I grew up like any other modern orthodox Jewish boy in Seattle: Attending synagogue every Friday and Saturday, going to Seattle Hebrew Academy, eagerly awaiting my Bar Mitzvah and participating in the collective Jewish yearning to return to the land of Israel. In September 2021, after graduating high school along with many of my peers, I embarked on my gap year in Israel.
I spent nine months living in Ramat Efal, Israel, participating in the Bar Ilan Israel Experience (Bar Ilan), a program that provided Judaic and secular classes through Israel’s Bar Ilan University. During that time, I fell in love with Israel and everything it has to offer: culture, nature, history, food and so much more. However, all that time I had a secret: I was a woman trapped in a man’s body. The Jewish modern orthodox community tends to exist within a bubble and most people within it are completely unaware of the concept of being transgender. This made me feel like I needed to hide that aspect of myself because Bar Ilan wouldn’t know what to do with that, and coming out would only serve to alienate me.
In August 2022 I came to UConn, and for the first time in my life I was able to live my truth as a woman. My first day at UConn was when I began living as Elena. I lived in gender inclusive housing and I was surrounded by other trans people. It felt like nothing I have ever experienced. However, I soon realized that most of the people living with me vehemently opposed the State of Israel. It is part of a widespread phenomenon I call the “cookie-cutter mindset,” where people feel that because of one aspect of their identity, they must believe in a collection of other things despite barely knowing anything about them. This is clearly seen from videos that have come out from the encampments in Spring 2024 at schools like Colombia and NYU, where students admit to not knowing why they are protesting Israel. After realizing the viewpoints of those around me, I hid my Israeli flag and my Bar Ilan merch under my bed until I was able to bring them home.
At first, I was content with overlooking my friends’ cookie-cutter tendencies and hiding my Zionist identity, because they made me feel so accepted with my trans identity. Again, I hid a part of myself out of fear, only this time the roles had reversed: I was hiding my Zionism but being proud of being trans.
That was until October 7, when my friendships and those walls began to crumble.
For the first few months after October 7, whenever I spent time with those friends, I had to tamp down the fear that I had for my friends and family in Israel, because I was worried about how they might respond. I didn’t realize it yet, but living this double life was wearing me down.
Through UConn Hillel and Birthright Onward, I got the incredible opportunity to spend winter break 2023/24 volunteering in Israel. I spent two weeks repairing wheelchairs and testing remotes for hospital beds and Hoyer lifts with Yad Sara, an organization that rents medical equipment at extremely low to no cost at all, to those who need it. It was so liberating! For the first time in my life, my trans and Zionist identities could coexist. During that time, I also realized how important posting pro-Israel content on Instagram stories can be. Doing so accomplishes two things: It opens the door for productive conversation with people who consider themselves pro-Palestinian, and more importantly, it shows other Zionists that we aren’t alone even though it often feels that way.
Soon after posting content related to my volunteer work and my views on Israel, my friends at UConn criticized me. They told me to stop advocating for Israel because I “have nothing to do with it” despite my obvious connections to the situation. I was told that I was indoctrinated with propaganda. They told me to “do better” when I denounced Hamas for raping innocent women. One person even told me to “stop guzzling propaganda from a right-wing apartheid regime.” When I tried to respond by asking where they got all their information from, one of them said “I learned in university and formed my own opinion by reading and hearing people speak, attending free Palestine protests, and having friends from many places.” It didn’t take long for most of the friends I had made in my time at UConn to decide that I was a genocidal maniac and cut all ties with me.
By spring break, I could count my close friends at UConn on one hand.
At that point, despite losing these connections, I was still afraid to live my whole truth as a transgender Zionist. There were posters on campus that incited fear in the Jewish campus community. Messages like “no justice no peace” were displayed in public places throughout campus. Most notably, was the encampment or “UCommune”, which I had to walk past every single day.
Now I’m in my final semester at UConn, galvanized and unwavering in my entire identity. I’ve started being more vocal in my support of Israel, with tape on my backpack and on the door to my dorm that says “Bring Them Home Now!”. Since making this addition, my door has been vandalized multiple times. In the past, this would have been enough to scare me and send me back into hiding, but not anymore. I will not hide any aspect of my identity any longer. Twice in my life I have tried to hide part of myself because I thought it would make me feel safe, but it only made me feel worse in the long run. I cannot and will not do that anymore.
Supporting genocide doesnt open productive conversation. Free Palestine
Please inform us as to your qualifications for determining that Israel is committing genocide? Oh right, I forgot you probably saw some TikTok video and are now an expert. Bravo to Elena for having the courage to speak her truth and THE truth. Something you’re definitely not capable of.
The United Nations says otherwise…
Anti-Zionism ≠ Antisemitism
Free Palestine, Save Lebanon
UConn Groyper, what’s your take on Spic Fuentes allying with browns, then cancelling the Groyper War and running away from Michigan with his tail between his legs? At least BAP influenced J.D. Vance or some shit
“Spic Fuentes allying with the browns” I’m actually dead that’s hilarious. And is he running away from Michigan? I try and watch AF daily but haven’t gotten to this week. We need far-right pressure about immigration and Iran in the Trump campaign, we need GW2. If he’s backing away from it that’s disappointing.
BAP is a Jew, Vance is funded by Jews, and you are a Jew or just a really stupid, stupid goy.
You can be Jewish and condemn Israel. Israel’s existence does not necessitate you to use whataboutism and or defend it vehemently.
“It is part of a widespread phenomenon I call the “cookie-cutter mindset,” where people feel that because of one aspect of their identity, they must believe in a collection of other things despite barely knowing anything about them”
I find this ironic because this is what you are displaying. You are Jewish and now feel as if you have to believe Israel is right and the enemy is worse. It would’ve been better for you to analyze why you defend Israel before losing so many friends.
A reminder, anti-semitism≠anti-zionism.
weird to assume that anyone who is pro-palestine “doesnt know anything about the subject” maybe examine confirmation bias?
Are u a UConn student? Ur based asf can we meet IRL everyone on this campus is a total lib.
idk if you practice but prolly the catholic center, i might not have time for pancake night tmrw but i should be there after student mass on sunday
im writing this during work right now lmao, my schedule is pretty tight
That’s a pretty harsh accusation there, some random queer, are you sure you aren’t projecting internalized feelings of national socialism?
Tsmt
Lots of ignorance in these comments. I had a discussion with a UCONN “protester” in Oct 2023 who was openly supporting Hamas. When I reminded him how Hamas threw queers off rooftops when they took over Gaza (around 2005), he shrugged and said “they’re against my religion.” The fact is that queer Palestinian Arab people are smuggled into Israel by certain private groups because they are under threat of honor killings. Whatever your views of the Gaza war, Israel’s morality on this topic is very clear. Like other minorities, queer people have equal rights in Israel while they are violently oppressed in the Palestinian Arab areas. Tel Aviv is a popular tourist spot for queer people around the world. Hold your head up high and keep being you, Elena! Check out Daniel Ryan Spaulding.
I understand that by being trans you are inherently a victim to societal pressures, that much is clear. being a trans woman is something you should be proud of because it is a genuine part of your identity and is immoral for people to try and alienate from you. there is a genuine struggle there. zionism however, is not at all comparable to that. zionism is a political ideology, you are not born with zionism, it is not biological or hormonal. by supporting the terroristic atrocities Israel commits onto Palestine, Lebanon, and other arab countries in the middle east, all for the political agenda of “the greater Israel”, you’re continuing the spread of violent rhetoric that you yourself hold. don’t let it be lost on you that “terrorism” has become a politicized term that the west uses only when referring to their political opponents, and Israel is in fact an illegal and terrorist colonial-settlement project and apartheid state. i’m not just throwing buzzwords at you, it fits into every one of these definitions. do not let zionism represent your Judaism, you are not a victim because you are a zionist, you’re supporting the mistreatment, displacement, and genocide of civilians who are victim to Israel. please do proper research and learn to let go of your biases, and of course free Palestine 🇵🇸.
Fantastic work.
UConn students who have never studied Jewish history (which I found out last October is almost all of the non-Jewish ones) fail to recognize the antisemitism on campus.
If you read 20th century European accounts, the almost instinctual hatred we are seeing in Storrs is very reminiscent of pre-Holocaust Europe. It doesn’t start with violence.
לשנה הבאה בירושלים
Okay so when you look up “what is antisemitism” literally all the results say that antisemitism is specific to Jewish people. If your response to someone saying that they saw antisemitism on UConn campus is “well Arabs are semitic too” what does that accomplish? At the end of the say -whatever you want to call it- hate towards Jewish people is the most prevalent it has been in almost 100 years.
Also, I’m not sure what this “fabricated persecution” is? Like Jewish people have been persecuted for basically all of time. Open a single history book lmao.
“many rabbis have openly opposed Zionism”
This is such a flawed argument for two reasons:
1) The vast majority of Jewish people in the world do support Zionism, so to point out a small handful of people who oppose it is like those climate-change deniers who use the very few “scientific” papers that say that climate change isn’t happening. Despite the overwhelming evidence that says it IS happening, they point at those “studies.”
2) The appeal to authority here is so flawed. Let’s follow this logic with Christianity- so because some priests are pedophilic, does that mean that all Christians should to that too? No. I’m just using your own logic here…
Lastly, your chosen profile name here is ridiculous. Who are you to dictate who is and isn’t a victim? Shouldn’t that be up to the person who is experiencing the negativity? Imagine if you told someone else in LITERALLY any other context that what they experienced, despite making them feel like a victim, doesn’t make them a victim? That would be insane. But I guess since it is a Jewish person experiencing it, it doesn’t apply?
to your first point, again, I am not claiming that anti-semitism is not a present issue. pointing out that arabs are semitic was not my response to people seeing anti-semitism on campus, it was a point that anti-semitism (in terms of Jewish hate) is widely (and wrongly) conflated with anti-zionism. that was also my point of saying “fabricated persecution”. of course I recognize the Jewish struggle in history and still today, that does not mean that being pro-Palestinian victimizes Jews, even though many/most defend their zionism with that point. also, you’re using extremes and false equivalences here. obviously every christian shouldn’t be a pedophile because there is no question that pedophilia is wrong. anti-zionism cannot be equated to that. again, it’s about political ideology and the context of how zionism is the ideology spearheading genocide and colonialism, and has been since Israel’s establishment. as for the last point, i’ll apologize. i don’t know your experience, and i do recognize that there are innocent Jews and Israelis who are victim to the conflict, and an increase in antisemitism. the belief of zionism specifically, though, is not an oppressed one, it is oppressive, so i’ll change my name to be more accurate.
“Trans Zionist,” huh? Can you do me a favor and let Neil Druckmann know we don’t need 37 different remakes of The Last of Us.
I am no expert in Middle Eastern culture or conflicts, but I am compelled to step in merely as a Logical Fallacy Referee after reading some of these harsh comments. I see that several accusations of fallacies are being either misapplied or replaced with fresh ones.
In rational argument, neither the authority status (Appeal to Authority) nor the number of subscribers (Appeal to Popularity) of a belief/claim are relevant in determining truth. However, one can’t automatically counter that a claim is false BECAUSE the source is of high authority, or that a small fraction of people holds that position. It is false if the stance can be shown to be incorrect.
Specifically, the fact that a minority of rabbis oppose (an ethnocentric classist definition of) Zionism cannot be dismissed out of hand because of their high rank or small number. Rather, the scriptural/political/socioeconomic evidence they use to justify this position must be examined, as should happen for any claim being debated.
Also, pointing to the horrors committed against untold thousands of abused and psychologically blackmailed minors who were and are misfortunate enough to be exploited by predatory Christian priests/pastors is a dangerous Strawman. These religious leaders are criminals acting AGAINST their professed moral doctrines. In contrast, the subset of rabbis sincerely believe that their views of two-state reconciliation are affirmed in the teachings of the Torah/Talmud. Their interpretation should be considered on its merits and compared to opposing schools of thought.
Of course, we should all acknowledge that claims that something is right or wrong because of divine special revelation written in an ancient text is flawed for several reasons (e.g., Circular Reasoning; Appeal to Tradition). Scriptural interpretation changes as society evolves (usually with a lag) and verses are readily twisted in self-serving ways to justify one’s pre-existing beliefs.
Questions for the “Anti-Zionists”: Zionism is basically just the right for the state of Israel to exist. If you’re against that, what other independent states in the world do you want to dismantle? What gives you the right to desire any state to be dismantled? What replaces Israel if it is somehow dismantled and what happens to the people there? In addition to the 70% Jews – descended mostly from around the Middle East, there are many other groups and ethnoreligious people there: Druze, circassians, bedouins, Arab Christians and Muslims, Bahai; what happens to them in whatever state replaces Israel? Why are these groups thriving in Israel but not in the other states in the region?
but you need to realize that by being a zionist and refusing to denounce Israel’s actions, and/or supporting Israel, you’re supporting a terror state that would be otherwise well known for such had it not been so tightly allied and influential over western countries. it’s about the way in which Israel was created, by colonizing Palestine in 1948 and displacing hundreds of thousands, over 85% of all Palestinians, systematically destroying homes and infrastructure, and since holding a brutal apartheid over Palestine with the monetary and resourceful backing of the U.S. In what world does a “two state solution, or ANYTHING justify that? it’s very obvious that a two state solution is not the end goal of Israel anyways, it’s the illegal colonizing of additional countries in the middle east through extreme force and expansion of Israeli borders for the “greater Israel” agenda that has been made extremely clear and public by Netanyahu and most (if not all) Israeli politicians in history. you know what would “replace” Israel if it was dismantled? Palestine. which has existed for thousands of years. what you’re giving into looks a lot like paternal imperialism (paternalism). you believe that because Israel is a thriving country and people within it can thrive, that “it’s what’s best” for the region and that other countries and ethnic populations just don’t know how good they have it because of Israel’s existence, despite the fact that the way it upholds its existence is nothing but destructive. free Palestine, they have always had the right to resistance 🇵🇸
These claims are just false. Palestine never existed as a country. Even the name “Palestine” is an anglicized version of the name applied by the Roman Empire who conquered the land 2000 years ago. It’s not even an Arabic name yet the “State of Palestine” is intended to be an Arab state (read their charter). Arabs colonized the land during the Islamic conquest. But whatever happened is in the past and people living today should not be punished for the sins of their ancestors (on all sides of the conflict). The existence of Israel is a highly productive source of prosperity and freedom for its citizens and other oppressed minorities in the region. For example, they just saved a yazidi woman who was kidnapped by ISIS in Iraq 10years ago and forced to marry a Gaza jihadist. Israel is a threat to the despotic regimes because it is a thriving democracy. The “greater Israel” notion is complete propaganda. Israel returned huge amounts of land for peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. Meanwhile the Palestinians have been offered a state and land (which they never had in history) multiple times by multiple Israeli governments. As they say, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Some day I hope enlightened Palestinians will rise against their oppressive despotic regimes (Hamas in Gaza and PA in West Bank). If you care about innocents being oppressed, you should be speaking out against those regimes instead of an obsession with replacing one free democratic thriving state with another that has proven to be corrupt and oppressive to its people.
most Lebanese and Palestinians do not like and even oppose Hezbollah and Hamas, but at the same time they realize that these militias are their last ditch effort at resistance against permanent occupation. that’s why you saw so much mourning over the deaths of Nasrallah and Haniyeh, despite domestic opinions against them. you’re proving my point on the paternalism, and I suggest you learn to let go of that ideology. I have and will never defend everything that these militias have done. October 7th was a terrorist attack in which nothing short of atrocities took place. lots of it is misinformation, propaganda, or outlandish claims that have little to zero evidence as admitted by Israeli officials, but yes, still barbaric actions. however it’s extremely difficult for the people to “rise up” against the resistance when they’re busy being fucking mass slaughtered. I don’t know how much you’ve looked into Israeli media, but it is 10x more unhinged than the American and other western media we are seeing right now, and that’s saying a lot. they’ve completely committed to the “nobody is innocent” rhetoric. especially with the very recent developments of the Israeli military plans and massacres that we will see in the following days, where the IDF will (and already has) targeted hospitals, neighborhoods, school shelters, and has given 24 hours for evacuation, which they have not even followed because they have already started bombings around, shootings, and drone strikes inside hospitals (Kamal Adwan) when the “deadline” isn’t even up yet. they are targeting everybody in Gaza and have declared it an “Israeli military zone”. If you do not see the past year, the past 76 years, and especially right now as purely ethnic cleansing, genocide, illegal occupation and colonization then you either 1. have fallen headfirst for western media (famous for censorship, propaganda, and corruption) that has always favored Israel, or 2. you genuinely believe that Arabs are naturally evil terrorists that need to be erased because they are a threat to western political agendas, or both. this whole “well Israel is thriving and Palestine is not” argument is so saddening, because look no further than the environment Palestinians have been forced into.
“most Lebanese and Palestinians do not like and even oppose Hezbollah and Hamas, but at the same time they realize that these militias are their last ditch effort at resistance against permanent occupation “
These notions are absurd. Gaza was handed over to the Palestinians in 2005. Not a single Israeli remains; even the graves were dug up and removed. The locals voted Hamas into power. I can only hope that the majority no longer support them and they’re probably too scared to rise up- just as many are under despotic regimes around the world. Innocent Gazans are victimized by the Palestinian terror groups and used as political pawns by their Arab brethren. It would be real simple if it was all Israel’s fault. But that’s just not the case. Let’s hope Israel’s military gains clears the way for enlightened Palestinians to rise up and build their future.
you did not read what i said 💀
Dumbest crap I’ve ever read
I’m sure I’ve seen you at the Catholic Center, but you haaave to get on board with NJF. What is at stake in this election? It literally doesn’t matter. If Trump wins, we get more immigrants, and we will definitely get a war with Iran. If Kamala wins, we will get more immigrants, and we will also probably get war with Iran. If we go to war with Iran, we will take the refugees. The only people in the dissident right that are still pushing Trump at this point are all Zionist Jews. When Costin Alamariu and Ben Shapiro are on the side of Trump, that’s when you know he’s been subverted. Shapiro used to be a never Trumper. A vote for Trump is a vote for Netanyahu. You can’t call yourself “based” and then go vote for the Jews and the same guy that Shapiro is shilling.
Not to mention, Trump isn’t running on immigration or populism or abortion or any America First policy this cycle. If the GOP realizes they will get the dumb, white goy vote without having to concede on any issue, they will never run on immigration again. Seek the truth and you’ll find it, and PICK YOUR OWN SIDE.
Check your email
This article made me feel sooooo threatened. 😢😢 Better file some bias reports!
+1 rep. keep ur head high g!
Elena I compliment you on your bravery, please tell me why you think so many transgender Jews are anti Zionist? I have a child that now as an adult is transgender and virulently anti zionist, I am broken about it and cant understand it. Please share your opinion.
love….
I am a transgender Jew from America in the IDF, I feel your struggle.