Batya Devorah Kline

Wesleyan University

Introduction

Across North America Trans anti-Zionist Jews use their voices to lead, organize, and audibly participate in Jewish ritual and anti-Zionist protests. The collective expression of these identities in so many individuals and their choices to loudly organize Jewish ritual and anti-Zionist protest demonstrates a deep resonance between Transness, anti-Zionism, and Jewishness which I argue are each enactments of T’shuvah, the Jewish concept of return, repair, and atonement. Additionally, each Trans anti-Zionist Jew uniquely experiences assuredness, affirmation, and comfort when using their voice in different contexts as a physical, aural, and semiotic instrument, creating emotive responses which folks use to steer their political and ritual work. 

In this paper I draw from interviews with Trans anti-Zionist Jews of various backgrounds who use their voices to lead anti-Zionist protest and Jewish ritual in different ways. Interviewees had diverse experiences using their voices in protest and prayer: some shared songleading experiences in Jewish-led anti-Zionist spaces, others are chanters or MCs (Master of Ceremony who acts as the program host) in secular or multi-faith Palestine solidarity actions; some described decades of Jewish ritual work, others are just starting their journeys as ritual leaders. This essay is an excerpt from my forthcoming master’s thesis about music and sound in the Queer anti-Zionist Jewish Movement and comes out of many years of Palestine solidarity organizing, creating anti-Zionist and Queer Jewish ritual, and being in community with other Trans anti-Zionist Jewish folks.

The Queer anti-Zionist Jewish Movement which has proliferated in recent years and the Trans anti-Zionist Jews at its helm are the heart of the Jewish Left. The Jewish Left is a decentralized movement constituted by informally-enmeshed religious, cultural, and political communities and leaders across the globe, including minyanim, “houses of study, farms, scribes, musicians, poets, organizers, caregivers, and educators” (Katz and Rosenberg 2024, 23).  Communities within the Jewish Left are mostly unaffiliated with larger institutions and share broad alignments around liberatory politics such as anti-racism, anti-capitalism, climate justice, Trans and Queer liberation, and other topics, often publicly expressing community values on their websites or social media which reflect these stances. While communities within the Jewish left hold various critical stances towards Zionism, the Queer anti-Zionist Jewish Movement opposes the big-tent, non-Zionist approach many left-ish communities uphold by not explicitly or sufficiently opposing Zionism’s genocide, colonialism, and apartheid so that Zionists in the space feel comfortable. The Queer, anti-Zionist Jewish Movement, on the other hand, adopts principled, practiced, and loud opposition to the State of Israel’s grotesque violence, understanding anti-Zionism as a prerequisite to liberatory, left Jewish community. 

This paper is written as I and my communities witness, grieve, and viciously resist the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank which is perpetrated by the State of Israel with the full backing of the American government. This is Nakba, Genocide, and Holocaust. Over a year of aggression, the State of Israel has expelled nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million populations from their lands and murdered 40,000+ individuals identified by Gaza’s Ministry of Health—180,000 estimated by The Lancet (Khatib et al. 2024)—with the intention of enacting violence and expulsion in all of Palestine. With my attention split between grieving and fighting against this annihilation, I am doubtful that writing about voice and music is the best use of my energy and have prioritized my organizing responsibilities over academics; nevertheless, in the midst of my despair and uncertainty, I write to amplify the voices of this movement I care deeply about, highlighting Trans voices whose activism, struggle, and spiritual rootedness form a pathway toward a more whole world. 

Kol T’shuvah

The folks I interviewed for this project each conveyed their relationship to voice using language that resonates with the Jewish concept T’shuvah, expanding musicology and vocal pathology’s “tendency to consider transgender vocality in terms of ‘passing,’ or of ‘dysphoria,’ or wrong body/wrong voice narrative” (Patch 2018, 43) with narratives about Trans peoples’ voices that are more reflective of our diverse, not solely negative, experiences. T’shuvah is core to Jewish moral philosophy, literally translating to return to G-d, self, and community, and often takes the meaning of atonement, repair, and taking account for wrongdoing of personal and communal actions. T’shuvah, “as a process of personal transformation and forgiveness” (Omer 2019, 157) to repair the injustice of one’s upbringing and take responsibility for the ongoing misdeeds of Zionist Jewish communities, is central to Jewish anti-Zionism and is repeatedly described by interviewees in Days of Awe, Atalia Omer’s ethnography on anti-Zionist Jewish movements.

I argue that Trans folks engage in the process of T’shuvah as we cultivate ourselves and cast off what no longer resonates or was forced upon us during upbringing. Some interviewees I spoke with experienced involuntary voice change from medical care, others transformed their voices through therapy, and some have changed their relationship to their voice while maintaining its sound. For many of my interviewees, these changes to the sound, timbre, ways of speaking, and relationship to voice facilitated reconnection to themselves, their communities, and their relationship to faith and G-d. Ella, a Philadelphia-based Trans Woman describes reconnecting with her voice after a period of estrangement, exemplifying transition as a process of return to self: 

I grew up singing all the time…and then as soon as my voice started to drop from testosterone, I remember retreating inside of myself…And it took me until coming out to understand that [hiding my voice] was part of not articulating myself to the world the way I want to…My voice has changed a lot since transitioning, but it’s been more of an internal shift in coming to accept voice as a marker of transness and to love that about myself (Ella 2024).

Ella changed her voice in part through therapy, but also began loving parts of her voice which she once felt articulated herself to the world in incongruous ways. Without completely reconfiguring her voice to fit confining standards of femininity reinforced by her voice therapy program, Ella, who once retreated from her voice and self—“swallowing [her] words, speaking very quietly, and internalizing a lot of shame” (Ella 2024)—now uses her voice proudly. As a nascent Jewish ritual leader and longtime activist, the day before Ella and I spoke she acted as the leader of a protest street-choir to oppose the Christians United For Israel (CUFI) national convention in Washington, D.C., singing and linking arms with others for hours to block buses from entering the conference.

Elayah, a Nonbinary person also based in Philadelphia, described another process of coming to love unexpected parts of their voice through the processes of transition, allowing them to overcome apprehension, take on ritual leadership, and unlock connection with Holiness. Elayah shared:

Going on hormones and before them, I really started to befriend fragmentation and brokenness in the voice and see that as necessary and beautiful. I started to understand the range of sound in my voice and the breaks it would have as really sacred and holy…Because my voice has changed, it holds so many stories, and the texture and change of that has the power to hold a multiplicity of grief and joy and rawness (Elaya 2024).

Elayah has befriended the fragmented and broken parts of their voice which tell the story of its transition, regarding those “vulnerable” vocal points as sacred and holy. Like Ella, Elayah shared feeling alienation from their singing background before transitioning and that “it took coming out as Nonbinary, as Trans, as Genderful to be able to take leadership and hold ritual space” (Elaya 2024). After embracing the entirety of their voice and connecting to it as embodiment of multiplicity and vulnerability, Elayah moved away from secular musical theater and Jewish singing environments in which they did not feel fully affirmed as an Arab Jewish anti-Zionist Nonbinary person and now uses their voice to lead Jewish ritual catered to honoring themself and their community in its entirety. 

Like Ella and Elayah, each Trans person I spoke with had a unique relationship with their voice, finding comfort, appreciation, and disconnection to it in different ways. Vocal comfort includes the physical ease with which a person vocalizes, the semantic freedom with which a person strings together words, and the aural alignment of sound quality with how a person wishes to be perceived. Each dimension of vocal comfort is augmented or minimized when used in Jewish ritual and anti-Zionist protest because of the different sonic and social qualities of each environment and the quality of voice privileged in each. 

In broad strokes, protest spaces are almost always loud—as loud as possible to strongly convey unifying messages and occupy space in opposition to the hostile powers targeted by the protestors—so the forms of vocalization privileged in protest spaces are shouting, loud and emphatic speech, and repetitive chanting. Jewish ritual spaces are relatively quieter, and prioritize melodic, soulful voice through liturgical chant, communal song, and spoken ritual framings. Additionally, these realms of soundmaking are not always separate: it is common to hear the Adhan at Palestinian-led protests to announce a prayer break, and many chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace have held protest rituals like JVP Bay Area’s Tashlich ritual, where instead of throwing bread into a body of water, they threw water soaked challah at the Jewish Community Relations Council to cast away the sins of the organizations and call it to T’shuvah. 

Some folks I talked to shared that sound qualities and privileged forms of vocalization in particular spaces affect the ways in which they choose to use their voice because of their personal vocal mechanics and preferences for how they wish to be heard. Arya, an organizer in Minneapolis who hosts anti-Zionist Jewish ritual inspired by the teachings of Kohenet Elana June, described feeling more comfortable with the physical and auditory components of vocalization used in protest:

Singing has always been a bit challenging for me, but I think it became more challenging when I started hormones. I get quite uncomfortable and shy in ritual space, especially if it’s a smaller group, because I can hear how much my voice cracks and feels unsteady. So in some ways, I think I almost prefer singing in protest, because you can scream, you can be masked by many people (Arya 2023).

Arya prefers the physicality of shouting during protests and feels more comfortable being heard when embedded within a torrent of protesting voices. Yet during our conversation, Arya also shared that in ritual “I feel more confident that I can speak off the cuff in a way that I don’t yet feel in actions. I feel like I can channel in ritual and I haven’t figured out yet how to channel or be improvisational [in protest]” (Arya 2023). Arya prefers the physical and aural components of vocalizing in protest space like screaming within a cacophony. They experience more ease, however, with the semantic component of vocalizing in ritual spaces by improvising Kavanot and Iyunim, spoken ritual framings to set the intention of prayers. 

Other folks feel it is affirming to use their voice to build the world they want through anti-Zionist protest and/or Jewish ritual even if physically doing so creates aural tension with how they wish to be heard. Ella shared, “Jewish liberation work and political chant leading both feel like I’m using my voice as a tool for realizing the kind of world I want to see…so that’s an immensely affirming experience however my voice sounds during it” (Ella 2024). Both Arya and Ella attune themselves to the feelings which arise from vocalizing in different contexts, using this awareness to tailor how they approach their political and ritual work to be most effective activists and organizers. Arya is less able to improvise in protest contexts so they take more time to pre-compose remarks; Ella finds affirmation singing in her protest-chorus regardless of how her voice sounds, so she sings vigorously for long periods of time. 

Multiple folks shared taking particular care as Jews using their voices in anti-Zionist protest, wary of centering Jewishness in Palestinian spaces and in support of the Palestinian struggle. Nomy, a long-time organizer based in Seattle, described using that wariness to hone, not hinder, their activism: 

I feel really aware about being a white Jewish song leader leading a song about Palestine. I want to stay in my lane but I also want to be really big in my lane, meaning I want to do everything I possibly can without stepping on anyone’s toes. I ask what I am offering, and to what degree is it supportive of the movement and what degree is it showboating myself. So those are my questions, it’s like do something, do everything, then you might fuck up, and then listen to people about it, and do something else that’s better (Nomy 2024).

Through their song and chant leading, Nomy demonstrates T’shuvah as the “the process of apology, correction, and moving forward” (Omer 2019, 239), listening to themself and others to do as much as possible in support of Palestine without causing harm by overstepping, or by learning from the their mistakes and recalibrating. Elayah, on the other hand, shared that they feel alienated in many American Jewish spaces—both Jewish anti-Zionist political spaces and ritual spaces—as a Moroccan and Libyan Jew, finding more safety and belonging when using their voice in non-Jewish space:

It’s hard for me to relate to American Jewish spaces; I don’t see myself reflected…I noticed I feel more at home in POC and Arab-led things that are explicitly not Jewish. I feel much more able and free to express, and be myself and be heard, because we can relate in a way that’s hard for me in the Jewish context on this land (Elayah 2024).

Elayah feels disjointed from many American Jewish spaces including anti-Zionist political groups because “they are so white and Ashkenazi-centered, and the histories [of Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Jews of Color] are not totally honored and literally given voice to” (Elayah 2024), choosing not to use their voice in these spaces to avoid experiencing harm. In contrast to the caution Nomy and many White Jews bring to non-Jewish Palestine solidarity spaces, Elayah finds belonging within Arab-led political and protest contexts which emboldens and amplifies their voice and abets their activism in support of Palestinian lives. 

The folks I spoke with expressed extensive vocal self-awareness which they use to orient and amplify their political and ritual work. Trans folks consistently attune to the ways they speak and are heard, curating our voices to most affirmingly represent ourselves. Having developed the skills to listen inwards and recalibrate when their voices do not sound how they wish, Trans folks who use their voices in anti-Zionist protest and Jewish ritual effectively implement those processes of T’shuvah to orient and magnify their political activism and ritual organizing. By listening to when their vocalizing is most physically, semantically, and aurally affirming— sometimes choosing to amplify their voice through moments of discomfort—the Trans anti-Zionist Jews I interviewed contribute their voices to building a more just and complete world in the ways most effective to them. 

References

Katz, Ariana, and Jessica Rosenberg. 2024. For Times Such as These: A Radical’s Guide to the Jewish Year. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Khatib, Rasha, Martin Mckeec, and Salim Yusuf. 2024. “Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult but Essential.” London, The Lancet, Volume 404, Issue 10449, 237-238.

Omer, Atalia. 2019. Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians. Chicago:, The University of Chicago Press.

Patch, Holly, and Tomke König 2018. “Trans Vocality: Lived Experience, Singing Bodies, and Joyful Politics.” Freiburger Geschlechterstudien/Freiburger Zeitschrift Für Geschlechterstudien 24 (1): 31–53. https://doi.org/10.3224/fzg.v24i1.03.

Interviews

Interview with Arya. November 11, 2023.

Interview with Ella. June 31, 2024.

Interview with Nomy. August 1, 2023.

Interview with Elayah. August 14, 2024.