Creating a Trans-Affirming Judaism: The Art and Ritual of Nicki Green

• In Event: Reframing Normative Judaism: Queer Jewish Ritual in the United States

Abstract

This paper discusses art/rituals/ritual objects created by Nicki Green. Green’s art/ritual objects reference both queer/trans and Jewish identity. For example, her piece "Blessing for Fermentation" is a video showing an aerial view of an individual descending the steps of a mikveh. In the blessing, which Green recites as a voice-over for the video, she compares the salt water of tears, the ocean, and the brine of fermentation. She uses the gender-neutral phrase "the well of life" to refer to God, saying: "this well is like the crock and like the mikveh. The container of life-giving waters, the beginning of everything." The description of these liquids as "life-giving," and the crock itself, conjure normatively feminine associations of the home, cooking, and childbirth, which are both embraced and challenged by Green. Green embraces the feminine/feminist in her work, and also challenges normative ideas about gender and bodies – for example by depicting trans women, unable to "give life" through childbirth, as the figures honored on her crocks. One such crock, "Crock for Dinah and the River," depicts Dinah as a trans woman – an interpretation common among some queer/trans Jews based on a Midrash which says Dinah was conceived male but Leah prayed for a daughter and God obliged. Green's blessing suggests that for mikveh and fermentation, a liminal transformative space exists below the water. Green says, "as queers we know this place of in-betweenness. We are a liminal people." She draws a connection between queerness and fermented foods, describing them as tasting like "the flavor of complexity and queerness itself." Both the queer/trans body and fermented foods hold layered experiences. Green also uses this blessing to honor: "the beautiful holiness of our queer bodies, our crocks, our mikvaot, our vessels of transformation." Here she radically and powerfully asserts that the queer/trans body itself is a holy site of transformation, positioning it as central to Jewish ritual. In the full version of this paper I consider Green’s works using queer theory to explore the ways she identifies both with and against normative elements of Jewish tradition in order to create a trans affirming Judaism.

Author

• SJ Crasnow, Rockhurst University