Rabbi Elliot Kukla

Elliot Kukla is a rabbi, author, and activist. In 2006, he was the first openly transgender person to be ordained as a rabbi. He has been tending to grief, dying, and becoming (more) disabled since 2007, and has been engaged in justice work since 1996. His practice of radical spiritual care brings together these two streams of expertise with his lived experience of being a trans, non-binary, disabled, anti-zionist Jew.

Elliot offers individual and organizational spiritual care for grief and loss, in addition to speaking and writing for international audiences about the intersections of justice and care. He is the founder of the Collective Loss and Adaptation Project (CLAP), which honors the disenfranchised and suffocated grief of disabled people. He is also a core faculty member at SVARA: A traditionally radical yeshiva.

Elliot’s essays have been featured in Time Magazine, Teen Vogue, British Vogue, Them, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and many other places. His essays are included in numerous anthologies and university syllabi, and have been translated into Spanish, Korean, French and Japanese. His activism is frequently featured in the media.

Kukla’s writing has been used to lobby against the medical rationing of disabled people in the California state senate and to set policies for welcoming transgender people by all non-orthodox branches of Judaism. He has spoken to audiences around the world including keynoting for Etsy, the Jewish Museum of San Francisco, and the virtual version of "Crip Camp" (the Oscar-nominated film). In 2019 he was named one of the 50 most influential Jews of 2019 by The Forward. In 2022, he was even a New Yorker crossword clue (April 12, 7 across).