A General Prayer for Adult Transitions, by Rabbi Elliot Kukla

Contributor(s):

Elliot Kukla

Shared on:

3 January 2022 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Well-being, health, and caregiving

Tags:

medical treatment, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., transition, gender transition

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Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	A Prayer for Adult Transitions
	May the One who blessed our ancestors— Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob— bless me as I enter into this new chapter in my life.
	The world was not formed by a single act. Each and every day God renews the work of creation. May God grant me the strength to constantly renew my own creation. May I open my heart and mind to continuous growth, unexpected change, and the perpetual unsettling, liberating expansion of being alive; may I have the courage to name and sanctify this moment of change that is shaping my body and soul in the image of the ever-evolving Divine.
	Blessed are You, El Shaddai, our God, the Renewing One of the world, who has allowed me to reach this time of transformation. And let us say: Amen.

“A Prayer for Transitions” was written by Rabbi Elliot Kukla. He writes that this prayer was written “for all adult transitions including gender as well as things like starting medication.” It was first published as “A Prayer for Transitioning Gender” in Where Healing Resides (CCAR 2013), p. 45. A more specific blessing upon the occasion of a gender transition ceremony may be found here.

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“A General Prayer for Adult Transitions, by Rabbi Elliot Kukla” is shared by the living contributor(s) with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Elliot Kukla

Rabbi Elliot Kukla (he/they) is a rabbi, chaplain, author, artist, and activist. Elliot has been tending to the spiritual needs of grief, dying, and becoming (more) ill or disabled since 2007 and he has been engaged in justice work since 1996. He is currently faculty at Svara: A traditionally radical yeshiva where he is also the founder and director of the Communal Loss and Adaptation Project (CLAP). He was a rabbi at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center from 2008 to 2021 where he co-directed Kol Hanshama, the multiple award-winning volunteer spiritual care hospice program. Elliot’s essays on disability and spirituality have been featured numerous times in the New York Times, as well as many other anthologies and magazines. In 2006, he was the first openly transgender rabbi to be ordained by a mainstream denomination (the Reform seminary, Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles) and in 2007 he trained as a chaplain at UCSF medical center. He currently lives on Oholone Land (Oakland, California) with his partner, their kid, queer chosen family, two Boston Terriers, and a cat named Turkey.

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established."–Psalms 90:17