What is Moving Traditions’ policy regarding transgender youth?
Moving Traditions is proud to be an organization that encourages all Jewish teens to reach their full potential by creating experiences that give teens the opportunity to explore fundamental questions of identity and society. Currently we do this through our field-tested programs, Rosh Hodesh and Shevet. This work has proven to be extremely effective for thousands of Jewish teens who benefit from gathering in small ongoing all-boy or all-girl groups with a trained mentor of the same gender.
Moving Traditions is strongly committed to making it possible for any girl-identified teen who wants to join a Rosh Hodesh group and any boy-identified teen who wants to join a Shevet group, to do so in a way that will be emotionally and physically safe, supportive, meaningful, and fun. To that end, we offer individual consultation with local institutional partners and group leaders, all of our new group leaders are trained on transgender issues, and we are currently developing curricula for all of our groups about understanding transgender identity and experience.
We are also currently piloting a new program that has been created for Jewish teens who do not identify with the either/or binary of our current model. Teen may choose to register to be in this group on its own or in a local Rosh Hodesh or Shevet group in addition to the online group.