One day, 12-year-old Moshe stood in his mother’s bedroom and said, “‘Hashem [God] knows I’m a girl,’ going on to explain that he just couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t have a bar mitzvah, that every time he put on tzitzit [a small ritual fringed garment worn by men, often under their shirt but sometimes over it] he was lying to Hashem [God]. It just began pouring out of him,” his mother said.
Ha'aretz has an article about Moshe, now Miryam, a 14-year-old transgendered Orthodox child located somewhere in the Midwest of the United States.
Her family seems to completely support her as do some of her parents' friends.
But the Orthodox synagogue's rabbi banned the girl from coming to shul and she dropped out of the Jewish day school, largely to avoid bullying.
Here's a brief excerpt describing the moment her family found out that Moshe wanted to be a girl:
…But shortly after Moshe began preparing for his bar mitzvah, he suddenly changed. From a sunny little boy to one who was withdrawn. Depressed. His grades, which had always been excellent, plummeted.
“He wasn’t himself. I didn’t know what was going on,” says his mother, Rebecca. “He started refusing to go to shul, not seeing his friends. This happened very, very quickly over about two months.”
One day, 12-year-old Moshe stood in his mother’s bedroom and said, “‘Hashem [God] knows I’m a girl,’ going on to explain that he just couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t have a bar mitzvah, that every time he put on tzitzit [ritual fringed garment worn by men] he was lying to Hashem. It just began pouring out of him,” Rebecca recalls.
His tutor had been emphasizing that becoming bar mitzvah meant Moshe was preparing to take his place as a man in the Jewish community.
“This is when it hit him, and he couldn’t take it any more,” says his mother, adding that when Moshe “finally told us what was going on, [he] went into therapy immediately. I think I was more shocked to find out that my beautiful child with the bright and shiny neshama [soul] was contemplating suicide than I was to learn that she was a girl.”
A psychologist and a physician both concluded that Moshe was likely transgender. Moshe and Rebecca traveled to meet with Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric endocrinologist at what is considered the leading center in the United States for transgender children: the GeMS (Gender Management Service) Clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital.…
Besides banning Miryam from shul and being hostile toward her family, the synagogue's Orthodox rabbi also chose to dabble in the medical science he likely isn't trained in. When asked by Ha'aretz to answer questions about his treatment of Miryam, the rabbi refused to do so. All he would say is that he did not believe the information given him by Miryam's mother explaining the medical science and Miryam's condition is accurate.