Jericho Vincent answers a calling

“Then,” says Jericho Vincent, “I had a calling to become a rabbi.” Their piercing eyes regard me with an intensity that makes our Zoom call seem to contract. “Which was ridiculous,” they add, “because I’m very blasphemous and have a lot of religious trauma.”  

It is immediately clear that this candor is a feature, not a bug, of Rabbi Jericho Vincent's way of moving through the world. We’re attempting to chart their ever-looping course through Judaism, from their upbringing in an ultra-orthodox community in Pittsburgh and time spent in Lakewood, New Jersey, to now, where they sit across from me on Zoom in Brooklyn, discussing their recent podcast in collaboration with Judaism Unbound: “Survival Guide for a Spiritual Wilderness: The Torah of Miriam.” 

They summarize deftly: “I was pushed out of the family as a teenager because I couldn't conform to all their expectations.” Now in their forties, Vincent offers brief glimpses of what that looked like, being cast out at age 17 to New York City, where they explored the teachings and practices of Buddhism, Sufism and mystical atheism, before an eventual return to Judaism through the prism of their social circumstance: the ex-ultra-orthodox community. Vincent charts their journey in greater depth in their memoir Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood published under their old name. 

To outside observers, a return to Judaism might be surprising, given Vincent’s painful personal experience with the strictest limits the religion can offer. To Vincent, though, it was almost more of a reframing than a return. Whether by intention, necessity or a mixture of the two, the Judaism of their now had been radically recharged. “By then I was a very different person,” they add. “I began to see through some of the very narrow stories that had defined the Judaism of my childhood.”  

One of the products of this wrestling with Jewish lore is the limited podcast series “Survival Guide for a Spiritual Wilderness.” The most direct parallel to the wilderness explored by Vincent in the series is the Passover story, told specifically through the eyes of Jewish prophetess Miriam.  

Why Miriam? Vincent is thoughtful in their answer: “There's such a weight of authority and confidence in how patriarchal Judaism, in its many forms, is delivered. There was this process in my twenties of starting to realize that these female characters in our tradition that had been sidelined were actually carriers of powerful wisdom that we needed more than ever.” 

The choice of Miriam as the main character of the podcast marked a crucial component of Vincent’s own relationship with Judaism, characterized by an accumulation of multifaith perspectives on spiritual practice. It was in a mosque that Vincent first encountered a Miriam they began to recognize. “I wasn't expecting to hear stories from my childhood told in such a dramatically more accessible, more exciting way,” says Vincent. “That really set me on this unfolding path of deep relationship with Miriam and her wisdom.” 

Still, the path from incorporating this new archetype of Miriam into personal practice and producing a professional podcast about her remained a wild, if inviting one. 

“I record the podcast in my closet, you know, on the floor,” they share, and I smile.  

“You’re not alone in that,” I laugh.  

“I just felt like I wanted to talk really closely and directly to somebody and have sort of a limbic connection,” Vincent continues. “I felt like, you know, I'm sitting here in my closet, you're sitting right opposite me and we're going to try to work through this difficult moment." 

It would be a weighty mandate for the casual listener who might stumble upon “Survival Guide” – and that’s the point.  

“That's intentional,” Vincent nods, suppressing a sort of pained laugh. “We are in crisis; we are in unfolding catastrophe. Easy, simple – I don't know, ‘inspirational poster’ – Torah is not going to cut it. 

"It's going to be a stretch to find access to the Torah that does work in this moment,” they add. “I have compassion and tenderness [for that] and I'm stretching, too,” they acknowledge. “I haven't finished the stretch. I'm in it with everybody else.” 

The careful reader may be catching on to why Vincent did not fit neatly into the ultra-orthodox community of their upbringing. Amid their ravenous quest for knowledge was knowledge of the self–pushing against the barriers of the exaggerated gender binary into which they were born. Vincent, who identifies as trans nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, came to see their relationship to the spectrum of gender as akin to their relationship with the spectrum of Jewish interpretation. 

“I think of Judaism as this very lush jungle,” says Vincent. “There's sort of this mainstream lineage that most people encounter Judaism through, that I feel has become very calcified and very unhealthy and very problematic. 

“I think of gender very much the same way: I think gender is this beautiful, lush, complex jungle, and we've narrowed closer and closer over generations into this very constricted way of understanding gender, this binary that's closely policed. I went out and explored other parts of the jungle.” 

“And,” they add after a moment, “I come back to the mainstream lineage and try to intervene in different ways to help heal it. I come back to the binary and teach trans Torah and critique how gender plays out, critique the patriarchy and attempt to bring healing to what exists.” 

This return to the “mainstream lineage,” markedly different from a reintroduction to the strong female archetypes of Jewish tradition, comes at a cost.  

“Do you feel – does that feel –” I stammer, “I don't know.” I settle for an observation: “If you're encountering stories that are only ever told a certain way, re-encountering them in that way, even as you're deconstructing it for yourself, might be painful.”   

“Rabbinical school, in particular, was very challenging for me,” Vincent acknowledges. "I often describe it as, like I was drinking cups of poison that had pearls inside, and I was kind of trying to take a sip of poison, hold it in my mouth, catch the pearl between my teeth, and then spit the poison back out. Not always 100% success, right?” They pause for a moment. 

“I think it's impossible to deeply engage with such problematic inheritances without getting hurt a little bit. And I think I've learned over time to get a little better at catching the pearls and not swallowing the poison.” 

Are their listeners ready to take that on? Vincent’s answer, a sober one, seems to be that we must be ready. I don’t disagree. If we are all to be faced with this wilderness, we must all do what we can to prepare ourselves to meet it head on. And, also, we need to do so in a sustainable manner. 

“I think pacing is the crucial spiritual skill for this time we're in,” says Vincent. “If we take in more than we have the capacity to digest, we end up [...] more of a drain on the communal body than an aid to the communal body. [...] There's this balance between really pacing how much you take in and building your capacity to take in more.” 

For those looking for how to put this philosophy into action, Vincent has answers: “So like, okay,” they start to gesture with their hands, creating small pockets of potential connection. “Who am I going to have, my little chavruta, my little partnership with? Who am I going to talk about the news with? You know, what is my small group, my community? Who are the people who are grappling with these things in real time?” The podcast is intended as a starting point for these conversations. 

For Vincent, real time sometimes seems to move at warp speed. When I ask them which of their upcoming projects they’re most excited about, their eyes widen: “what I'm working on right now that I'm really excited about is everything!” Having wrapped the podcast series, they’re working on a forthcoming book of theology, a new prayer book and strengthening a growing global network. The podcast is their offering, a digestible starting point, a seed from which action hopes to grow. 

“The canon of Judaism is enormous. You could devote your whole life to it and barely scratch the surface,” admits Vincent, “and that's part of why I wanted it to be a limited series podcast. The idea is, you just have to listen to five episodes, and then you will have mastered something comprehensive about Miriam’s Torah. If you're not Jewish, or you're Jewish and only have limited background, this is a full chunk that you can walk away having.” 

“Judaism has been monopolized by voices that have often used it to cause harm, and I don't want us to abdicate this anymore,” they say firmly. Their resounding message: those voices don’t have to be the only ones we hear: “Judaism is our ancestors, our inheritance, you know?” says Vincent, leaning forward and locking eyes with me again. “It's ours to claim.” 

EMMA NEWBERY (enewbery@jewishallianceri.org) is a staff writer and podcast host for Jewish Rhode Island.