Tisya Cooke is a Jewish transgender woman. She’s actively involved in her synagogue and spoke about carving out space for queer people in Judaism.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Tisya Cooke: I grew up reading Torah. I grew up going to Hebrew school.
To this day, I still do tutoring, and I do a lot of volunteering and activism within the Jewish community while also trying to actively wrap my head around religion and this feeling that a god can hate anyone – especially a group of queer people just because they are queer.
A couple of weeks ago, we had the Parsha Acharei Mot, which is the Parsha that specifically talks about “a man shall not lie with a man as he would a woman for this is an abhorrence.”
And I've given, at this point now, including this last time, three different devars, or sermons, about the topic.
And I think what I've realized is that particular phrasing – even if it no longer hurts me the way that it did the first time I read it – has been used for 1000s of years to persecute and ostracize individuals purely based on who they are.
"That particular phrasing – even if it no longer hurts me the way that it did the first time I read it – has been used for 1000s of years to persecute and ostracize individuals purely based on who they are."Tisya Cooke
I think now I'm very much at a place where I know it's coming, and so, I'm not surprised by it, necessarily, but it still feels like a dagger every single time.
There's no great way of talking about it and trying to say that, “Oh, we as a society have moved on, so therefore it's not important.” It still is written in every single Torah, in every single Chumash, the English translation of it, to this day,
And again, it's cited by not only Jews but Christians and other groups as the reason why we must hate queer people.
And so, even if we as a society have tried to move on from it, we have to be able to look at it and say that's f**ked up.
And so, it is still very much a deep sense of pain every single time.
I've been very blessed and very happy to be surrounded by not only the rabbi, but quite a few friends who are queer, and when recently we had Passover – I had friends over for the Passover seder, and we just had fun for four hours.
You cook a meal for your friends, you talk Torah with your friends, during Yom Kippur you starve yourself for almost two days with your friends.
And even when you hangry and kind of a b**ch towards the end of it, you're still having these fun moments with the people you care about.
And the other nice thing is to this day – because I have such a large family – every time I get a text from my family, whether it's talking about something that we have planned coming up, or just talking about nieces and nephews being idiots, because nieces and nephews are like that, it's this moment of just I'm still a part of this. I'm still loved by the people around me.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This interview was conducted in the Spring, just after the Jewish holiday of Passover, which in 2024 was celebrated from April 22-30.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story contained several phrases that were not correctly transliterated from Hebrew to English, resulting in misspellings and grammatical errors.
![Caitlin Cunningham laughs while sitting on their couch on Saturday, April 20, 2024, at their home in Columbia. “When you know so much darkness, suddenly the light is so bright,” Cunningham said. “I mean, queer joy will blind you. You should live so brightly that it hurts people’s eyes. Other people should have to put on sunglasses [because] you’re living so brightly.” Cunningham, who is 40 years old, is pansexual, nonbinary and non-monogamous. “You know the big joke is always, ‘Oh, you know you’re non-monogamous when your color-coded calendar is shared with four other people.’ And, it’s true. You have to be on top of your A game in terms of keeping things organized because you’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings otherwise,” Cunningham said. “Yes, it’s difficult. Yeah, you joke about calendars and getting together and having enough energy and everything, but ultimately time and energy are the limiting factors. Love is not the limiting factor.”](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/bd0e168/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1750x1158+0+0/resize/260x172!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F2d%2F59%2F5bde8f414630bd00882735cb327a%2F20240420-bas-queer-joy-caitlin-cunningham-0032.jpg)
![Queer 16-year-old Mason, who uses any and all pronouns, sits down on Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at the Daniel Boone Regional Library in Columbia.
“I was just asking myself, ‘What type of person am I? Who am I to myself?’ Like, when I look in the mirror, ‘Who do I see? Who do I feel like I am,’” Mason said of the questions he asked himself early on in his coming out process. “I think I don't really have those [specific identity labels] for myself. I do see other people around who have those that are in the queer community. But, yeah, for myself, I wouldn't really say I have one.”
“I think [my parents have] been very reassuring in the fact that they accept me for who I am. They still know that I'm their son, and they love me,” Mason said. “And, I can't say that for a lot of other people who have had problems with their identity and just really figuring out who they are. I'm lucky to have that. I'm glad I had that. But, I wish there were more parents or just people out there that were more accepting to this idea [of being queer].”](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/132cd05/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1750x1158+0+0/resize/260x172!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F0d%2Fab%2Fbda94349471cbb8887367225b7cd%2F20240521-bas-queer-joy-mason-graham-0064.jpg)
