Tonight, I tuned into Hinenu Baltimore's virtual Selichot services. The High Holidays are a time when we challenge ourselves to be our best selves. Usually, for me, this means tempering and directing my righteousness; and reminding myself not to martyr myself. I often have to remind myself to take care of my health. This year, as I watch a room full of masked queer Jews a city over singing about social justice—while mere blocks away my old synagogue does the same without masks—I am realizing that I failed to be my best self in a different way this year. So this essay is my t'shuvah to my local community of queer and trans disabled Jews. This year, I failed to stand up for what is right. I failed to speak truth to power. I prioritized wanting to be accepted over my own health, and the health of those around me; and I gave up too soon. I had an excuse, given how much I had on my plate, and then I thought it was too late to do anything. But it is never too late. The gates never fully close. It is the high holidays. The moment to do what is right is now.
This essay is not Lashon Hara, because it is not pointless. My aim is to make a call for accountability. It is never too late to do t'shuvah. It is never too late to change and do what is right. The Chofetz Chaim cautions us to attempt every possible way to hold someone accountable before we detail their misdeeds in public. This has been attempted by others before me to no avail. I did nothing but pity myself while others fought to regain our inclusion in a community we once called home. I am pessimistic that this essay will result in change, but I owe it to my community to write and publish it.
This essay is an accounting of Kol Tzedek Synagogue's decision to go mask optional from my perspective, the impacts it has had on me, and some thoughts, philosophy, and analysis.
Bagels on the Stoop
For five years, I frequently attended and participated in Kol Tzedek Synagogue. Kol Tzedek was a major weighing factor for why I moved to Philadelphia, and a major reason I did not move away when I had the opportunity. I did not pay monthly dues at first, due to financial hardship, but I would donate here and there as I was able—and began paying 5% of my annual income to Kol Tzedek when I achieved the financial stability to do so. I gave a dvar torah in February 2023, Those Who Give You Life, which was well received; and I was asked to deliver "vorts" for the high holidays later that year.
In August of 2023, I had a multi-stage concussion which prevented me from writing and delivering those vorts. Rabbi Mónica Gomery told me that I should rest, take care of myself, and that Kol Tzedek would still be there for me when I recovered enough to return to services. When I was recovered enough, I could write and deliver belated vorts for a shabbat service. The Chesed Committee organized a brief meal train for me, which was useful at the time. My recovery was and continues to be too long. The support from the synagogue dried up after the high holidays were over, and I spent six months mostly alone at home, tuning into services virtually as I was able.
The high holidays that year were challenging. I tried to attend in-person, but my concussion symptoms were too severe. I could not read the siddur without headaches. It was too loud for my constant low-level migraines. I could not stay focused. I tuned in virtually at home and listened in. I tried to journal while listening. I tried to make it meaningful. I spent most of it laying in the dark, with services in the other room on low volume, so I could distantly hear it without my symptoms being triggered.
I made my return to Kol Tzedek in-person on January 6th 2024 to see a friend give a dvar torah in celebration of completing their conversion. I struggled to get through it, but I managed. It is amazing how much of the service I had completely memorized, having attended so many times for years, and so not being able to read the siddur was less of a barrier than I expected.
After motzi, I ate bagels on the stoop of the Calvary Center, in the snow, with the other chronically ill trans people. There was consistently between ten and twenty of us on any given week. We called ourselves the "stoop crew." Most of the synagogue had an unmasked oneg indoors, perhaps ignorant of our own wintry gathering outdoors. That it during was the annual peak of COVID transmission did not change this. The symbolism of the moment felt absurd. We were literally outside, in the snow, standing by a loud road, because we were unable to safely participate fully in the community. A pathetic dramatic irony hung over us. We all knew what the board was currently in the process of discussing.
It was all okay, though, because services themselves were masked, and we had each other. A special little portion of bagels was set aside in the kitchen for us to sneak in and grab without having to enter a room of unmasked people. So, that was a type of caring about us, yes? We were still a part of the community, even if we could not be fully included. Surely, the board would make the right decision, and we would still be able to attend weekly services and have our little stoop oneg. Attempts were being made to keep us, so surely we would not be cut off so easily. Bagels and oneg are not the most important thing. We could still all sit together in the sanctuary and daven together whether you were able-bodied or disabled. With everyone masked, this was the one place left in the world where people at high risk of complications from COVID-19 infection could still feel normal and a part of a community without being singled out.
This was the last time I ever attended services in-person at Kol Tzedek. I never delivered those vorts.
Who needs masks? Who is high-risk?
The CDC regularly issues guidances on COVID-19 promoting a relaxed attitude and a sense that the pandemic is over. However, these guidances are always accompanied by a nifty post-script: "Except for those with underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk of complications from COVID-19 infection."
So, who is included in that group, for whom these relaxed guidances do not apply? The CDC's list of underlying health conditions that increase one's risk of complications from a COVID-19 infection "with conclusive evidence" is very extensive.
If you add up all of these conditions, I am confident that you would capture at least half of all Americans. HIV is on this list, of course, so there are a lot of LGBT people and especially LGBT elders who are very high-risk. I also want to highlight the presence of autism on this list. Autism is tremendously prevalent in LGBT communities, as an incredibly disproportionate large portion of Autistic people self-report as being LGBT. There are multiple books about the intersections of autism and transgender identity especially. LGBT and high-risk groups overlap tremendously. Excluding high-risk people from your community is also exclusionary of a lot of LGBT people.
Now, this part is anecdotal, but I know a lot of people with "Long COVID." They have all been officially diagnosed with it by a physician. They are all neurodivergent. Some of them had to quit their careers because of it. Some are on disability benefits because of it. One is now a wheelchair user. The CDC found a conclusive correlation between neurodivergence and severe COVID-19 risk. I cannot afford to lose my career. I do not have a biological family to lean on for financial support. The risk of developing Long COVID is not a risk that I can take. Many other trans people are in this same position.
It is one thing to be concerned because of my autism, but I am also fat, and I now also have a history of brain injury. I have a poorly studied autoimmune disorder which is often treated with long-term Methotrexate, an immunosuppressant used in chemotherapy. I have refused to take Methotrexate due to my fear of putting myself at even higher risk, requiring deeper isolation than my career allows. I am trying every route of treatment possible to avoid Methotrexate. Weaker immunosuppressants, topical immunosuppressants, lifestyle changes, anything I can to not make my status as a high-risk person worse. Work from home is not an option with my employer.
I wear KF94 masks for a minimum of nine and a half hours a day, a minimum of five days a week. I do not eat in restaurants. I am so tremendously lonely. Community is difficult to find. Meeting new people is difficult. Very few people are willing to take any precautions of their own to make themselves safer for me to be around. I have devoted my life to public service, which often gains me expressions of deep gratitude and praise from others, but those same people will never agree to wear a mask even only when around me, indoors, in winter. I am expected to go out, do good work, and then go home and pretend it's still 2020. If the world just took COVID a bit more seriously, I could take it a bit less seriously, and we would all meet in a happy middle. Alas, that is not the world we live in.
But—for a while—I had Kol Tzedek. At Kol Tzedek, everyone still cared about protecting the most vulnerable. Food was set aside for us to eat on the stoop in the snow; and everyone masked during services. Thirty to three hundred people singing close together in a densely packed room is a very high-risk environment for spreading COVID-19, and it was because everyone wore masks that I felt safe participating. At Kol Tzedek, I was not the weird person still wearing a mask. You could not visibly see who was high-risk. Everyone was just one, unified, community—during services, before we parted to eat our bagels in our respective locations. The low-risk individuals in the warm building, sitting down; and the high-risk individuals outdoors standing in the snow.
Kol Tzedek Considers Going Mask Optional
Near the end of 2023, the Kol Tzedek board announced that they were considering removing the mask requirement for in-person services. This was not the first time that this had been proposed, and every time it had been shot down. Kol Tzedek attracted a substantial community of disabled people, especially trans disabled people, because of its efforts to include us in 2020. Listening sessions were held, for members to voice our opinions on the proposal. Surveys were sent out to members. I was only able to make it to one listening session, an online session specifically for disabled and high-risk people.
I expressed heartbreak and sadness. Some people present were full of rage, and I think that they were right to be, but I was still struggling to speak through my sadness. I only expressed heartbreak. I was a part of this community for five years. Now, the community was considering abandoning me. I was told it would still be here for me when I recovered from my concussion, and now it was not going to be. This was my spiritual home base. It gave me faith in humanity.
This was the last community space where I felt fully included. This was the last community space where I could meet a new person by chance, and not have my mask be a social barrier. In other community spaces, people do not try to socialize with me. Unmasked people avoid me so long as I am wearing a mask. I have conducted experiments. During times of low-transmission, I have experimented with taking my mask off in community events where people previously had ignored me despite my generally outgoing personality. Suddenly, everyone becomes very interested in talking to me. People welcome me to the space as if I am new. I tell people that we had actually met before—multiple times, in this same space. They ask where I had been this whole time. I tell them, right here, the whole time, wearing a mask. At the next event, I will put my mask back on, and those same people will go back to ignoring me when I greet them by name. Kol Tzedek was the only space where this was not an issue, because everyone was wearing a mask.
The listening session was what it was. I honestly wish it had not been a one-way listening session. I wish it was a dialogue, where I could have heard the board members explain why they thought it was safe to go mask-optional. I wanted to ask them for their sources of information. I wanted to tell them that I would love to live in their reality, where this is a safe and inclusive thing to do. I wanted them to convince me to believe in their world, where this would all be okay. I wanted to believe they were right, but nothing was provided to try to convince me.
I wish we could have negotiated. I wish we could have agreed to compromises. I wish it was not just a venting session where fifty disabled people cried in our own ways and a middle-aged cis woman took notes with a blank facial expression. I remember at one point, she asked me why I do not simply attend virtual services. I am grateful for the existence of virtual services in this world, but to suggest that they are comparable to an in-person community space is a joke. If virtual services were just as good as in-person services, then why don't the able-bodied people just attend virtual services? Why did I donate hundreds of dollars to fundraise for an expensive new ADA-compliant building for the synagogue? Why would I give 5% of my annual income to a local synagogue just to attend virtual services? There are plenty of free online options I could have gone to instead.
The Board Meeting
On January 21st, Kol Tzedek held their board meeting to discuss and vote on the change. All synagogue members were allowed to attend, but we could not speak. About twenty high-risk individuals showed up wearing masks to watch. We filled the small room at the Cedarworks Community Center. We silently sat there, no signs, no noise, we just observed.
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative's COVID transmission dashboard shows that, during that week, there was more COVID-19 transmission than during 85% of the entire pandemic.
The meeting began with Rabbi Mónica Gomery leading the room in singing Ozi V'Zimrat Yah, to the Shefa Gold melody.
My Strength with the Song of G—d will be my salvation
Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari read a written speech about the importance of disagreement and differing opinions in Judaism. So he read ten opinions on masking. The first opinion was "There are people who want us to continue masking and will be mad at us if we go mask optional." The next nine were all arguments to stop requiring masks during services. None of the positions presented by him were "There are long-time members of our community who will no longer be able to safely participate in our community anymore if we do not require masks."
Some of those nine reasons to relax the mask requirement were, I think, reasonable; while others felt vague. I did not see any of them as necessitating the intensity with which the proposed change was made. We could have worked together to address all of those needs while still taking meaningful actions to also include high-risk individuals.
The original proposal was simply to go mask-optional and dissolve all COVID precautions. A "manager's amendment" proposed maintaining one Shabbat service a month as a masks-required service, unless a B'nei Mitzvah happens to be scheduled that day. Anti-masking board members framed this as a generous offering to high-risk individuals that we should be grateful for. It was framed as an act of disability justice, to continue to include us. But, of course, none of us in the room felt that way. Sure, no other synagogue in Philadelphia has one masks-required service a month, but at Kol Tzedek we could already attend every in-person event without hesitation. We were losing more than 75%.
This proposal would reduce us to less than 25% of Saturday services, and no other events. Even for the high holidays, when Kol Tzedek often has over six hundred attendees in a small space, singing their hearts out and fasting, there would only be a masked section of the audience. The vast majority of people would be unmasked. Given how COVID-19 transmits, this would be pure optics. We would be seated all together away from the rest of the community, separate and excluded, and still would be putting ourselves at immense risk to be there. I doubt that for break-fast we would be able to have our stoop crew. No such mention of setting out food for us to collect without going near unmasked crowds was in the proposal. Why would they? The entire sanctuary would be an unmasked crowd of immense size.
Their survey found that 25% of the synagogue would be negatively affected by going mask-optional, which is why they chose one Saturday a month. There are 4.33 Saturdays per month, so one per month is actually less than 25%. Also, if a b'nei mitzvah "happens" to get scheduled during one of our 12 services a year, they would just make it masks-optional anyway. This is disproportionately fewer shabbats per year than members of the community who reported being affected by a masks-optional policy.
Since when do Jews see minorities as undeserving of full inclusion? We, as Jews, are only 2% of the population ourselves. The desires of the majority trumping the needs of the minority were routinely repeated during this meeting and it baffled me. It felt incredibly Un-Jewish and hardly progressive.
There were high-risk people on the board who spoke against going mask-optional. Each one had proposed a compromise amendment which would give high-risk people more than what was being offered, but still allowed for the lower-risk majority to not wear masks on the majority of occasions. There was a proposal to add language where masks would be highly encouraged for all attendees, and provided for free, but not required. There was a proposal to accept the one masked service a month for most of the year, but add one additional masked service a month during the period of November through February when COVID transmission is highest. These, to me, are incredibly strong concessions. They feel like desperate pleas to remain included just a little bit more. These amendments, if accepted, would have barely made services safer for high-risk individuals, but they at least would have shown that the rest of the board cared about our feelings and desires to remain in the community.
These amendments were not just dismissed entirely by the anti-masking board members, but spitefully derided, even laughed at and made fun of. There was a note of hatred in their voices. These compromises were called naive, untenable, even "insulting." I will not name any individual board members to respect their privacy, and because I do not remember all of their names. Because we all live in the same part of the same city, I see them in public frequently. To make my life less painful, I have tried to forget their names and faces, so that seeing them unmasked at the grocery store does not give me palpitations.
One board member, who was pro-masking, said quite simply:
More masking is better than less. More precautions are better than less. Some precautions are better than none.
Her speech was level-headed, even-toned, and fair; but you could hear her exasperation and pain behind it. Her thesis was essentially that she will accept anything she can to keep as much COVID safety as she could, and then she could accept the loss of whatever else was done. You got the sense that the anti-masking board members hated this woman and wished they had never voted her onto the board.
One board member, who was anti-masking, said that she had fibromyalgia and was tired of "everyone saying that masking is important for all disabled people." She said her symptoms "would probably be diagnosed as long COVID today" which to me reads like an implication that long COVID is not real, which is painful to hear from someone who herself has a health condition that is very serious but considered to be fake by many people. It was infuriating, however, to hear someone declare herself to have a disability that is not on the CDC's list of underlying health conditions, and then try to speak for those of us who are. Not all disabled people are at high-risk of complications from COVID-19, it's true! Not all disabled people need masked community spaces. People with fibromyalgia do not, according to the CDC. But I am not a person with fibromyalgia. I am an immunosuppressed Autistic fat person who has experienced a multi-stage concussion. You might not be excluded, but I am. So what use does "not all disabled people want masks" serve?
One board member, a high-risk trans person, who regularly assisted with leading services and leyning from the torah, who gave tremendous free labor to the community, broke down crying during their turn to speak. It sticks in my mind, the sound of their voice. They simply kept saying "I don't understand why you are doing this." They did not have a prepared speech. They just wept and begged the board not to make their community unsafe for them to be in.
Multiple board members invoked transmisogynistic and ableist tropes to cast pro-masking synagogue members as violent, aggressive, and dangerous. There was a demonization of crazy pro-maskers who were angry just to be angry and seemingly had no stakes in the matter at hand besides an ideological adherence to a party line. Comments were made that, without names, were heavily targeted at one disabled trans woman in particular who has been extremely involved in Kol Tzedek for years, has helped lead services many times, and who had contracted long COVID more recently. She is opinionated, but she is not a violent or dangerous person—especially not since long COVID. She is an incredibly kind and caring person, even if she can at times be snarky. Are we, as Jews, really going to demonize a Jew for being opinionated, snarky, and having an impolite tone? It was painful to see a "progressive community of activists who believe in social justice" so easily ostracizing and isolating a trans woman who has done so much for them because they did not like her tone—which I doubt was as aggressive as they framed her as being. During the listening sessions, she was very level, and never raised her voice.
One board member, perhaps the only ally on the board who did not self-identify as high risk but supported masking, gave a compelling speech about how being Jewish is about being different, and being a minority, and that just because other groups are going mask-free is not a good reason we should do it too. I thanked him personally after the meeting took a break and kicked out the non-board observers. However, I was crying, so I don't know if he understood me.
The Board Deliberates
When it came time to vote, non-board observers were not allowed in the room. We would not be allowed back in, so it was time for us to leave. I remember Rabbi Mónica Gomery sweetly saying "Thank you, Community Members" as we left the room. We were thanked for observing this important moment, a moment wherein the room was about to vote against our best interest. We heard the board speak. We knew that the odds were not in our favor.
We walked from Cedarworks to the old Kol Tzedek office on 50th Street, where we sat, masked of course, and waited to hear the news. We sat, and sang songs, and cried, and commiserated. I remember one person shouting "I moved here for this community. Now what do I do?" The waiting felt like it went on forever.
One of the board members eventually came by to tell us the news. The one who at the beginning gave the speech about how more people masking is better than fewer people masking, and had proposed at the very least putting language in the COVID-19 policy politely encouraging people to wear masks even if it remains optional. She told us that the Board "did what they always wanted to do" and had voted for the "manager's amendment" giving us only one shabbat service a month with masks required (unless they decide to schedule someone's bar mitzvah that day.) The only concession made to the pro-masking side was that they would provide free masks of KN95 quality or better at the door, in case someone needed one.
I made a comment about how I was not going to pay 5% of my income for less than 12 shabbats a month, and that since 25% of the synagogue had said they would be impacted by going mask-optional, then maybe if we all cancelled our dues the financial impact would make the Board change their mind as they realize they are losing such a huge portion of the community. Nearly every trans person who attended Kol Tzedek was high-risk, so they would lose nearly every trans member. Ironically, it was a trans person, Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari, who was the most adamantly anti-masking. I felt very betrayed by that.
Understandably, I got pushback. We all cared about this community deeply, and a lot of people did not want to be antagonistic, or tear the community apart. They wanted harmony. They would reduce their dues by 75%, but they would still pay dues. The board member told me that my own dues were small fish to the board, and that the anti-masking crowd was where the real money was. I told her how much I gave to Kol Tzedek every year, even when I could not attend for six months. To me, it was an astoundingly large number. She told me that that amount was considered the sliding scale subsidized membership dues, and that most members payed substantially more. The board would not even notice my dues being cancelled.
I don't want to sound like an entitled donor, but when I worked in non-profit development, if somebody gave $1000/year to the organization, which had four times as many staff as Kol Tzedek and double the building expenses, then we considered that person a "champion donor" and would wine and dine them to keep their good favor. I was giving substantially more than $1000/year to Kol Tzedek, so to hear that I was actually considered relatively low-income compared to most of the synagogue, it broke an illusion. Kol Tzedek was not a community of marginalized social justice activists struggling to fight together for a better world. Kol Tzedek was a community of exorbitantly wealthy people seeking a salve for their guilt, and the presence of people like me made them feel better about themselves. Perhaps this was not really true, but in that moment, that is what I felt.
Wherein I email the board
Our crowd dissipated for the night, and I went home, and I wrote a letter to the board. A long pathetic, messy, typo-ridden emotional letter that I sent to all of the rabbis and all of the board members.
I write this letter to you, the leadership of Kol Tzedek, as a farewell. I have cancelled my Kol Tzedek membership. Tonight I cried a few times. I do not want to leave Kol Tzedek, but it seems Kol Tzedek does not feel the same.
Kol Tzedek was the last place where it felt like there was community who cared about me and my community. Kol Tzedek was a major reason I moved to Philadelphia and before the pandemic I attended every single weekend. When I became a front-line essential worker, KT gave me spiritual solace when I needed it. When we returned to in-person services, I attended as much as I was able. When I had an opportunity to leave Philadelphia to live with a partner, I chose to stay because there was nowhere like Kol Tzedek in the city I would have moved to. That relationship ended, so in a way I had chosen the community I had at Kol Tzedek over that relationship.
For the past few years, I have given 5% of my annual income to Kol Tzedek. An entire paycheck. I am not a wealthy person. I make ends meet and then just a little bit more after that. I do not come from wealth or have a bio-family to bail me out in an emergency. Last February I gave a dvar at KT about the importance of chosen family and community. Everyone knows that giving over $100/month to KT is not nothing for me financially. It was because I really truly valued KT and the ability for KT to survive. It seems KT does not feel the same way about me.
Between bottom surgery, organizing against the Moms for Liberty Conference, and my multi-stage concussion in August, I was not able to attend KT very much in 2023. Still, I continued to give to KT, because I wanted KT to still be there when I recovered. It seems that KT decided not to be there for me anymore now that I am getting back on my feet.
I was supposed to write and deliver vorts for the high holidays this year, and then I had an accident at work resulting in a multi-stage concussion. I am only just now back to working part-time. I managed to sit through one full shacharit service recently, but it was a struggle.
My neurologist says my brain injury combined with my autism make me very high risk for COVID complications, so it's important that I avoid infection. Most of my life I spend wearing a mask in rooms where nobody else is masking. I feel alienated from those spaces. People don't talk to me. They do not want to include or befriend the person wearing a mask. Kol Tzedek was different. Everyone wore a mask. So people talked to me like anybody else in the community. It felt like I wasn't an alien. For once a week, I was not the only Jew, not the only trans person, and not the only person wearing a mask. Before, I masked just in case, now, it is not a choice anymore. If I get COVID, I will not be able to keep my job, and I will not be able to support myself. So I just can't take that risk.
Many community spaces have dropped COVID precautions and in doing so stopped being places I could fully participate. None of those places claimed to care about disability justice. None of them claimed to be progressive, or to care about the voices of the most marginalized, or about trans people, or about repairing the world. It is much more heartbreaking for Kol Tzedek to decide it is no longer important to include me and my community.
Yes, only 20%, 1 in 5 people are disabled. That makes us a minority. And not all disabled people are high-risk of COVID complications. But only 2% of Americans are Jewish. Only 10% of Americans are LGBT. Do we not still want to be able to take Jewish holidays off for work? For public spaces and community spaces to be inclusive of Jewish people even just socially? Do we not still insist on creating representation of LGBT people, uplifting LGBT voices, and enforcing anti-discrimination laws? In this circumstance, it is not merely alienation, but simply a matter of medical necessity that we are not excluded.
Sure, one shabbat a month is a concession that was made, but after observing the board meeting tonight, I simply no longer feel welcome. How could I possibly feel like Kol Tzedek is my "spiritual home" when I am only allowed to attend once a month, and hope to G-d that that one time a month aligns with when I can go. How could I possibly feel like a part of the community when I am sitting on the other side of the masking mechitzah during the high holidays, observing everyone else's unmasked singing, but unable to go up for an aliyah, or give vorts, or participate in services beyond observing from afar. Nobody from the "real" community that is allowed to come every week would ever have a reason to talk to me, to meet me, to include me in their community. They are sitting in their section, attending during their weeks. This is not inclusion.
How could I feel at home at KT anymore after Rabbi Ari Lev gave a speech at the beginning of the board meeting listing 9 reasons people don't want to mask, and the only reason to keep the masking policy being that "some people want us to" without any consideration for the fact that for many of us it is not a matter of want it is a matter of life or death. I know so many people with autism who have developed chronic nerve pain after getting COVID. One now has become a wheelchair user. The CDC considers our risk factor to be in the highest category and that this is "conclusive evidence." I just cannot afford to become more disabled than I already have become with this brain injury.
I heard that many of the board members felt like they were given dignity or good faith by the people expressing our pain at being removed from the Kol Tzedek community by their actions. I can sympathize to an extent, but I do not feel like that same empathy has been extended to us when a decision is being made about if we are allowed to be in the community anymore at all.
I want to extend my deepest gratitude to the five board members who advocated for masking and for doing everything that can be done to include people like me at KT. Five, unfortunately, is not nine. And so 11 people out of 895 have decided to kick me out. It breaks my heart. Kol Tzedek will be less colorful without us. I supposed that is the synagogue you wanted.
I'm sure most of you have not even read this far. I am merely one of the loud minorities you expected would be "angry" at you for changing this policy. I want you to know that I am only a little angry. Mostly, I am just sad. I am in mourning. I am grieving. I will never see that new building I fundraised for excited about the ADA accessibility. I have lost something profoundly important to me. I am a whole entire person, not only one fourth of a person.
I hope you all enjoy getting to "see each other's faces." You will not be seeing my face. The faces you see will all look a little more similar to each other than before. It is not because I do not want to be there too. How desperately I dream of being there too, smiling with you, eating bagels during oneg together at a table indoors and not sitting on a stoop in the snow. As if the "stoop crew" ever did this because we enjoy eating outdoors in January. Unfortunately, there is only one science when it comes to neuroscience. An autistic person with a traumatic brain injury must not take unnecessary risks during a pandemic, such as sitting in a room of one hundred unmasked people singing. It is the advice of my neurologist and the conclusive stance of the CDC. And knowing that 11/16 board members, and our own RALF, have decided that I only deserve the table scraps of inclusion, does not make me inclined to come that once a month.
Policies of apartness have never been an effective or just method of dealing with minorities. Kol Tzedek of all communities should know this.
Then again, this is also the community where, when I pleaded for help defending the library against Moms for Liberty, I was chastised for crying. So maybe my expectations of Kol Tzedek were too high.
I will take my cripple tranny vorts elsewhere. Come Yom Kippur, if any of you wish to reach out for t'shuvah, you have my email.
Shalom,
Shel R[.] Poet, union organizer, trans woman, and recently a TBI survivor.
I did not receive a response, but I know that my email was read by at least one person. I never received the email announcing the new change to the Kol Tzedek COVID-19 policy. Other people received it, including people who had already cancelled their dues. It went out to the general listserv. I checked my spam folder on all of my email accounts. I searched for "kol tzedek" and for "mask" in my inboxes. I did not receive this email. Another email went out about upcoming events, and I did not receive it.
I had been removed from the mailing list, by someone, without a word. Maybe this is not true. Maybe I am going crazy and this is conspiracy thinking. Maybe it was a technological fluke. I sent the board another email. An even messier email. This is not me being my best self in these emails.
I stopped receiving KT newsletter emails despite having never unsubscribed. Never got the official announcement of the decision. This must be because one of you manually took me off the list, even though nobody replied to my letter.
That is petty. You’re better people than this. I truly believed you are better people than this. Even after everything I desperately tried my best to believe in you and your claims to understand the impact this has and the deep profound grief and sadness that me and people like me are going through. I didn’t exactly expect a reply but to manually unsubscribe me feels like saying “good riddance. You should have just accepted our mechitza and not complained further.”
None of us want to leave or want to mask or want you to mask or anything like that. It is not righteous indignation. We just want to continue to be a part of this community and we do not have the same choices available to us that you do. Some express that in anger and others in grief. Perhaps they look the same to you. But truly it is not because we are out to get you or make you out into bad people. We just want to be seen as whole entire people and to be allowed to fully participate in the community like we have done for many years until now. To some, tactics of protest are the only language they know. I wish I knew what language would be heard.
But that was so cold. To take me off the mailing list. To take away any option for me to even try to reconsider if attending once a month would be worth it still because it’s better than nothing. I don’t know who did it but it is very evident that someone did given that others who canceled their recurring donations still received the verdict email and I have checked spam and everything.
Cruel. Whichever of you did that, that was cruel. You did not need to put salt in the wound when I am still grieving the loss of my community.
I do not want to be cruel. I just want to be seen. I do not know the language of facial expressions, only the language of words. As an autistic person, I understand words. This is my language. I am trying to communicate exactly what I am saying. There is no other secret message. I am not trying to punish. I am just trying to make visible to you the impact of what has happened, as important information for you to have. Leaders deserve to know the impact of their decisions.
I am not trying to harass. You just deserve to know that someone in leadership made that decision to silently unsubscribe a grieving person instead of talking to them. So you know who you are working with. Please in my words read only sadness and not hostility. That is all I am trying to communicate.
This email also never received a response.
I also had sent a personal email to Rabbi Mónica Gomery specifically, in our email thread about my high holiday vorts that she had asked me to write and read to the community.
Hi Rabbi Mo,
Given the decision that the Board made tonight, I am no longer able to attend Kol Tzedek services given that the TBI that this dvar is about makes me at very high risk of complications were I get to get COVID-19, and I no longer have any sick leave left to even financially afford getting more sick.
I will have to take these vorts and revise them into an essay to publish somewhere, I guess.
I'm sorry I was never able to fulfill my offer to give vorts for KT. It seems that the same accident that prevented me from speaking at the high holidays now makes me no longer eligible for inclusion in the Kol Tzedek community at all.
Best of luck in all your endeavors. I will miss you.Shel
Mó had always been a very sweet and kind person to me. When a community member had scolded me for crying, she had reached out personally to tell me she was going to speak to him, to apologize on his behalf, and urge me to remain in the community. I know that rabbis professionally have to make every member of the synagogue feel like they have a personal connection, but I did still feel like we had a personal connection.
This email also never received any acknowledgment or response.
I never re-subscribed to the mailing list, but the next week, I received a newsletter. Someone read the second email, and re-added me to the list. Or maybe it was a technological fluke. Either way, nobody ever acknowledged my pain. Nobody ever tried to convince me to give the masked service a try. Nobody ever told me they were sorry that it had to be this way.
Nobody ever tried to convince me that the decision was correct, and based on science. Nobody ever tried to convince me that my perception of the state of the pandemic was wrong. I have spent many nights imagining what they could have told me to convince me that it was okay and I could just keep being a member. What if they had told me that one-way masking is actually effective enough, and sent me a study showing that as long as I wore a high quality mask, then I would be pretty safe? I would have accepted that. What if they just told me that they hoped I'd still consider attending the masked service and see what it's like? I would have accepted that. What if they had just reassured me that they never took me off of the mailing list, and it was a technological fluke? I would have accepted that. Almost anything expressing care or a desire for me to remain in the community would have convinced me to give the new mask-optional Kol Tzedek a try.
I received nothing. I was small fish. My absence was meaningless. My virtual attendance was never noticed. I did not matter to them. I was merely a customer, and the other customers paid more than me to have things their way.
If you are reading this, and you believe that I am wrong about how dangerous it is for me to attend a shacharit shabbat service indoors where the vast majority are not wearing masks, but I am wearing a KF94 mask, then please email me. My email is shelraphen@gmail.com. Please try to convince me that I am wrong. I desperately want to live in the reality where my concerns are not based in reality. I want to live in the world everyone else seems to be living in where COVID is no longer something to worry about, and it does not matter if other people mask around me. Heck, convince me that I don't have to wear a mask either. Convince me Long COVID is not real, or more rare than I think it is. Convince me COVID was a hoax. I do not want to live in the reality where everyone else has moved on from the pandemic and left me behind. This is not the reality that I choose. I do not wear a mask because I want to. I wear a mask because I have to. I do not isolate myself from every offline community I was once a part of because I want to. It is because all evidence I have found shows that it is necessary for me to keep my career. Please, I am desperate, convince me otherwise. Convince me that I was wrong and can safely re-join Kol Tzedek. I want that more than anything.
Nobody has ever tried.
The Aftermath
Other people tried to organize campaigns in response to the decision. I kept tabs on it, but I just could not get myself to be involved. I could not imagine sitting through a dvar by Rabbi Ari Lev after hearing him speak against masking. I could not imagine looking at all those unmasked people and not feeling contempt the entire time. I was still trying to return to full-time work after a traumatic brain injury, and I had to get an emergency surgery because of GRS complications caused by my autoimmune disorder. I did not have the time and energy to devote to fighting a decision the board had already made.
There were some attempts at organizing an all-masked minyan out of the homes of former Kol Tzedek members. I found it challenging to participate. My concussion symptoms were still acting up, but I also just could not get into it. My faith was shook. Everyone still talked about classes they were attending through Kol Tzedek. Everything sappy and progressive made me feel contempt and bitter. I got into a fight with someone during Passover because they wanted to slow down and make the rituals more meaningful, and I just was not putting any passion or emotion into my reading voice. Everyone could tell I was emotionally checked out and I was not a pleasant passover participant. I was not contributing anything to the space but an impatience to go home and dilate.
That was not my best self. I should have tried harder to keep myself in community. I should have tried harder to keep my faith. I should not have given up.
Recently, I mapped out everything that is making me sad, and drew connections between them. I counted how connected each problem was to the other problems. Loneliness was the worst contributor to my sadness, but Kol Tzedek came in second place. It is now October. This all happened in January. There are six things I identified as being tied back to the events I describe above. They are all interconnected.
I am sad that I have a brain injury now
My concussion symptoms continue to linger and I find it hard to accept the timeline that having my concussion put me in. Life before the concussion was going very well. I was able to convince myself that I was not that high-risk. I had community. I keep wondering if I would have been seen as so disposable if I had read those vorts during the high holidays after all. I conclude that nothing would have changed. This makes me sad.
I am sad about the pandemic
Kol Tzedek going mask-optional makes me feel profoundly alienated and marginalized. Me and my community cannot exist in public space the way we once could. We are systemically excluded from society and seen as acceptable collateral damage. I am sad about the state of the pandemic every day, and everything that we lost because of it. I cannot move on from the pandemic, and Kol Tzedek moving on without me makes it all hurt even worse, because my "spiritual home" was my salve for coping with such a harsh world.
I feel like I don't know what is real anymore
The way that the Kol Tzedek board framed pro-masking community members as unhinged and crazy, and took it for granted that masking is no longer necessary or needed, made me feel like consensus reality is broken. They are clearly reading different sources of information than I am.
I have been obsessed with the breakdown of consensus reality since that board meeting. I have been reading philosophy books, sociology books, even New Age books about the formations of worldviews and how people choose what to believe.
I feel gaslit by the entire world. How do I know what is real? How do I know what information is reliable? I am a librarian and my entire career depends on my ability to evaluate sources of information for authority. What do we do when those systems of authority break down and we no longer have a consensus among the experts?
The Kol Tzedek Board Members kept talking about "multiple truths" and "more than one science." How can that be the case?
I am questioning long-held political beliefs
Judaism and Leftism were deeply intertwined for me. It is impossible to be a leftist and have hope that you can build a better world and improve upon massive systemic problems without having some sort of faith. You need to have faith in the power of collective action to create change. You need to have faith in humanity to be good if they are given the chance. Left wing ideologies depend on the idea that human begins are not inherently evil and will do the right thing without a strong authority forcing them to do it. How can you be a prison abolitionist without believing in the innate capability for humans to become good?
Kol Tzedek services frequently talk about how "another world is possible" and our duty to "repair the world." It was a home base to renew my hope for the future in spite of everything.
To have spiritual leaders and a community I believed in not just turn their backs on disabled people but to do so in a way that was so vile, cruel, and harsh; it shakes my hope for the future. If even a progressive synagogue of kind left-leaning people could do such a thing, how can I expect it to be possible to convince the whole of humanity to care about disabled people even a little bit? To care about trans people? To care about each other?
Not only does it shake my faith in progressive and left wing movements; it shakes my faith in left wing ideologies. What if we do need a state authority to prevent people from doing evil? That is a terrifying idea. But if people are not innately inclined towards good when given the chance, how could we ever have anarchist or communist societies built upon mutual aid and collective care?
What if nobody else was ever as serious about progressive and left wing ideas as I was? What if this entire time all of these activists have not truly meant what they were saying, and they all knew it, and I was just a gullible autistic person for actually believing them? How few people in the world are there who truly believe in this stuff and mean what they say? Is that really enough people to change the world and tear down capitalism? Or are we just doomed?
Autistic people don't cope with injustice very well
It is an injustice that the Kol Tzedek board did this. I am autistic and experience justice sensitivity which means it is very difficult for me to stop thinking about this and being upset by it and it has made it hard for me to sleep for months and it is making me exhausted emotionally.
I am sad because I am lonely.
I am lonely. Because I no longer have a community the way that I did when I had Kol Tzedek.
What does it mean for something to be traumatic?
Dr. Edith Shiro, on the podcast Factually, defines trauma as something that forces you to radically change the way you see the world. The world once seemed safe to you, and now it no longer does.
Listening to this podcast, I realized that the Kol Tzedek board meeting and decision has been traumatic for me. It is unusual for me to call a board meeting traumatic. Other events in my life that I call traumatic usually include me almost dying, or having my body physically overpowered and taken advantage of. How could a board meeting be traumatic?
Before that board meeting, I believed in a world where cruel and selfish systems of power drove humans to do bad things out of desperation, but that there were still pockets of the world where caring communities of good-hearted people tried to band together and make a difference. I believed that I was a part of a real meaningful community that cared about my well-being as an individual and as a demographic. I believed that protecting the most vulnerable was a value shared among progressives. I believed that I followed an imperfect but overall well-meaning and wise rabbi whose dvarim often guided how I saw the world. I believed that I was not truly alone, because I had this community. I believed that the proposal to go mask-optional was being made primarily out of ignorance and naïveté but that, when they saw how much it would impact us, the board would still ultimately be composed of good-hearted people who would realize that a bigger dialogue needed to be had to negotiate a compromise that worked for everyone.
The board meeting shattered those illusions. When I left that meeting, I did not enter the same world. I now lived in a world where there was no single public space in the entire city where I could go and not be out-of-place for wearing a mask. I now lived in a world where not even my own community cared about my safety. I now lived in a world where people who used to praise my writing and offer me caring words now ignored my pleading miserable emails. I believed in an institution, and I should not have. I was naive. I was not wise. I was only now learning that most people in the world say things they do not mean, even passionately, and I was supposed to know this and not believe in them.
A community was taken from me, but so was the world. Public space, places to meet new people, my religion, my faith, my sense of reality, my political beliefs. Everything came into question. Why am I even Jewish? Do I even believe in G—d? Why don't I write the O in that word? Why do I follow halachah? What is the point of this religion? Why do I do these rituals? Everything reminds me of Kol Tzedek now. It is all just painful. Why should I stay Jewish and not just go convert to Catholicism? Nothing means anything anymore.
My mother was about my age when she left Judaism. She did not leave by choice. Her Jewish community ostracized her because she dated non-Jewish men and did not expect them to convert. They ostracized her because she became pregnant with my biological brother. Growing up, I was bullied by other Jews, and she did not encourage me to identify as Jewish or participate in anything Jewish even though we lived in a Jewish neighborhood. I am the product of the Jewish community ostracizing someone for a horrible reason. If Jews were not flawed, I would not have been born. Was I stupid to start practicing Judaism as an adult, knowing how Jews treated my mother, and myself? Was this better than becoming Catholic instead? Or Neo-Pagan? Or getting into Chaos Magic? Or remaining an atheist? Or remaining a New Age Quantum Hippie? I thought believing in Judaism was better because, as a religion, it was better. What if I was wrong?
I am having an existential crisis. It has been nine months and I still spend half my nights sleeplessly going over that board meeting again and again. I think about if there is anything I could have done or said to have prevented it. I have dreams where I confront board members and rabbis. I see random people in public and think they might be Kol Tzedek board members who are avoiding looking at me because they recognize me. Sometimes I see Rabbi Michelle-Greenberg at the grocery store and wonder if she recognizes me. It is a hyper-vigilance. Where once I saw friendly neighbors, I now see people who fill me with contempt.
The DSM-V lists PTSD symptoms as:
Unwanted upsetting memoriesNightmaresFlashbacksEmotional distress after exposure to traumatic remindersPhysical reactivity after exposure to traumatic reminders
Avoidance of trauma-related stimuli after the trauma, in the following way(s):Trauma-related thoughts or feelingsTrauma-related external reminders
Negative alterations in cognitions and mood:
Negative thoughts or feelings that began or worsened after the trauma, in the following way(s):Inability to recall key features of the traumaOverly negative thoughts and assumptions about oneself or the worldExaggerated blame of self or others for causing the traumaNegative affectDecreased interest in activitiesFeeling isolatedDifficulty experiencing positive affect
Alterations in arousal and reactivity: Trauma-related arousal and reactivity that began or worsened after the trauma, in the following way(s):Irritability or aggressionRisky or destructive behaviorHypervigilanceHeightened startle reactionDifficulty concentratingDifficulty sleeping
Duration (required):Symptoms last for more than 1 month.
Functional significance (required):Symptoms create distress or functional impairment (e.g., social, occupational).
Can you believe it? I'm experiencing all of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from a synagogue board meeting. Of all the things to be traumatized by. My mother nearly killed me as a child, and I am having flashbacks to a synagogue board meeting instead.
A call for accountability
Researching what to do for the high holidays this year, I observed that nearly every synagogue with progressive values, such as Hinenu Baltimore, still does require masking for their high holidays services, at the very least. While no synagogue in Philadelphia still has a mask requirement, Kol Tzedek is still an outlier among its sister synagogues in American for not requiring masks.
I spent five years with Kol Tzedek. I would love to repair this relationship if Kol Tzedek wanted to repair a relationship with us. It has been less than a year since they made their decision. T'shuvah is still possible.
The Kol Tzedek Board could issue a statement apologizing to high-risk community members, and opening a dialogue on how we can find solutions which keep us in the community while still meeting the needs expressed by those who proposed going mask-optional. We could exchange the information sources we are reading to come to our conclusions, and try to rebuild a consensus reality together. A lot of people are so desperate to stay in the community that they still pay dues even after everything that happened. There is a path towards healing that does not require going back to 100% masked services every week without exception. What needs healing is not just the policy, but the trust. The sense that we are valued as community members.
They won't do this. Kol Tzedek members far more involved than I have tried everything to convince them to change their minds. I hardly have the clout to convince them to do such a thing with an essay. Most of my readers do not live in Philadelphia. I am not interested in trying to get this published in a local newspaper. They ignored my emails. They cut me out. They do not care what I think or feel.
But I needed to put this out there. I needed to do something instead of silently grieving alone. Kol Tzedek needs to be held accountable, and that means writing an account of what happened from the perspective of a normal community member. Not a board member, or someone who was very involved in the process of trying to change things. Just one of many high-risk individuals who expressed my sorrow at their decision and is dealing with the trauma of my loss.
If you think my accounting is wrong, and want to defend the Kol Tzedek board, then please do. I genuinely want to be convinced that their decision was good and I was wrong to be hurt and traumatized and should go back. I would prefer you do it by emailing me at shelraphen@gmail.com as I believe a dialogue in private will be more effective for having a conversation than a public comments section. When you convince me, I can edit this article.
Please give me the nuance that I am missing, and send me studies and articles about how PMC19 is actually bogus and I'm not as high risk for COVID complications as I think I am. I am not being facetious or making a rhetorical move here. I am not invested in the horrible version of events that I have given account of here. I don't want this version of events to be the truth. But after nine months of trying to think of it from different angles to make myself feel better about it, this is still the only interpretation I find believable.
If you are a Kol Tzedek board member, clergy, or staff member and want to make t'shuvah, well, email me. You can reply to my original email or write a new one. I'd email you first but right now my assumption is that you do not want that and there is no point in harassing people who do not want to talk.
This year, I will be taking Amtrak down to Baltimore to spend Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with Hinenu, who do require masking for their high holiday services. I will be staying with a friend who I met online in a community that does still require masking at its three annual offline meet-ups. I don't know how it will be. It will likely be painful. I will at least go into it knowing that I was not silent. I hope that publishing this will help me move on, at the very least.
L'shana tovah. May we be inscribed in the book of life for another year, still alive, despite the world doing nothing to make it easy for us.