The fantastic adventures of Koach Baruch

Why I #SayHerName Just about every week, I have stood during kaddish to say her name.  She is a Trans women of color and she has been murdered. Our tradition of mourning provides space and time to remember and reflect on the entire world that a person we have lost represents.  We stop. We take notice. We sit low to the ground or on the floor. We tear our clothes.  We mourn. We come to shul to say their names and remember them for an entire year. We tell their stories and share our favorite memories. We mourn. But who will mourn for our dear sisters?  How will we even know they died? For many, their deaths go unreported.  When there are news reports, they are often misgendered and their birth names are used. I say her name because I am a Jew. As of August 23, 2015, there have been over 20 Trans women murdered in the US, the majority of whom were trans women of color.  We are in a state of emergency. We are losing our beautiful sisters to senseless violence.  They have b

Over the summer, I participated in four 5K races.  First of all, that is a record for me and I felt really good about this accomplishment.  I decided that once I started hormones that I would do my best to stay active knowing that my fat would reposition itself, mainly to my belly.  My belly didn't need to grow, so I challenged myself. The last three races I entered and finished even earned me a medal! All of the races used only two gender indicators (male/female) to register for the race.  This included the Pride race. Two of the races used chips for tracking the time we finished the race. Two of them used the bib system where they collected the time we finished at the end tearing off the number on the edge of the bib. The bibs were divided into the two gender indicators by which side we ended on.  There were two paths, one for men, one for women.  Since I had registered as a male for all the races, it made sense to me that I would end the 2 races with the bib system in the mal