This panel discussion will share best practices for rabbis, cantors, lay leaders, and Jewish professionals to build trans inclusive spaces. Attendees will learn strategies to build supportive, safe, and affirming faith communities and gain skills to be an ally to support the needs of transgender people.
Watch a recording:
Welcome: Rabbi Marla Hornsten, co-chair Clergy Task Force; Temple Israel, West Bloomfield, MI
Moderator: Rabbi Ron Muroff, Clergy Task Force, chair of training; Chisuk Emuna Congregation, Harrisburg, PA
Panelists: Dubbs Weinblatt, Keshet; Kari K. Provizer, Temple Israel; Rabbi Gray Myrseth, Kehilla Community Synagogue, Director of Kehilla School
Dubbs Weinblatt is Keshet's Education and Training Manager. Keshet works for the full inclusion and equality of LGBTQ people in Jewish life. Dubbs is based in NYC but travels the country facilitating inclusion trainings, Leadership Projects and other interactive workshops. In addition to the Education and Training work they do, Dubbs supports the creation of resources in the Keshet resource library.
Kari K. Provizer, LMSW, ACSW is the Director of the Robert Sosnick Family Life Center at Temple Israel which supports the Temple’s 3500 families and our entire Jewish community. Kari has more than two decades of experience in crisis intervention, short term problem solving, resource & referral work and programming. Kari deals with relationship, LGBTQ, child, adolescent, adult, aging and family issues. Kari is a trans ally and when she saw a need, started the Transgender support program at Temple Israel. The program supports both transgender youth and parents of transgender children and teens. She is one of the winners of URJ 2017 Belin awards for Audacious hospitality for her Transgender support groups.
Ordained by the Hebrew College Rabbinical School in June of 2017, Rabbi Gray Myrseth is the School Director at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland, CA. Gray has worked as a trainer and consultant on LGBTQ inclusion and equality, a chaplain with a specialization in the spiritual care of LGBT elders, and as an educator with people from age 3 to 103. When not at work, Gray can be found walking their excellent dog, expounding on the wonders of Talmud study, and reading everything from poetry to young adult novels.