Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater

Shalom! My name is Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater. I am a radical transfeminist rabbi and activist. I am an autistic, transgender woman. My rabbinic work focuses on creating innovative yet traditional Jewish law, liturgy, and ritual, in order to celebrate and affirm trans identities and experiences. I also work for acceptance and accessibility for people with visible and invisible disabilities. I am the author of Ein Self: Early Meditations and Haggadah Shir Ge'ulah. My other projects include playing chamber music, advocating for alternative education, computer programming, and smashing systems of institutional oppression.

http://www.emilyaviva.com/

הָא לַחְמָא עַנְיָא | Ieste el pan de la afrisiyon | Ha laḥ’ma anya (This is the Bread of Oppression): the opening of Magid in a Ladino translation

Contributed on: י״א בניסן ה׳תשפ״א (2021-03-24) by Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater | ❧

This is Ha Laḥma Anya in Aramaic with translations in Ladino and English, from the Passover Seder Haggadah of Rabbi Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater, Haggadah Shir Geulah (2015, v.2.1/2016). . . .

אשר יצר | Asher Yatsar prayer for recognizing the Divine Image in all our bodies, by Rabbi Emily Aviva Kapor

Contributed on: ד׳ בשבט ה׳תשע״ה (2015-01-24) by Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater | ❧

Asher Yatzar (the “bathroom blessing”, traditionally said every morning and after every time one goes to relieve oneself) has always rung hollow to me, at best, and at worst has been a prayer not celebrating beauty but highlighting pain. The original version praises bodies whose nekavim nekavim ḥalulim ḥalulim (“all manner of ducts and tubes”) are properly opened and closed—yes, in a digestive/excretory sense, but it is quite easy to read a reproductive sense into it as well. What do you do if the “ducts and tubes” in your body are not properly opened and closed, what if one is open that should be closed, or vice versa? . . .

עַל חֵטְא | Interpretive Al Ḥeyt for Yom Kippur, by Rabbi Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater

Contributed on: ט׳ בתשרי ה׳תשע״ט (2018-09-17) by Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater | ❧

The Al Cheyt (literally meaning “For the sin…”) is a confessional litany recited on Yom Kippur. It is an alphabetical acrostic; each one of its verses starting with a successive letter of the aleph-beit, to represent not only the moral failings that are specifically enumerated there, but the fullness of every way in which we missed the mark in the previous year. . . .

הגדה שיר געולה | Haggadah Shir Ge’ulah (Song of Liberation) for Passover, by Rabbi Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater

Contributed on: י׳ בניסן ה׳תשע״ד (2014-04-09) by Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater | ❧

Haggadah Shir Ge’ulah, the Song of Liberation, is a new Haggadah for Passover. It is at once traditional and radical, featuring egalitarian Hebrew and English, full transliteration, progressive theology, and a focus on modern issues of oppression and liberation. It is my hope that this Haggadah will elicit questions from all participants, and that everyone will find something in it to challenge them: both people steeped in Jewish learning and used to traditional texts, and also people who are new to the Passover seder or are coming from different worldviews and ideologies. . . .