Gender Identity and Jewish Texts

It is with great humility that I, a cis-gender straight woman, approach both this subject and the difficult texts included in this shiur. While I'm aware of the deep pain some of these texts have caused my LGBTQ friends, I have only felt that pain secondhand, as a caring ,supportive friend; not as my own pain. I have, however, struggled with difficult and painful texts related to physical imperfections,suffering and disabilities in Torah and Talmud. While these aren't the same, it is through this frame of reference that I share this shiur. Just as I can't change those texts that have caused me pain, I can't change these, nor their traditional readings. What I can try to do is to provide a deeper, equally valid, even if non-traditional, look at these texts so they no longer must be seen as painful, condemning words to be avoided or rejected.. Rather, I hope to begin creating a framework that would allow all of Torah to be seen as affirming by people of all gender identities and sexual orientations

The core teaching in this shiur providing a new approach to the Leviticus passages is not my own, but that of Rabbi Ethan Tucker of Hadar. I'm deeply grateful for his scholarship, far beyond my own, that allows me to show these difficult passages of Torah in a new light.

OBJECTIVES

• Understand how Torah and Talmud do—and don't—look at gender
• Explore a problematic text through other texts and ideas to discover new ways of looking at it
  
• To begin to discover how you can find yourself in texts that appear on the surface to exclude you

TORAH

The Torah doesn't know gender identity. The Torah only knows two biologically defined genders: זָכָ֥ר /male and נְקֵבָ֖ה/female

MITZVOT

The Torah doesn't speak about internal gender or sexual identity. The Torah only speaks about external acts.

The mitzvot in the Torah aren't written to address gender identity, or any other individual aspect of how we perceive ourselves in the world. The mitzvot are written to address how we act in the world (and especially in community) :what we do or don't do and what we're expected to do or not do.

Is there overlap and connection between mitzvot and our personal identities? Yes. How we identify and how we act are connected. However, when we look at Torah mitzvot through our own identities, it can be helpful to keep this distinction in mind. When it comes to gender, mitzvot are about how we act, not how we feel. It is the actions addressed that we must grapple with, not the way we see ourselves, as Torah makes no statement nor judgment on this.

HALAKHAH

Because the Torah knows only binary gender, halakhah (Jewish religious law) is also constructed along the lines of binary gender. However, the rabbis of the Talmud recognized four additional genders along with the "male" and "female" found in Torah and determined when each was to be classified as 'male' or 'female' for halakhic purposes.

Halakhah isn't concerned with defining individuality, but rather, with creating a shared commanding framework to channel it into meaningful spiritual community.

TALMUD

Six Genders Addressed In the Talmud

• Zachar (זָכָר): This term is derived from the word for memory and refers to the belief that the man carried the name and identity of the family. It is usually translated as “male” in English.

• Nekevah (נְקֵבָה): This term is derived from the word for a crevice and probably refers to a vaginal opening. It is usually translated as “female” in English.

• Androgynos (אנדרו:גינוס): A person who has both “male” and “female” physical sexual characteristics. 149 references in Mishna and Talmud (1st-8th Centuries CE); 350 in classical midrash and Jewish law codes (2nd -16th Centuries CE).

• Tumtum (טומטום): A person whose sexual characteristics are indeterminate or obscured. 181 references in Mishna and Talmud; 335 in classical midrash and Jewish law codes.

• Ay’lonit (איילונית): A female who does not develop at puberty and is infertile. 80 references in Mishna and Talmud; 40 in classical midrash and Jewish law codes.

• Saris (סָרִיס): A male who does not develop at puberty and/or subsequently has their sexual organs removed. A saris can be “naturally” a saris (saris hamah), or become one through human intervention (saris adam). 156 references in mishna and Talmud; 379 in classical midrash and Jewish law codes.

SOURCE: Wikipedia "Gender And Judaism"

LOOKING DEEPER: Applying Rabbinic Thought

Because gender identity wasn't a rabbinic concern in the ancient world, we must look deeper than the surface of our core texts to find what they might have to say on the issue. This is the same process we must follow for any modern issue that wasn't a concern in ancient times: artificial intelligence, climate change, etc.

LEFT-HANDEDNESS AS A HALAKHIC MODEL

(based on teaching by Rabbi Ethan Tucker)

One area of individual identity that was of concern to the rabbis of the Talmud was left-handedness. By looking at the ways in which this issue of diversity was addressed in halakhic sources, we may find models to help us address our modern gender and sexual identity issues with Torah texts.

MODELS OF DEALING WITH HANDEDNESS THAT WE FIND IN HALAKHIC SOURCES

• Exclusion
• Passing
• Double Burden
• Mirror Image
• Deconstruction

;EXCLUSION The need for right­handed uniformity and the costs of left­handedness are so strong that lefties simply cannot be included at all. This model is used to disqualify left­handed kohanim from serving in the Temple, where consistent choreography and competence are at a premium, and where the costs of excluding people from a highly elitist activity are low.

PASSING The need for right­-handed uniformity is strong, but the wholesale exclusion of left­handed people is extreme or unnecessary. Lefties are simply expected to conform to right­handed expectations and their left­handedness is rendered invisible. The Ittur takes this approach around lulav and etrog . The Talmud states that the lulav should be taken in the right hand and the etrog in the left. Ittur says that this prescription applies to lefties as well, understanding the value of coordinated aesthetics to be high and feeling that maintaining this essentially ceremonial requirement for all does not distort the core meaning of the mitzvah for those whose hands are wired differently.

Double Burden . Lefties are indeed different, and their distinctive reality must be taken into account; they cannot simply be treated like righties. That said, the dominant paradigm of right­handedness is so significant that lefties must accommodate it as well and adhere to its standards. This creates a double burden for lefties, who must account both for their own difference as well as for the needs and standards of the majority. This view is manifested in the Talmud by one Sage’s approach to writing on Shabbat. He posits that while righties only violate the Biblical ban on writing by doing so with their dominant, right hand, lefties are liable for writing with either hand: the left on account of its dominance, and the right on account of it being the way most writing is done.

Mirror Image . The costs of uniformity are high, as are the benefits of embracing diversity. Righties and lefties inhabit mirror­ image realities, each acting out the shared value of dominance as refracted through diverse bodily states. Neither may deviate from their prescribed path, which is grounded in inherent handedness. This model is most prominently on display in the reigning position on how to put on tefillin . Righties have a non­negotiable requirement to put tefillin on the left arm, whereas lefties must place it on the right. The categories of “right” and “left” are just conventional expressions of the terms “dominant” and “non­dominant.” These values apply equally, but divergently, to a diverse human reality.

Deconstruction . The presence of lefties and righties in the world destabilizes our notion of handed preferences making sense at all, leading to a rejection of even a mirror­-image model. A deep internalization of the fact that lefties and righties do things in different ways leads to a conviction that it does not really matter what hand one uses and all are free to choose based on personal comfort or preference. This approach is generally absent from halakhah and antithetical to an ethos of direction and obligation. However, there is perhaps a hint of it in the plain sense of the Mishnah on Shabbat violation. Unlike the Sage we cited above, the Mishnah rejects the notion that handedness matters in the context of Shabbat writing at all, arguing that consequential results, rather than dominance, should define the parameters of the forbidden labor of writing. As long as someone has written something, they have committed a core, Biblical violation of Shabbat. In that sense, this model can surface in halakhic discussion, when someone argues that a factor like handedness is in fact a proxy for another concern, a concern that might be irrelevant as a factor in a contemporary context. This approach will of course only be viable if there is no ongoing coherence whatsoever to the handed bias evident in earlier texts. In our specific example, nothing of this sort survives.

APPLICATION

Now, returning to gender and sexual identities, let's see how it looks to apply what we've learned to a difficult passage of Torah.

When I first began grappling personally with this verse as a Jew committed to Torah who had friends who were LGBTQ, some of whom were also Jews committed to Torah, the best solution I could find was uncertainty rooted in possible cultural practices in the ancient world.

There's more than one word for 'prostitute' in Torah:

The 'zonah' (זנה) was a woman who sold sex for money or valuables

The 'kadeshah/kadesh (קדש/קדשה)—yes, from the same Hebrew root ק-ד-ש as kadosh (קדש) 'holy'—was a woman/man who engaged in sexual acts as an offering to deities, a 'cult prostitute'

This approach allowed me room to doubt the traditional application of the text, but didn't really resolve any of the issues it raised.

If we understand this 'abhorrent act' through this lens, it's about engaging in a sexual act that goes against your gender or sexual identity.

To quote Rabbi Tucker, "For the person who would normally be drawn to a woman, lying with a man is an abomination
And if the meaning of the pasuk is not just limited to its application for 90% of the population, but the meaning of that pasuk is essentially 'don't channel your sexuality in a way that goes completely contrary to where your normal nature would take it."

Rabbi Tucker concludes his shiur with this thought question: What would it look like to have a communal conversation where we all actually, honestly, on all sides of this conversation, engaged the kind of cost-benefit risk-fear—all of those issues—analysis of 'What are we concerned about when we're worried about people falling into the wrong sexual box or the wrong category of activity?'

Rabbi Ethan Tucker's full shiur, "Toward an Halakhic Model of Diversity in Sexualities" may be found on the Hadar website:

/www.hadar.org/torah-resource/toward-halakhic-model-diversity-sexualities