The Stranger Within Our Gates

Transgender Jews in Congregational Life


Renée M. Thomas

This article is currently slated for submission to Tikkun Magazine and/or Reform Judaism Magazine


Seder Zeraim ( סדר זרעים‎, lit. "Order of Seeds") is the first and shortest Seder of the Mishna, The fourth chapter originates from the Tosefta Bikkurim. It compares the Jewish Law as it relates to men, to women, and those of intermediate sex, including the Tumtum (persons with no obvious external genitalia) and the Androgynos (generally understood as an intersex individual – meaning one who has male as well as female physical characteristics). I would extend the definition of the Androgynos to include the transgender person in that being transgender is experienced, and functionally presents, as a persistent gender identification and sense of self in essential conflict with the physical body and birth-assigned gender of the individual. From their commentary in the Mishna, the Rabbis deduced:


“ . . . An Androgynos is in some respects legally equivalent to men, and in some respects legally equivalent to women, in some respects legally equivalent to men and women, and in some respects legally equivalent to neither men nor women…. Rabbi Yose says: an androgynos is a creature by itself, but the sages could not decide if the androgynos is a man or a woman . . .” –Mishna Bikkurim 4: 1, 5

It is in the nature of Judaism to not only tolerate questions of faith and practice but to actively encourage them. With that well-known and much respected principle in mind, several questions occur. Firstly, how was it determined to be up to the Rabbinic commentators of the Mishna (2nd century C.E.) to define and subsequently decide such matters? Moreover, if in their purview, what in effect did they actually decide? Even allowing for the Rabbi’s considerable erudition and empathy for the human condition, how could they hope to see though the eyes of such as these to appreciate the true complexity of the question “what is a man and what is a woman?” How could the Rabbis begin to imagine, in the midst of their exquisitely protracted concerns over legal “status”, the war that raged unseen within the soul of the transgender person?

In fairness to the commentators of the Mishna, the social and biological phenomenon of Transgenderism remains even now, almost two millennia later, one of the most mystifying and poorly understood of the whole of the human experience. As transgender people have assumed increasingly more prominent public profiles, and with all due respect to the writer(s) of the first book of the Torah, our existence proves to be the negation of society’s widely held belief that there exist only two valid expressions of human existence. Transgender individuals live in the twilight. In a world whose reality is, generally both inaccurately defined yet inexorably bound up by binary systems of intellectual problem solving. These binaries tend to brute force us toward the facile conclusion that something as complex as gender can be neatly and conveniently described as consisting of two and only two choices.

Defying such facile categorization, the transgender individual lives, of a private and understandable necessity, in a sort of neither world. This “netherworld” is a space that one becomes accustomed to after first confronting and in many cases subsequently concealing a lifetime of fear, shame and self-loathing. The experiential sense of inhabiting the “wrong body” in a binary world is as uniquely profound as it is socially isolating. It continuously pervades one’s thoughts and actions quite literally all the days of our lives. Much like being gay or lesbian, being transgender is wrongly regarded by many heterosexuals as a “lifestyle” choice. In truth, the only choice that presents is the choice to conceal our true selves from a world still largely ignorant of the complexities of gender identity and impatient (or worse) with the ambiguity that our lives represent.

Our “true selves” emerge early, for many of us at about 5 to 6 years of age. Moreover, choices made while we are young and at our most socially ill equipped and fragile, can often set the course for a lifetime of repression. While we may ultimately come to see the world as oppressed by patriarchy and the tyranny of the gender binary, we nevertheless desperately try to conform ourselves to it, seeking the approval of parents, family and friends by trying to be the very thing that is impossible for us to be – other than God has seemingly made us. That has left me to ponder, why does this specific age range prove to be so pivotal? To many in the Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Community I pose this question; “when did you know you were different?” I think the consistency of their answers (and my own) is indicative of the typical developmental psychology of children at these ages. Firstly, at about five to six years old, we come into a more “mature” psychological and social understanding of ourselves as “gendered beings” in relation to others with whom we socially interact. Secondly – and perhaps more significantly, as social beings we are becoming keenly aware of our responsibilities and society’s expectations of us based upon that understanding.

Society, in ways both large and small, reinforce the strictures of “appropriate” behavior based upon the largely unspoken social consensus of what exactly constitutes “gender normative” behavior. While it is true that this social consensus can vary somewhat from culture to culture, Western society generally makes it quite clear that gender roles are policed, often rigorously, by the gender binary. If we happen to find ourselves at either end of that “Bell Curve” we are faced as children with the urgent need to adopt coping mechanisms to conceal our internal conflict and our need to act out the truth of our gender identities. Knowing that society’s expectations of us are false and untenable we nevertheless attempt to “perform gender” to conceal our profound and intense discomfort with living in a gender role that is completely alien to us. Of course, there is always a price to pay for failing to be honestly who you are. In many cases, it is living the lie that often sows the seeds of fear, isolation and deep depression that can all too often lead to suicide.

In 1977, the Central Conference of American Rabbis issued its landmark proclamation affirming the civil rights of lesbians and gay men. The proclamation stated in part:

“ . . . homosexual persons are entitled to equal protection under the law. We oppose discriminating against homosexuals in areas of opportunity, including employment and housing. We call upon our society to see that such protection is provided in actuality . . . (w)e urge congregations to conduct appropriate educational programming for youth and adults so as to provide a greater understanding of the relation of Jewish values to the range of human sexuality.”

Ten years later, in November of 1987, the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism of the UAHC issued its proclamation affirming its support for the participation and full inclusion of gay men and lesbians within the Reform Movement. It stated in part:

" . . . Sexual orientation should not be a criterion for membership or for participation in an activity of any synagogue. Thus all Jews should be welcome, however they may define themselves."

In 2003, The UAHC published a significant addendum to its 26-year-old guide on welcoming LGBT individuals into the community of Reform Judaism. The Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism expanded upon its previous statements of support for Gay and Lesbian Jews by adopted the resolution supporting the inclusion and acceptance of transgender and bisexual individuals within the Reform Movement as well. Further, it voiced its support for federal legislation that opposes discrimination based on gender identity and expression and urged that individuals be treated equally under the law as the gender with which they identify.

As a statement of an institutional position, this expansion of the tent to include transpeople (and bisexuals) went a considerable way toward addressing the pervasive sense of alienation that specifically plagues the Transgender Community. Nevertheless, making space for the transgender individual within our congregations involves more than simply carving out a place of benign indifference for the Jewish transperson to inhabit. Safe places are created by actively working to enhance opportunities for full and vigorous participation in the life of the Congregation. Notwithstanding the pronouncements of the UAHC, real acceptance, and the hope of enduring connection, happens congregant to congregant. It requires that each person take careful stock of themselves and closely examine their often rigidly gendered preconceptions. Mere tolerance or acceptance is not enough. The power of this transformative experience to change hearts and minds happens, or fails to happen, to the degree to which each of us unselfconsciously accept and fully affirm the humanity and worth of each individual.

The ethical concept of “welcoming the stranger within our gates” was never a more compelling imperative than as it applies to the transgender congregant. Yet beyond the lofty rhetoric and sincerely laudable goals of social justice and equality, there exists the immediacy of where the transgender Jew makes his or her place within the congregation. On the social level, achieving that abiding sense of “place” can be a complicated process. The transgender person who comes out to a congregational community to which she or he has been a member for many years faces the inevitable “renegotiation” of many of his or her past relationships. Established friendships can often be severely tested when the realization becomes clear to friends and associates alike that “they didn’t know you at all”. None keeps secrets so well as they, who in a binary obsessed world, are clothed in the shame of being “The Other”.

Beyond organizational pronouncements, the story of Riana David and Michael Mendelssohn(both pseudonyms) illustrates the need for even greater levels of understanding through thoughtful engagement. Regrettably, Riana’s experience is not unique to the experience of many transgender people. What was also not unique, in the context of Judaism, was that the twenty-year relationship of Riana David and Michael Mendelssohn had become powerfully grounded in time by the ebb and flow of life bound by the Jewish ritual and festival calendar. Among chaverim, this flow of life serves to strongly bind us to each other in a shared destiny and a connection not easily broken. Yet break down it can and often does with the strains imposed by the transperson coming out and striving, after a lifetime of dishonesty, to at last be who and what he or she is. Initially, feelings of shock, disappointment, and distrust can often overtake a person’s impulse to lead with their best selves in regarding the reasons and motivations that someone close to them might undertake to transition gender. People understandably don’t often know what to expect or how to react. While people can initially be given to public pronouncements of understanding and tolerance often their unexplored feelings, concerning the perceived rigidity of gender and gender roles, can intrude to undermine that tolerance.

How does one react to you when your very existence tends to upend something that seems to them as fundamental and immutable as one’s gender identity. In the wake of a person coming out as transgender, family and friends often openly wonder, “Just exactly what is real”. Often more confusing and disturbing to others is the stated need of the transperson to alter their basic physiology to align with the internal truth of their conflicted gender identity. In a larger sense, I think we fail to consider the true purpose of the human body. It exists for no other reason than to be an effective container for our spirits contained within. While that statement seems self-evident to most, it can suggest a more elusive and yet substantive reality. What do we intrinsically value about being human? Surely, we can conceive of a deeper reality? Moreover, if we can, how do we by extension then regard the categorization of the fleshly container as “male” or “female”. Are these then mere distractions of the superficial mind?. The as yet elusive etiology of Transgenderism (and its effective “treatment”) suggests that, if the container is indeed malleable, than a gender binary based upon the most superficial of externalities is worse than pointless, it is inherently false.

Perhaps it was better said by the playwright and feminist activist Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, when she previously suggested that beyond the superficial distinctions of gender, “one day we humans will see and interact with each other on the level of the spirit. We’ll be fluid . . . like water.”

When the truth that the body must be changed to allow the spirit to be free is revealed, friends invariably ask, “and what of your family?” They often demand, “how can you be so selfish – how could you do this to them?”

Riana and Michael had been friends for nearly twenty years when Riana medically transitioned MtF in 2008, transgender community shorthand for a Male to Female gender transition. Their friendship had previously been marked by the membership of both their families in their local Reform Synagogue and active participation in its ritual and social life. Their bond was close, yet through those years Riana never revealed the shameful secret she had concealed from everyone since she was six years old. When it inevitably became known, Michael and Riana struggled to adjust to the news and its implications for their friendship. They tried to find a way to make peace with it and to be reconciled to each other. Sadly for both of them . . . they failed.

From: Riana Bat-Ami
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009
To: Michael Mendelssohn
Subject: All Who Are Hungry . . .

22 Nisan 5769 – Erev Passover

“Lo this is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all those who are hungry come and eat with us. Let all who are needy share the hope of Passover.” (Haggadah, “Ha Lachma Anya”)

Michael,

At this season of yet another Passover, my heart lingers upon these words. The Passover Haggadah is asking which of two categories we fall under: Do we approach the Seder Table because we are hungry, or because we are needy?

What is it that I am hungry for? The warmth of friendship, the passing of the seasons, of love shared at your table for over nineteen years. How am I needy? I am separated from your friendship by a seemingly intractable set of circumstances and conflicting loyalties. How difficult is it to unwind these things – to be free of them? Does freedom from one kind of bondage impose bondage of another sort, the separation from beloved friends?

Freedom is not simply something we choose. We cannot choose it for ourselves alone – we choose it as a community and we must affirm it for each other. However, by whatever path we come to it, it is essential to our very being. As much as we need food to live, we need freedom to exist. Just as a person starving in the desert searches for even the slightest bit of food, should we not be striving for our own personal freedom?

Slavery is not just enforced by the pain of a whip. Even a life outside of prison can be a life of horrendous slavery. Not "knowing" who and what you are and what to do with one's life based upon that knowledge is as much slavery as not being "allowed" to be the human being that you’ve struggled to be after forty long years.

On the first night of Passover, when we open our doors and intone the invitation to the needy of our community do we really expect them to answer our call?

Moreover, if in their want and their lack, they did . . . and reached out to us?

How would we greet them?


From: Riana Bat-Ami
Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009
To: Michael Mendelssohn
Subject: Re: All who are hungry . . .

Michael,

Is there any way to get our friendship back on track?

If prompting is needed - than I guess it is simply to remind you of the promise that you first made to me?

“You’re my friend and I can’t conceive of anything happening to change that”

You’ve been my friend for 20 years, you were the best man at my wedding and you are the godfather to my children.

It’s time Michael . . .

Time to find it in yourself the heart to rededicate a friendship to
that promise or have the courage and the integrity to admit that you
consider “my deceitfulness” to be too egregious, “my selfishness” too unforgivable
and an ongoing friendship with me too challenging to make exploring why we
became friends in the first place worth your trouble.

Riana


From: Michael Mendelssohn
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009
To: Riana Bat-Ami
Subject: Re: All who are hungry . . .

Riana,

I cannot do what you have asked. Perhaps I'm not yet ready to forgive you. I’m not able to separate you from your ex-wife and your children. I continue to see their pain, and so there we have it. Sometimes it is easier to not respond than to say what I think. An example of that was your Seder plea. What would you have had me do, exclude them to invite you? That would be impossible. I suppose we could meet and make small talk, but that would be glossing over the true state of affairs. I just can't see us getting back what has been lost. That you have devastated two children for your own needs, I just can't seem to get past that.

Maybe this is just my own selfishness. I have to deal with the challenges of my own life, I just don't seem to have the energy to take yours on as well. My plate is full right now.

I am truly sorry.

Michael


A respected former teacher of mine, Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman often asks when he teaches the Haggadah, “Why retell the Passover story?” The answer, he says, is “to make the story significant in terms of the world in which we as modern Jews live.” Its themes of liberation and freedom from bondage are more important”, Rabbi Zimmerman asserts, “than the events depicted in the text.” This is why the story of the exodus has been important to so many people throughout the ages and why it is so important to me now as a Jew who happens to be, by some as yet poorly understood agency, transgender too. We have not yet slipped the bonds of slavery if we regard who and what we are with fear, shame and self-loathing. All of us are uniquely and wondrously made in the image and likeness of God and all deserve to be free.

לשנה הבאה בירושלימ
Next year in Jerusalem . . .





© 2009 Renée Thomas all rights reserved