TDOR Services 2024 Kavannah
For Trans Day of Remembrance, I joined up with a handful of other trans members of my synagogue for the annual TDOR service. One of the things I prepared for the service was a Kavannah for the Birkat Kehila (community blessing) that we sing each Shabbat.
Writing this was really meaningful. It gave me an opportunity to reflect on what prayer has come to mean for me in these past few months as I build an adult relationship to it. At the heart of the Kavannah is a reveal that I've been using prayer as a tool to tap into my inner sense of belonging. I'm learning that cultivating belonging is a practice, not a consistent state for me. It's grounding in a very uncertain world -- connecting me to all people and beings. To the universe of all things. I'm curious how my relationship to prayer will shift over the next many years, and if this specific framing of "belonging" will fade at some point as I learn to feel more and more confident in my spiritual connections or if it will always be the right word to describe what I'm reaching toward.
Here's the Kavannah that I delivered. I hope it serves as a time capsule of how I felt about prayer in this transitional time:
During the high holidays this year, we studied the priestly blessings as a community. The translation we used, interpreted the first line this way:
"may god bless you and keep you"
I find the word "keep" to be very powerful. I hear "kept" as somewhere between the words "held" and "chosen."
It's a little possessive even -- in a way that says I choose you, I want you. When we keep each other we reach outside of ourselves and to pull the other towards us. To tell them they belong, both to us and to our community.
On trans day of remembrance we keep the memories of those we've lost. We keep them by speaking their names, sharing their stories, and letting their spirits know that they belong. That we yearn for them and reach towards them. We keep them in our minds but we also keep them in our bodies. In our bones. Our beautiful, holy, trans bodies are the keepers of a lineage.
My Judaism shifted when I started my transition. That is in large part because our bodies and our lineages are a potent path into our connection to God. When I stepped into my body, I opened up to all of the bodies around me, to their stories, and all of the things that our spirits have in common. We are always already kept by God. The question is not "if we belong" to this world, but how we can remember that we do and how we can extend that belonging to each other.
When we sing and bless tonight, I want you you to hold onto that feeling. The blessing of being kept. As we hold onto the way God keeps us, let's keep those who aren't with us today and also reach out towards each other and keep one other close. And please, if this is the blessing you need to keep yourself here, with us, let that fill your heart too. I want to keep you. We want to keep you.
I'd like to invite you to put your arm around your whoever you came with as we recite the blessings.