At the Trans+ Passover Seder in Brooklyn, an Evening of Queer Jewish Joy

Forty transgender Jews walk into a dinner church in Brooklyn. It sounds like the set-up for a bad joke, but it’s actually an annual Passover gathering where spiritual tradition meets a queer friend hang—served up with an extra side of Jewish shtick.

Now in its second year, the Trans+ Passover Seder is a holiday ritual and meal for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming Jews and allies, hosted by The Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life, which creates pop-up Jewish community and cultural events in Brooklyn.

I’m a non-binary Jewish community organizer and spiritual leader, and inviting people to come together through ritual, song, and food is my way of helping build a better world. As America becomes an increasingly dangerous and complicated place to be both trans and Jewish, I started the Trans+ Seder project to create an event where people striving to embrace all of these identities can come together in a meaningful and celebratory way.

On Monday night, the Trans+ Seder assembled at St. Lydia’s—a cozy, brick-walled storefront in Gowanus, Brooklyn, where progressive Christians gather weekly for food cooked in the space’s sprawling and well-loved kitchen. The room was decorated with lace tablecloths and linen runners, artisanal ceramic kiddush cups, cherished seder plates brought from home by the event’s organizers and volunteers, and even some leftover Easter decor. Floral arrangements abounded, staged alongside cans of Dr. Brown’s soda (a Passover staple for many).

Some guests came to this event in order to introduce a trans element to their regular Jewish or holiday engagements. Others came to partake in a Jewish gathering as an addition to their queer social calendar, or are habitués of the rare yet vibrant spaces where Jewish and LGBTQ+ identity are not just tolerated together, but celebrated as an intersection where friends, lovers, and misfits of all stripes can find joy and community.

Breaking bread (or in this case, matzah) is a key ingredient in the concept of the Trans+ Seder—when we dine together, we become each other’s honored guests; we become a bit more than strangers to each other. Many attendees swapped childhood Passover traditions and Instagram handles while enjoying a vegetarian, gluten-free, and miraculously-still-delicious kosher for Passover meal from the Lebanese-Jewish, woman-owned CedarStar Catering. For dessert, a variety of kosher for Passover staples like Joyva jelly rings and toasted coconut marshmallows (filed under weird-but-good) were served.

Co-facilitator Eliana Rubin, a trans Jewish educator and playwright, spoke on the tradition of ceremonially cracking apart a piece of matzah, saying that, as a trans woman, “I have broken myself open over and over again,” before introducing the concept of kintsugi and asking participants to reflect on what is golden about breaking.

Also leading the Seder was ritualist, scholar, and zine-maker Ari L. Monts/Emet, who, reflecting on the impetus for the Trans+ Seder, shared that the purpose is “to make a space where the Passover story’s message of freedom from oppression wasn’t a far away idea, and where the big ideas that our tradition offers us felt close, personal, and intimate. We wanted a space where our stories and our ancestors’ stories came together, danced, and transformed into something new—and I think we did it.”

As much as the rituals and liturgy of the Trans+ Seder are innovative, one of the main goals is to explore the trans and queer themes that are already baked into the Passover tradition—celebrating struggle, fighting for liberation, and a strong emphasis on collectsivity, we are another link in a long chain of progressive Jews reimagining their heritage to change society. Today’s Brooklyn scene constitutes one of history’s most intensely concentrated zones of queer Jewish flourishing, and one goal of this event is to capture and nurture that energy. The Seder is also a course correction, fighting against years of the marginalization and erasure of trans participation in communal Jewish life.

So why is this night different from all other nights? It’s different because when the room is filled with trans souls, there is no need for apology or explanation. Marginalized people can truly claim a voice, be it loud, quiet, broken, golden, hormone-inflected, or, invariably, angelic. Yet, the purpose of this gathering is community, connection, and tradition with a twist—and that’s about as kosher as it gets.