The Second Circumcision of Lili Rosen
From my one-woman show—The Second Circumcision of Lili Rosen. Before I could approach my coming out to my Hasidic family (a version of which is depicted in the show) I thought I would share a bit of background on what it was like for me growing up as a closeted trans girl in the Hasidic community.
BORO PARK, SPRING 1991.
A much younger and pubescent-er version of me climbs into bed and tries to get comfortable but can’t. I feel entirely alien in my own skin — as if I am wearing someone else’s skin and the rough fabric is itching my own delicate skin underneath it. This general feeling of discomfort turns into a kind of spiritual dysphoria around my genitalia. I’ve begun to fantasize about taking a knife to it and reenacting my own circumcision. I simply can’t find the words with which to express my increasingly painful experience as a Hasidic transgender child being forcibly subjected to the wrong puberty. My own body was literally turning against me. I don’t know this at the time but one day, three long dysphoria-riddled decades later, I will finally find the words when I will discover a 14th century prayer expressing this very existential ache.
LILI
(starts chanting in Hebrew, a pre-recorded version picks up at which point she continues in English)
Father in heaven / who did miracles for our ancestors / with fire and water / You changed the fire of Chaldees so it would not burn hot / You turned Dinah into a girl in her mother’s womb / To leprous white You turned (Moses’) hand / and the Red Sea to dry land. Oh if only you could turn me from a man to woman!/ Were I only to have merited this / being so graced by Your favor/ I would be the Lady of the house ruling my home with fervor / But what shall I say? Why cry or be bitter? / If my father in heaven has decreed upon me / and has put in me a permanent deformity it cannot be removed from me / and anxiety about the impossible is a mortal existential anguish/ which no empty solace will extinguish / So, I thought I would bear it and suffer / until I die and wither / But then I heard say / that one must bless [God] for the good as well as the bad/ so shall I bless low of voice and weak of tongue/ Blessed are you o Lord, for not making me a woman.
Never before had I read such a dead-on characterization of gender dysphoria at least from the perspective of a young Hasidic trans girl. The language perfectly mimicked that of prayers and piyutim (or Hebrew hymns) that I knew and loved from an early age. And the imagery evoked was something that I could relate to as well. So naturally my first instinct was to sing it as I would any other prayer with that structure — giving it my own signature blend of cantorial and Hasidic stylings. And I recorded it at the time while it was all raw and fresh in my mind.
Lilith Online, October 2024, read the full piece here.
