halakhah Project. Okay, we talked the last month about how hard it is to just carry on with business as usual, with the Israel Hamas War going on. And so many of us, especially Jews, regardless of our political leanings, are feeling hurt, anxious, scared, and traumatized. And by the way, there are plenty of podcasts out there on the situations that are taking you through the emotional, moral, political, spiritual questions. Personally, and this is just me, I've been listening to For Heaven's Sake, put out by the Shalom Hartman Institute featuring Yossi Klein Halevi and Donniel Hartman. Wondering what you're listening to. Let me know. Send an email. I'd love to hear it. Of course, that being said, there are so many other important conversations going on. And all of us, while a war is happening, can't forget about the environment, racism, queer and trans' rights, so many things. And the reconstructionist movement, I think really makes the case that one of the best defenses against antisemitism, and we've seen truly scary levels of antisemitism in the US, around the globe, is to lean into Jewish community practice Torah study. That's not to say we put our heads in the sand, but we spend the bulk of our time on positive expressions of Jewish life, investing in them. And in that spirit, we've got, I think, a really important discussion today about trans empowerment in Torah, Talmud study. It's a conversation that took place in the shadow of war, though it's not about the war. It's a conversation for the sake of heaven. And I was truly honored to be part of it. And if you haven't figured it out by listening to me or this is your first time, I am a cisgendered straight male who is actually not Halakhically observant. I've taken one graduate level Talmud class. I'm much more immersed in say the works of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow than the Tractates of the Gemara. And I'm speaking with a trans teacher of Jewish texts about Halakhah. And listening to this conversation again, before we did the introduction, I couldn't help think of Denzel Washington's famous line from the movie Philadelphia. Those of you who are old enough to have seen it. I think it came out in 1993 where he says, "Explain it to me like I'm a 2-year-old." And some of my questions might come off as some version of this, but I hope it reads as coming from a place of respect and desire to understand experiences and ideas outside of my own. Now, before we start the interview, a reminder that all of the essays discussed on this show are available to read for free on the Evolve website, which is evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. Okay. Now on to today's guest. Laynie Soloman is Associate Rosh Yeshiva and Director of Transformative Leadership at SVARA. SVARA's mission is to empower queer and trans people to expand Torah and tradition through the spiritual practice of Talmud study. Laynie is a passionate teacher of Jewish text and thought, and they believe deeply in the power of Talmud study as a healing and liberatory spiritual practice. Laynie holds an MA in Jewish education from the Jewish Theological Seminary, is a Schusterman Fellow, and received the Covenant Foundation's 2020 Pomegranate Prize for emerging Jewish educators. Laynie Soloman, welcome to the podcast. It's so great to have you here. Laynie Soloman: Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. Bryan Schwartzman: Great. So let's dive in. I'm going to say it Halakhah, I know you can pronounce it a couple different ways. I think of Halakhah as Jewish law. Essentially what the ancient rabbis, or those who've interpreted them say you can do and you can't do. How do you understand it? I guess your view is not quite that simplistic. Laynie Soloman: Yeah, I love that articulation of what Halakhah is. And I think with love and kavod for that definition, I think that we often get stuck in a conflation between what our tradition calls Halakhah, or Halakhah and Halacha L'ma'aseh. Applied Halakhah or specific practices or the Halakhah of what you do. And my favorite definition for... Halakhah is Jewish practice and its surrounding discourse. So Halakhah L'ma'aseh, Halakhah of action, that's the set of rules that are often written down, but part of the hidden curriculum of Jewish life. That's the stuff that we perceive as what you got to do. The dos, the don't dos, and the how you do it. So if there's some food in front of you, what's the blessing you say? How do you say it? Who can say Amein? Who must say Amein? All of that is the world of Halakhah L'ma'aseh. And often when we're thinking about Halakhah, we think only of that. But Halakhah is also, and our tradition says this, which is why there are two different terms. Halakhah is also the discourse. It's the whys and the values that are underneath each of those decisions. And those decisions are unique actions that sort of codify and express those values. So that's a part of what the Trans Halakhah Project is about, is restoring some of those values-based conversations, and articulations, and understandings of what Halakhah is. So I love that you started there. That's perfect. Bryan Schwartzman: That's really interesting. So you would argue that Jews can and should engage with the discourse around Halakhah, whether or not they observe it, whether or not they consider themselves bound by it? Laynie Soloman: Beautiful. I would say not only they should, but they already are. Halakhah is actually just what Jews do. There is Halakhah L'ma'aseh. There are rules of engagement and behavior in every community. Some of those rules are written down, and some of those rules are just known. They're mimetically present. But that is Halakhah. We are already doing Halakhah in each of our communities, and we often are afraid, for lots of different reasons, to name our practice as such. So the bound by Halakhah question, I would invite folks to think about what practices, ideas, and concepts they feel accountable to. I would imagine that every single Jew everywhere feels accountable to something. So whether you feel quote unquote "bound" by the rules that are written down in a certain set of Halakhic texts to me is different than whether you are doing Halakhah. Bryan Schwartzman: Interesting. Maybe it's my encounters with very well-meaning folks from the Orthodox community, or just my impression. But I think you mentioned scared, or I don't remember what, or reticent, what the word you used was. But I would be reticent as somebody who doesn't consider myself, don't live my life according to Jewish law, to stand up and say, "I have something to say about Halakhah." That to me sounds scary. Laynie Soloman: Yeah, I really hear that. And I think that's a really pervasive feeling. I think part of that is that we conflate Halakhah as a broad discourse, as practice and its surrounding discourse. We conflate Halakhah, which I think is a really expansive and dynamic spiritual language with Orthodox Halakhah. With Halakhah as it's articulated, understood, and lived within Orthodox communities. And I think that's a loss for non-Orthodox Jews. At least it's a loss for me as a non-Orthodox Jew for someone who wants to live my life informed by and also informing the way our tradition unfolds. Bryan Schwartzman: I know we're going to get there, but just to try to get this out the level of the abstract, is there an example you could give us of discourse around Halakhah that really speaks to or might speak to how non-Orthodox Jews live their lives? Laynie Soloman: Yeah. I think that there is real Halakhah with the reconstructionist movement related to blessings. There is substantial discourse around how bracha have shifted, how liturgical language has evolved and shifted and changed and moved, that I think is Halakhah. Not only the practice of what you say, whether it's melach or ruach or something else, that is the L'ma'aseh. What our community's doing, what words do we say? But the discourse, the traditional texts, the instincts and the intuitions that people have felt for weeks and months and years and decades and centuries that leads to those decisions, that's part of the discourse. So every moment of making bracha and picking the nusach, picking the language, picking how you're describing God, is both enacting the Halakhah L'ma'aseh of the community, but is touching on, and pulling from, and informed by, and then informing, what Halakhah is. Bryan Schwartzman: Great. Great. So can you tell us a little bit about the Trans Halakhah Project? Laynie Soloman: Yeah, I sure can. The Trans Halakhah Project is a project housed at SVARA, which is a home for Jewish learning that empowers queer and trans folks to expand Torah and tradition through studying Talmud. And the Trans Halakhah project housed at SVARA is all about empowering and nourishing trans Jews whose experiences aren't yet, but hopefully soon, at the center of Halakhic exploration. And so we really do three main things in our work. One is we create euphoric and celebratory opportunities for trans Jews to learn about and explore their own relationship to Halakhah personally and communally. Two, we curate existing and developing resources that exist out in the world for and by trans Jews. And three is we develop new Halakhic literature that addresses needs and experiences of trans Jews. Bryan Schwartzman: And one of the main things produced out of this are rabbinic responsa. Teshuvot, is that how you pronounce that? Laynie Soloman: Yeah, exactly. So over this past year, we published two main resources. The first is called Tefillat Trans, which is a compilation of rituals and liturgical expressions and blessings that trans Jews created, or found, or developed, or adapted, to celebrate, honor, and express through Halakhah moments in our lives as trans Jews. So that's one of the resources that we published this year. And the second, as you're referencing, Bryan, is a series of Shavuot, of Halakhic position papers, essentially, that are responding to questions that we have as trans Jews. Bryan Schwartzman: And these are modeled on papers or writings from the Middle Ages, or where do responsa come from? I don't know the history. Laynie Soloman: Yeah. Beautiful. Responsa really comes from basically letter writing that communities would engage in or rabbis would engage in to other rabbis. So a process of writing a letter. Usually what might happen is as Jewish communities were spread out, not all communities had access to a ton of books, and also to a ton of learning. And communities were really figuring things out for themselves. And so communities would write, or leaders of communities would write to leaders of other communities to pass along questions about practice, about what to do in a seemingly unprecedented situation. And there are all sorts of modes that that letter writing took place in. And some of them are paragraphs, some of them are long form letters. Some of them now often are more position papers that are geared towards a pedagogical resource, so to speak, as opposed to a sort of binding letter. But these throughout history were sort of like the emails that people write to their teachers, like, "Hey, what do I do about this?" And so some of the teachers would write back briefly and some would write back in more lengthy papers. And so our Shavuot are modeled after that discourse. Bryan Schwartzman: And I want to ask about the responsa that you authored. And I'm wondering, did it come from a question you were asked maybe over email, or was it just a topic that you'd been wrestling with? Laynie Soloman: Yeah, the question that I explored is what is the proper blessing or a proper blessing to recite over taking testosterone via gel daily? So the hormone, the gel, and the daily all felt like variables that informed the answer. So that's why I say it like that. And it's a question I have been asked quite a bit. And it's one that I didn't have clear insight into until it was an experience that I had. And so that's one of my orientations as a Shavuot writer is really being precise about my awareness and attunement to the experiences that I've had, as opposed to imposing or expecting that I understand the experience of someone else. So I felt like I had been asked that question quite a bit, but it wasn't until I started the practice of taking testosterone daily via gel that I really had an answer or that I understood even what the question was. Bryan Schwartzman: And what is the question that traditional Halakhah prevented presented challenges from doing so, or there just wasn't a clear way to mark that practice and be mindful of it or find meaning in it? Laynie Soloman: Yeah. So in the evolution of testosterone, I didn't know of any codified articulation of what one should say, what bracha one should make. And it was obvious to me that a bracha should be made. So the question I didn't ask was, should one make a bracha? It was obvious to me, and I borrowed the language here from the Talmud, [inaudible 00:18:47], how do we bless? What's the bracha? When the rabbis of the Talmud invent, for example, Hanukkah, they invent that holiday, they invent the process of lighting candles. They ask the question, [inaudible 00:19:00], what bracha do you make? They don't ask the question, should we bless this newfangled practice that we invented? Instead, they say, it's obvious we should bless. So we're going to ask the question, what's the blessing? And that's the place I started my Shavuot from was it was obvious to me that there is a bracha. I say a bracha over everything I do. Why would this be unique outside of the realm of my practice? So it was obvious, I would say a bracha. And then my question was, what bracha do I say? And the way I engaged in that question is how Halakhah always unfolds, which is a new thing comes into existence, or a thing that exists and has always existed, comes into our consciousness. What is it like in our tradition? What is it compared to? Where can we have an analogy that can help us understand what to do in this particular moment? So I sat and looked through a bunch of different sources about Brachot, and I thought, what is this like? Is this a bracha you would say on a mitzvah? Is this like a bracha you would say over seeing something majestic out in the world? Is this medicine, is this like food? What is it like? And that's really how I went about my process. Bryan Schwartzman: If we go back to the origins of rabbinic Judaism, the folks, the generations that came up with this system are maybe not as different from us as we think, but certainly different. Certainly wouldn't have had our same views about inclusion. And I wonder, is there just something about the system, or the methodology they created that so speaks to you like the detail or the looking at context? I guess I'm just, yeah, I'll stop there. Laynie Soloman: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. The content of what they created isn't always going to reflect my values right now. But I don't think that I am that different from them. I think that we all aren't actually that different from them. I think they moved through the world, a world of chaos, and grief, and war, and collapse, and feeling the ineptitude of an inadequacy of leaders around them. They understood oppression, and harm, and pain, and they like us both sought liberation and also enacted suffering. That is a part of their legacy and a part of our legacy. And so I think when I encounter them, I feel aware of those pieces. Of course, in limited ways. I'm just one person, but I feel aware of those pieces and it doesn't disallow me or prohibit me from engaging in what I hope is a project in their legacy. Which is to take the stuff that I've been given and to change it, or find new things in it, or expand it, or grow it, which is the project that I think they were all about. They took a Torah that had a certain number of words, and out of it, they created a tremendous body of expansive literature. They were all about the magnification of concepts and ideas, and playing out values, and finding analogies that enabled them to locate themselves in the story that wasn't really made for them. Bryan Schwartzman: Are there other examples you have of folks who've already found themselves reflected in this project or found a new practice or fulfillment out of the responsa that have come out? Laynie Soloman: Yeah. We've seen folks who have used prayers or rituals in Tefillat Trans to make art for themselves. Folks who have, we find a lot of it on Instagram, a very hot place for trans Halakhah these days. Folks who are incorporating these rituals into their lives, folks who are learning these Shavuot. I think my favorite thing is when folks learn these Shavuot and then push back, or have an experience that isn't yet reflected in the language. That's when we know these are real, is when folks engage with them and learn them and then have their own insight. So that feels like a powerful also mode of engagement that I'm very grateful to get to witness when folks share that with us. Bryan Schwartzman: How does the project fit inside SVARA's overall mission? Laynie Soloman: Yeah, SVARA's mission is all about empowering queer and trans folks to expand Torah and tradition. So I feel like that's what's happening. The blessing of this work is that it helps to expand what our tradition is, what it can be. And I think there's also a way in which our current expansion with humility impacts the tradition itself. Our Shavuot, I hope, will help people maybe have a different relationship to aspects of hilchot brachot. Maybe they'll encounter blessings differently after thinking about what blessing to make on testosterone daily via gel or in any other form. So I do think there is a forming and informing that acts in multiple directions that we're trying to cultivate. That's for broadly and in the work of the Trans Halakhah project specifically. Bryan Schwartzman: Obviously the work is not happening in a vacuum. You're doing this project during what I think could rightly be described as a challenging time for queer and trans folks. Certainly in the United States and in many states, there have been laws that seem to particularly targeting the trans community. How do you see the work fitting into the political social context of our moment? Laynie Soloman: Yeah, I think for me, there are two pieces that come up in this realm. The first is that in moments when communities and people are subjugated and attacked, and attempts are made to legislate those people out of existence, coming together and celebrating our transness without reservation, and acknowledging the beauty that our transness offers, is a political act and is essential. We don't create this project as an inclusion project that attempts to change how other people see us. This project is for us and by us. And this work sees the transness that is our essence as a gift, and not as something that is allowed to be in the room, but something that is essential. That is offering revelation and vision into this world that wouldn't be there without us. So that in and of itself is I think extremely powerful and something that I feel blessed to experience as we come together and learn. And the second piece, I think gets to why it feels so important for me to disentangle Halakhah from quote unquote "law" as we understand it. So many of us that are subjugated under the American legal system, we relinquish our relationship to our tradition and our ancestors when we allow law to be defined by the people trying to subjugate us. So if we define Halakhah as law, I'm like, uh-oh, that's conflating this tool of domination and violence and subjugation to many with a liberatory world-building project. And those two things are very different. And while we could spend a lot of time finding expansive definitions of law that create more entry points, which is important and holy work, I also think knowing the ways in which Halakhah has operated outside of and counter to state legal systems is really key. That is a fundamental part of what Halakhah is, what brought it into being and what it always has been. It is the ways we take care of each other counter to and in opposition to and beyond the state. So I think that piece for me is part of the liberatory legacy of Halakhah that we can reveal together when we disentangle it from law. Bryan Schwartzman: Noting that it definitely helps to have some background in studied Judaics or Talmud in reading the responsa, even though they are definitely in English. I think it helps to have some of that reasoning. Where does somebody start? Where would you recommend somebody if they've never really engaged with Talmud or Halakhah, but just are drawn into what you're saying? Where could somebody get going? Laynie Soloman: Yeah. I'd say come learn with us at SVARA. We learn Talmud in the original and develop our capacity to translate the tradition for ourselves. All you need is to be able to decode the alef-bet. So to sound out the letters of the alef-bet, you can start learning Talmud at SVARA or at any of the learning spaces that our fellows, folks who are trained to teach at SVARA, any of the places our fellows have developed all over the world. Thank God. Bryan Schwartzman: You described yourself to us before we got on recording as a Torah nerd. I've been involved in Jewish stuff my adult life, which now is not so short, a couple of decades, but I wouldn't describe myself as a Torah nerd. So I guess I'm wondering, how do you become that? Laynie Soloman: Great. How do you become a Torah nerd? Bryan Schwartzman: Exactly. Exactly. Laynie Soloman: Yeah. So I don't know how you start having the desire to be a Torah nerd, but once you have that desire, I don't know if that desire was learned or innate for me. But I think that I love worlds, like things that contain worlds. And I always have been really moved by and drawn to world-building projects. Things that are imagining different worlds within the world that we are or counter to the world that we're living in. And I think that from really my earliest moments encountering Talmud and especially Halakhah, I felt captivated by the world-building that was present and felt inherent to this project. Both the fantastical elements of imagining places that no longer existed and imagining ways of leading and ruling and judging and being in community that weren't lived necessarily, but were a part of the rabbinic imagination. Those things always really captivated me. So I think my nerddom just flowed right from there. And maybe it's just that I'm a nerd in general and that I found my way from being a regular nerd into the world of nerding out about Torah and Talmud. Bryan Schwartzman: But if you own it and love it, that's the take pride in the nerddom, right? Laynie Soloman: That's right. Bryan Schwartzman: I can relate to that for sure. Flowing from that, I'm wondering what role did Jewish practice, Torah study, play in helping you become the person you are, maybe including your journey in gender transition? I'm wondering if it, it just seems to me it must have played a role. Laynie Soloman: A lot of folks who are connected to the Trans Halakhah project or to SVARA or just out in the world, I've heard a lot of folks describe powerful connections between deepening or developing or finding Jewish practice, and deepening, developing, and finding their authentic expression in and through transition. I think that, and my colleague Rabbi Xava De Cordova talks about this. The ways in which trans folks gift the world. I think, with the invitation to participate in self-creation, I think that trans folks visualize for all of us the power of creating oneself. And the role of each of us to develop, and define, and decide, and create who we are. That's something that trans folks do as part of our survival and also our thriving. And I think that that is really connected to what it means to develop and create ourselves as Jewish people. What it means to find practices that help us feel euphoric, that help us see more of who we are. And I remember the first time I put on tzitzit tallit katan when I was in high school, and I did feel more of who I was. And I don't know to what extent that is about gender or to what extent that is about mitzvot or to what extent that's about any number of things. But I think all of those pieces, our gender, our relationship to mitzvot, our relationship to God, the clothing we wear, the way our bodies move is all part of creating ourselves and participating in self-creation. Bryan Schwartzman: By the way, Laynie, you mentioned Rabbi Xava De Cordova. I know Evolve just had a wonderful web conversation. I think you were on there. Which touched on some of these same issues and concepts. So we'll definitely leave a link in our show notes so folks can find it. Laynie Soloman: Awesome. Bryan Schwartzman: Do you follow Reconstructing Judaism on social media, on Facebook and Instagram? Find us at Reconstructing Judaism. This Hanukkah we'll be sharing uplifting messages about finding the light amidst the darkness. We're calling the campaign Light Now. Be on the lookout for videos, poems, and thoughts on where we can find light in this difficult time. And if you're enjoying this episode, please take a moment to give us a five star rating or leave a review in Apple Podcasts. These ratings and reviews really help other people find out about the show. And by the way, we did just recently celebrate our 100,000th episode download. Thank you so much for listening and helping us cross this threshold. All right, now back to our conversation. So at the risk of asking maybe one too many questions about Halakhah. Laynie Soloman: Impossible. Bryan Schwartzman: So I think you might've referenced it, but in writings and in previous conversations, I've really heard you mentioned the term euphoric Halakhah. And I'm wondering if you could explain that or add to what you've already said. Laynie Soloman: Great. Euphoric Halakhah for me is borrowing some terms that I knew and lived and felt in my body in relation to my transness. Euphoria and dysphoria, gender euphoria, gender dysphoria, and connecting them to things that I felt when engaging in or learning, or reading, or hearing Halakhic discourse. And the way I define these terms or offer them and invite folks to use them however feels right, is that for a long time, all of the Halakhah that I encountered related to trans identity was what I would call dysphoric Halakhah. And you can recognize dysphoric Halakhah first by how it feels in your body. It is about the places where trans folks do not fit what has existed, and attempting to contort or move or adjust our bodies, and our lives, and our experiences to make them make sense from a cis-normative perspective. So dysphoric Halakhah is like when cis-people ask trans people, well, what bathroom do you use? It's about trying to understand how trans bodies fit into a system that is upheld and designed, both not with us in mind, and often to maintain our limitation and our constriction and domination. Dysphoric Halakhah is when folks ask questions about trans people without trans people being part of the questioning. It's all about where we don't fit. And euphoric Halakhah is about where we fit. And not only where we fit, but is about the places and the spaces in practice and discourse that our lives and bodies are here to reveal. So euphoric Halakhah is like, I think actually what Halakhah is about. I am using language that resonates with my experience as a trans person, although not all trans people experience dysphoria, but that is a part of my lived experience is that binary between euphoria and dysphoria and moving and shifting between it. But I do think euphoric Halakhah is actually Halakhah that feels good, which is what Halakhah is about. It's particular language to describe that, but it is a part of the Halakhic project. Bryan Schwartzman: And remind what are some of the other topics that are raised as part of the project? Laynie Soloman: So in the first cohort of Shavuot writing, we had one Shavuot about what to do about and how to relate to parts of one's body that are removed in gender-affirming surgery. That included how to relate to those body parts. And also a ritual based on nullifying chametz on Pesach that one could do to nullify those parts of their body. It's a really interesting exploration. We had a Shavuot that explored immersing in a mikvah while wearing a chest binder. We had a Shavuot that explored the idea of transition itself as a mitzvah, as the fulfillment of a mitzvah. We had a series of Shavuot that explored the question of niddah and various perspectives on niddah. Things related to quote unquote "menstruation." Spoiler alert, those Shavuot will agitate that definition in beautiful ways. And things related to milah, to circumcision. So a really wide range of things that folks wrote about. And in our second cohort, which will be starting this winter, we'll be exploring questions related to periya u-rviya, the idea of fruitful multiplication. What's often seen as the mitzvah to procreate, but which we're hoping to explore more expansively. Bryan Schwartzman: So no easy way to say this, but you and I are talking on October 17th, 2023. We'll be releasing this sometime in November where 10 or so days into a war, horrific violence. I know as an organization, we've even Reconstructing Judaism, we've wrestled with to what extent do we go on with regularly scheduled programming and what's the messaging around that? And it's tough. I think no matter one's political philosophical positions, this is a difficult time to be Jewish, to be human. Just personally, I'm wondering what role Torah study, Talmud study or teaching is playing in getting you through this? I mentioned before we got on the air, whatever mindfulness practices I've developed, which usually seem fairly effective, just kind of seem like overrun by a torrent of thoughts and not particularly effective. So that's a long way of saying how is your Torah-Talmud study, what role is it playing in getting you through this time? Laynie Soloman: Yeah, it's a really powerful question, Bryan, and a really painful moment. And as I mentioned earlier, the Talmud is not a stranger to war, and to heartbreak, and to pain, and domination, and persecution. The world that we live in expresses those things differently than the world of the Tannaim, the early rabbis who created the mishnah. But it's not always that different. And I think part of the gift of our tradition is knowing that our ancestors have held so much. And for me that is an invitation to know that I as one human being don't have to and also can't possibly hold it all. Just me. So part of my relationship to Talmud, I think gifts me that, and I hope gifts many of us that, in whatever ways that feels right and aligned. And the other thing is a colleague of mine, Julie Batts shared the other day that we teach Talmud to beginners and we also teach Talmud to experienced learners with beginner's mind. And right now, this is what Julie shared, and I feel the same way. I'm a beginner at what it means to learn and teach and live in this particular moment of war and devastation. I'm a beginner. I'm not an advanced scholar in anything like this moment. And knowing that feels really important for me as a teacher, is to humble myself before that and in light of that truth, and to open myself up to the truths that I'm missing. And that I'm only beginning to understand. Bryan Schwartzman: Wow, I'm thinking of trans and queer youth, probably not going to be reading some of these responsa at 11 or 13, but does their existence make a difference for them or somehow pave the way for it to be easier to be fully themselves as a Jew? I don't know if that was the most precise question, but I think you know what I'm asking. Laynie Soloman: I know what you're asking. Yeah, I hope so. I deeply hope so. I grew up in Jewish communities and was part of, I went to camp and I was in two youth groups in high school because I was a nerd, as I said. And I never, until I was in my mid-twenties, I never saw an adult that looked like me. As a young person, I actually didn't think that I would grow up. I had a weird sort of confused sense of will I become a grownup? Because I never saw an adult that looked like me. And a part of that is, that's not because there weren't trans elders, although there were not that many. But is part of also how we invisibilize the work of our elders. And so my hope is that all of this work can also catalyze an understanding for all of us that we are here, we have been here, we always were here. And that our stories are real and deserve to be told. Bryan Schwartzman: Laynie Soloman, thank you so much for a wonderful, enriching conversation. I really appreciate it. Laynie Soloman: Thank you. It's such a pleasure. Bryan Schwartzman: You love our podcast. I know you do. You read our essays. But have you checked out our live web conversations? On Evolve's homepage, which is evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org, click on web conversations to learn more about upcoming sessions and register. Or you can tap on the link on the show notes. We'll be back next month with an all new episode. The Evolve Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub, and edited by Sam Watts. Our theme song Ilu Finu is by Rabbi Miriam Margles. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host, Brian Schwartzman, and we'll see you next time.