
"A brilliant teacher, a brilliant mind...
I am filled with love and gratitude for the lessons that I have learned from Lexi." - R Rae
What Lexi Does:
Speaker, Teacher, Tutor, Author
Speak To Your Community
Lexi is a thought leader working at the cutting edge of trans Torah. Bring her to your community, and she will shine new lights on the tradition. Lexi is available for divrei Torah, shabbatons, panels, and virtual events.
Past Speaker Highlights:
Encountering Gender At Creation As queer readers and practitioners of Torah, one of our grounding principles must be that the Torah does not contradict what we know to be true about the world. An experiment in applying this principle to Genesis 1:27--what could this verse mean if it can't be that God created the gender binary? Taught at Mount Holyoke College and My Jewish Learning.
Revealing God's Face A practical tutorial on writing tefillot full of power and self-expression, using Lexi's original prayer for a trans woman upon laser hair removal as a model. Taught at Yeshiva Shel Maala.
A Date With Davening Our community gathers for services, but what are we actually doing when we daven? A discussion framed by approaches from Non-Violent Communication, the Rambam, and the Zohar. Taught at Congregation Bnai Israel, Northampton MA.
Teach Torah With Love & Rigor
Torah study forms the soul of the Jewish people, and each Jew can find their own soul in Torah. Lexi's teaching combines brilliance and compassion, making Torah live in the hearts of her students. Book her to teach on queer & trans Torah, Hebrew language, shul skills, and more.
Past Teaching Highlights:
Worlds To Come Worlds To Come is an immersive tabletop roleplaying adventure for learning Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew. This beta test of the game was its first extended trial, with six beginner students learning the full Qal Imperfect verb paradigm and vocabulary over the course of six 3-hour sessions split between traditional lessons and live language activation through gameplay.
Shatz Like A Boss 8-session skill building course on leading the weekday Shacharit service. Deepened students' understanding of the meanings of the tefillot and trained them in traditional Ashkenazi nusach, with the aim of cultivating more leaders for the minyan. Co-taught with Sasha Batz Stern for the Ohel Minyan, funded by the Grinspoon Foundation.
Psalms Weekly class on the Book of Psalms, exploring each psalm as a poem that reflects a powerful moment in the author's relationship with Hashem. As part of the course, Lexi is producing her own translation of the Psalms. Taught at The Torah Studio.
Guide Your Personal Journey
Your path to Hashem lies in your heart. Lexi offers a personalized tutoring experience tailored to your goals and learning needs. Develop your prayer practice, deep dive into Jewish texts, invest in your Hebrew language skills, and more. Email Lexi for availability and rates.
Favorite Tutoring Topics:
Leyning - Torah - Haftarah - Common Ashkenazi nusach - Breath control and performance anxiety
Hebrew & Aramaic - Access Biblical and Rabbinic texts - Every level from aleph-bet to responsa - Approaches customized to your language-learning needs
Prayer & Ritual Practice - Daily tefillah - Shul skills: leading, divrei Torah, gabbaying - Rituals for transition
Write Words of Wisdom
The right words make all the difference. Lexi has published pathbreaking work on trans Jewish experience in genres ranging from halakhic essays to personal tefillot. Book her as a guest writer or to compose personalized prayers.
Selected Writing:
Be Whole: A Halakhic Approach To Gender And Transition
A Lesson From God In Trans Visibility

Lexi's Story
Lexi Kohanski is a Jewish educator, Torah scholar, and a trans woman - and she is in love with the Torah. In 2019, she began to discover her own relationship to a living Judaism in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The tradition and the people she met there brought her to know the meaning of justice, to finally let herself live her real gender, and to fall in love with Hashem (God). The wellspring of Judaism has given her purpose and opened her to the magic of being alive - Hashem has literally redeemed her soul from the pit of death.
Since that rebirth, she has worked as a farmer and hitchhiked around Turkey and Georgia. She has been a minyan maker in Siberia and Northampton. She is, to the best of her knowledge, the first trans woman to learn at Yeshivat Maharat. Now she is returning home, around the corner from the apartment where her grandmother raised her mother, in New York's Washington Heights.
We have a saying that there are 70 faces to the Torah–in our lifetime, She is turning to show us a face that we as a people have never beheld before. People whose Torah voices have been silenced throughout history are manifesting the yearning to speak to our tradition and be spoken to by it. We are reclaiming our inheritance as children of Torah. It is happening now, in this time, in these very days.
In Pardes Rimonim, R Moshe Cordovero teaches that Hashem created the world so that Zir creations should arise, turn back to Hashem, and know Zir. What Hashem wants, all that Hashem wants of us, is to know who Ze is. What that means to Lexi is that each person who brings themselves to Torah study is helping us all to know Hashem better. It means that every single person’s voice is necessary, and that each new thought is fire lighting up a new side of Hashem’s face. The Torah’s face is turning, and we are raising our voices to greet Her.
In this time of new faces and lights, Lexi's tafkid (sacred task) is twofold: to empower any Jew who comes to Torah with a spark in their soul, and to speak out about the blessings Hashem has granted her as a trans Jewish woman. By making herself known to the world, and by helping others know themselves and this world through Torah, Lexi hopes to merit the verse:
וכל בניך לימודי השם ורב שלום בניך
And all your children are taught of Hashem, and great is the peace of your children.
And all your children are lessons in Hashem, and great is the peace of your children.
(Isaiah 54:13)

Get in Touch
Drop me a line to book me to speak to your community or teach a class! Or inquire about tutoring, consulting, or writing services.