I am listening to the podcast Fringes ( https://www.advahdesigns.com/blogs/fringes-podcast), which is about how trans Jews relate to wearing the tallis/tallit or prayer shawl, and holy crap does it have a lot to say to someone who struggles with gendered cultural and religious traditions.

I am not of Jewish extraction and I do not have a salvageable relationship with the faith I was brought up in, but I have an insistent need to learn about how other people exist in their own histories.

like my experience of gendered clothing and religious traditions has mostly been one of extreme alienation and loneliness, so hearing people talk about them in a way that is joyful but incorporates doubt about god existing and a deep ambivalence about one’s body feels revelatory