Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community

***WINNER, 2011 Lambda Literary Award - Transgender Non-Fiction

While the Jewish mainstream still argues about homosexuality, transgender and gender-variant people have emerged as a distinct Jewish population and as a new chorus of voices. Inspired and nurtured by the successes of the feminist and LGBT movements in the Jewish world, Jews who identify with the “T” now sit in the congregation, marry under the chuppah, and create Jewish families. Balancing on the Mechitza offers a multifaceted portrait of this increasingly visible community.

The contributors—activists, theologians, scholars, and other transgender Jews—share for the first time in a printed volume their theoretical contemplations as well as rite-of-passage and other transformative stories. Balancing on the Mechitza introduces readers to a secular transwoman who interviews her Israeli and Palestinian peers and provides cutting-edge theory about the construction of Jewish personhood in Israel; a transman who serves as legal witness for a man (a role not typically open to persons designated female at birth) during a conversion ritual; a man deprived of testosterone by an illness who comes to identify himself with passion and pride as a Biblical eunuch; and a gender-variant person who explores how to adapt the masculine and feminine pronouns in Hebrew to reflect a non-binary gender reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books
• Release date: Aug 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781583949719

Book preview

Introduction:

The Literal and Metaphorical Mechitza

Since my transition, I have repeatedly tried to access Orthodox space to be able to engage as a Jew in the community and tradition in which I was raised. One rabbi stated that in his shul, he did not feel that I could sit on either the women’s side or the men’s side of the mechitza. He also did not feel that his congregants would be comfortable with constructing a third section to seat me. This led me to wonder if Adam, the first person, who was created possessing both male and female sex characteristics, would be accepted into today’s synagogues and communities. I recently found a progressive Orthodox shul in my hometown where the rabbi is supportive. I have attended a couple of times, and it’s hard to describe how wonderful it is to be able to have a safe and welcoming space where I can engage as a Jew. It is also so heartening to find people who are supportive and accepting and who realize that although my gender has changed, I am still the same person they knew and loved.¹

Mechitza is the Hebrew word for a barrier that separates men from women in an Orthodox synagogue. It can take the form of a floor-to-ceiling built-in wall or a partition erected temporarily, but a clothesline stretched from one end of a room to the other, or a balcony at the rear of a synagogue, can serve the purpose just as well.²

Along with this first conception of the mechitza, which exists in three-dimensional space and separates men and women in an Orthodox synagogue, another mechitza stretches across our lives. It resides in the intangible realm of thought, of Western culture and of Jewish tradition, and separates the human population into male and female kinds. In the quotation above, Nicole Nussbaum describes the challenging position of a transsexual woman who determines to bring her whole self to synagogue, when the physical mechitza provides no category of seating for a woman with her origins. When her rabbi suggests that congregants would not be comfortable creating a third space, he is invoking the second mechitza, the intangible mechitza of the mind. A third space is not something that we do.³

Gender difference is not an evil or an illness that endangers the Jewish world; it is a vital and healthy Jewish variety. This book presents an invitation to encounter gender diversity intimately, safely, and within the very heart of our tradition. Written to and for gender-variant Jews, this anthology affirms the vibrancy and vitality of trans Jewish life, and provides resources, encouragement, and support to transsexual, transgender, gender-variant, and genderqueer Jews, wherever they locate themselves in Jewish space. For non-transgender allies, this book provides support and instruction about the transgender world.

If gender difference presents an obstacle to the system of human recognition, this anthology sets apart as kadosh the moment of ambiguity (rather than certainty). If gender difference interrupts traditional forms of communal identification, the stories in these pages propose the opportunity and the means to negotiate alternatives. If gender difference obstructs whole-bodied participation in Jewish life, this anthology shares techniques others have used to gain access.

My hope is that the stories in this book will also help readers develop compassion for human differences so that a first encounter with a transgender person can provide an opportunity for a courteous greeting rather than a cause for discomfort or embarrassment. Reading these essays can minimize the human fear of difference, especially those phobias categorized as transphobia.⁴ As readers who are unfamiliar with the transgender experience follow these Jewish lives as they go to shul, approach Torah for an aliyah, or shop for Shabbat at a local supermarket, gender variance will begin to seem less strange than it might once have appeared. Insight gained from these pages begins the process of Jewish reeducation and resocialization to an updated gender norm. As a result of open-hearted efforts in Jewish communities, this valuable dialogue ensures that eventually, no part of a person’s gender identity need remain hidden in Jewish space.

It is my fervent prayer that gender identity and expression no longer generate discomfort in Jewish sacred or secular space. It is untenable for a Jew who wants in to be locked away from the beauty of Judaism, to be barred from the joy and solace of family, communal ritual, or social activity. There should be no gender-based physical or psychological barrier to the Divine or to the synagogue or to any other human collective expression of the Divine. No ideological confusion, no door, no wall, no mechitza should come between a Jew and membership in a spiritual community. I do not mean dismantle the mechitza. I mean to suggest that the mechitza defines reality far too narrowly, and that other options are possible both within and outside of those traditional boundaries. Everyone should have a place to stand.

Transgender Choices

Transgender is not a single category of person.⁵ In the next few paragraphs, I’ll describe some categories transgender persons sometimes use to identify themselves, and some of the different ways transgender persons think about changing sex or gender. It is a lengthy but incomplete list, as this is only a single moment in the history of a rapidly evolving transgender movement.

Transgender is an umbrella that includes different body types as well as different gender expressions or identities. Transgender body types include the intersexed—those whose bodies contain both male and female genetic material, as well as those whose bodies do not normatively express secondary sex characteristics. Transgender body types also include some persons with genetically male bodies who undergo hormone therapy to prevent the progression of prostate cancer. Transgender body types include male or female transsexuals—those who cross or change sex and express a gender identity different from the one typically associated with their birth sex. Transgender gender expressions may or may not involve surgical or chemical changes to one’s body—one need not change sex to express a gender identity different than the one typically assigned to the sex one is assigned at birth. Transgender gender expressions are not limited to adults; some parents allow their transgender children to choose the toys and clothing that match their spirits, regardless of their anatomy and genetics.

For some who transition, the goal is complete migration from one side of the mechitza to the other. Such persons may feel more comfortable calling themselves men or women, rather than using the nomenclature of sex-and-gender-change—FTM (female-to-male) or MTF (male-to-female). They have the option of living stealth: their journey of transition is nistar (hidden), and life may be lived with relative ease in the sex and gender of choice. Transition for such persons is unlikely to be marked with ritual; it is not a celebration of transformation. Rather, transition is an unfortunate medical condition now relegated to the past.

Others who transition possess bodies (or have made different surgical and hormonal choices) that display some remnant of birth gender: a tall woman with large hands and broad shoulders; a short man with small hands and no Adam’s apple. Stealth is not an option; ambiguity is written on their bodies. Each transgender person in this situation deals with the reality of the body’s ambiguity to the best of their ability. For some, the situation generates shame and bodily dysphoria. For others, receiving the great blessing of taking as many steps as possible toward their gender of choice is dayenu, enough. As a consequence of this range of acceptance of bodily ambiguity, persons within this grouping might choose to identify themselves as FTM or MTF with greater or lesser comfort. For this category of transperson, the space between male and female serves as a category of recognition, with its own pronouns, its own blessings, rituals, and rites of passage.

Another transgender category marked with doubt and ambiguity in social situations is that of persons who consciously choose a third space between or outside of the categories of man and woman. Rather than undergoing surgery and taking hormones, the persons in this category simply claim an alternative gender. Some in this category might call themselves FTM or MTF; others might call themselves transgender or genderqueer (or butch or boi or fairy or bear). For this category of transperson, the expanded binary (with man at one end and woman at the other and a third space in between for FTM and MTF) must be differentiated even further into a spectrum whose ends, like the infrared and the ultraviolet in the spectrum of light, are invisible to human eyes. The unknowns—the invisible genders as well as the nonnormative visible genders—on this spectrum must lead us to a place of awe and compassion for human variability. Each point in an eternal line must one day be noted in Jewish song and story.

Claiming the Gifts of Variation, Doubt, and Ambiguity for Jewish Lives

Gender theorist Judith Butler says that a livable life is one for which there are categories of recognition. Categories of recognition provide a linguistic foundation for talking with other people about the life one lives; categories of recognition begin to plot the socially available options for one’s communal life. There is no awareness in the mainstream of Jewish life that some people might resemble the people on one side of the mechitza, but belong with the people on the other side. There is no category of recognition within Jewish culture for a woman who arrives at the women’s side of the mechitza while still claiming the right to tell the story of his triumphant bar mitzvah. Except in the most progressive coastal areas of the United States there is no trichitza or third space in an Orthodox shul for a boi or a transvestite to daven. We must negotiate within our communities a Judaism that contains these spaces. All of these options must be fleshed out with distinct markers of Jewish personhood: ritual, blessing, social activity, opportunities to serve the community and repair the world.

The Orthodox mechitza is visible, but the metaphorical mechitza is a subtler force that is perhaps even more challenging. In liberal synagogues and in secular Jewish organizations where there is no actual mechitza, where men and women daven together, where men and women are each able to read from Torah, and no one is obligated (but some choose) to perform some or all of the mitzvot … even here one finds Sisterhoods and gender-coded restrooms. It seems reasonable to assume that some difficulties might arise when loving Jewish parents select a summer camp for their ten-year-old daughter who was born with male anatomy.

I heard a transgender man in the early stages of transition from female to male speak of himself as balancing on the mechitza. Davening (praying) at an Orthodox synagogue, he did not fit on either the men’s or the women’s side, so he metaphorically claimed for himself a precariously balanced position in a space that is no space at all.

Reminiscent of Shalom Aleichem’s iconic rooftop location for a fiddle player, a perch atop the mechitza is easily recognizable as a quintessentiallly Jewish location. For many transgender persons, the middle ground represented by the space above the mechitza is not a final destination, but an unavoidable ambiguity that results from being in transition. For others, the space in between male and female is the goal; ambiguity becomes haimish (like home).

It is uncomfortable to meet a person whose gender is ambiguous. How should s/he be addressed? What conversational topics might be welcomed? What common history might be shared? It is easier to avoid the situation than to ask socially awkward questions: Do you have a pronoun preference? When I meet a person who is difficult to categorize, I leap to minimize my own discomfort by attempting to place the person in a category, to fix (situate) them. Every day I work to change that behavior in myself. Fixity can provide a firm foundation, and it can be a pair of cement shoes. To include transpersons within the Jewish world, the moment of doubt and ambiguity that precedes human recognition must be claimed as revelation, a moment for the emergence of the Divine.

The Emergence of Transgender Jews

Perhaps exclusion of transgender people from Jewish social and ritual space at this point in history is unavoidable. Transgender community (as an independent entity rather than as a part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender [LGBT] community) is still in its infancy; transgender Jewish community as a subculture is currently being born. Transgender communities are relatively new phenomena, with populations sufficient to maintain nonprofessional support groups in most of the fifty states and to have specialized health care and legal clinics on the East and West coasts.⁶ There are a couple of national advocacy organizations specifically concerned with transgender civil rights, and a handful of national conferences on transgender themes have been well attended for the past decade.⁷ An international organization exists for FTM and masculine-spectrum transgender people in San Francisco, a city that houses one of the largest populations of transgender persons in the world.⁸

Setting aside issues of how to extend welcome, congregations and denominations simply have not had enough contact to identify individuals who may be transgender to understand their needs.⁹ Even those with a policy of welcoming lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons may find it easier—or at least more familiar—to recognize a gay man or lesbian.

Equally important, as transgender persons we have not had enough time to wrestle with questions of Jewish life and practice even among ourselves. We are struggling with questions as basic as how to name ourselves as a group when language has proved itself rooted in an outmoded binary.¹⁰ We argue among ourselves about whether it is better or right to live simply as a man—whole, complete, and without any specialized designation (such as transgender man, transman, and so forth)—or to eschew the binary altogether and embrace the fruitful ambiguity of the space between (a third-gender space like genderqueer, boi, fairy, or stud). It is understandable that in a new movement struggling for its own identity as well as for the recognition of the civil rights of its constituents, issues of faith and the spirit take a backseat.

As we learn to say without shame who we are and what we need in the public square, we have begun to gain our civil rights. Transgender persons have in the past five years successfully managed to acquire protection under the law and coverage under health care plans in many states and municipalities.¹¹ Our attention may now turn to matters of spirit.¹² As we have begun to organize, we recognize that we are not alone and that many of us are Jewish. As we begin to find one another as Jews in the public square, thinking Jewishly with others of our own kind is quite new. We are only just beginning to ask ourselves if and how Jewish practice changes when we perform it, and if there are transgender understandings of God and how they might differ from non-transgender understandings.¹³

Each and every circumstance of Jewish life and ritual space must be rethought to include transgender lives. In the face of such a daunting reality gap, transgender people have tended historically to go stealth (blend in as a non-transgender person) or opt out of Jewish communal life altogether. It has historically been too hard to face the bulk of this massive transformational task alone.

As we coalesce into Jewish community, transgender Jews are coming to understand some of what we need. In addition to space in the larger Jewish social realm in which all genders are welcomed, transgender persons need support for time spent in transgender-only space. As women gained strength and wisdom from their collective experience in the consciousness-raising movement of the 1960s and brought that experience to the 1970s mixed-gender movement known as havura (study partnerships is the literal meaning of the Hebrew term, but small congregations that meet in peoples’ homes to daven is the sense of its use in this instance), transgender persons need opportunities to share with each other their experience of Jewish prayer, Jewish holidays, traditional and chosen family as well as nonprocreative and nonfamily options, and other creative dreams for transgender Judaism.¹⁴ Transpersons need time to develop and share a body of collective wisdom with the Jewish world. Transgender Jews need education, organizations, and artifacts in service of a distinctly transgender Jewish subculture and as an integrated segment of the Jewish world.

In addition to communal rituals shared with the larger Jewish community, transgender Jews need communities within which to practice and experiment with new forms, knowledge of honored forebears who have genitals and genders like theirs, textual evidence of communal solutions to their problems, a deity that looks like them, rituals that support their lives, and an underlying mythos that entirely supports the expression of variant genders.¹⁵ That is not to say Jewish worship and social life should only reflect the transgender person, but these images, traditions, and practices must be represented within our multivocal canon.

Summary of Contents

The contributions

Balancing on the Mechitza contains spiritual autobiography, rituals, text study, assistance for community organizing, and theory to advance the idea and the practical reality of transgender inclusion in mainstream and queer Jewish spaces. The book provides classical Jewish texts with traditional and activist interpretations that support and validate transgender lives. Some essays invite personal reflection on the nature of the transgender Divine. Each chapter introduction will provide an overview of the essays in that chapter.

Using this book

Chapter Three will be useful in the beit midrash (house of study) or in a synagogue classroom. Any combination of essays could be useful in a college or graduate-level course on gender and religion, cultural studies, queer theology, or present-day Jewish innovations. Feminist and LGBT studies scholars may look to these essays for their emergence and points of departure from feminist, lesbian, and gay roots. Synagogues and Jewish community centers can use essays in this anthology to teach about ritual and prayer innovations. Community educators can employ these essays to encourage tolerance of gender variance in diversity trainings. Mainstream Jews may be interested in exploring these topics, and people from other religious traditions may also be interested in how Judaism wrestles with questions of gender diversity.

Notes on terminology, translation, and transliteration

Neither Modern Hebrew nor English accommodate with ease the terminology of gender variance. Pronouns come in two flavors, male and female, and there is no room for shades of gray within or between categories. Activists, scholars, and other creative people have twisted or cobbled together old terms (s/he, hir), or created new words (zie, zir) to fill the gap. The alternatives are as individual as their creators. To recognize that plurality, in this anthology, each author who employs such pronouns has been permitted to do so—no standard convention was imposed by me as the editor.

Hebrew transliteration in this anthology is also idiosyncratic. I make an attempt to standardize the transliteration of only one Hebrew word in the entire anthology, mechitza, the term for the barrier between the sexes. I chose not to allow mechiza, mekitzah, mechitsa, or other variant forms to emerge in parallel. Elsewhere, I have allowed personal preference to remain. The idea here is to recognize unity in diversity, and to reinforce the idea that translation is a crucial skill in decoding human identity, that meanings are negotiated, contextual things.

The contributors

The book includes essays from transgender persons who cross or change genders as well as those who blend or bend them, and essays from non-transgender persons. Only voices from the United States and Canada are represented in these pages. An attempt was made to extend the call for submissions to an international audience, especially Israeli and Palestinian voices on transgender experience in the State of Israel. While there were some productive conversations and some amazing contributions from Israeli transpersons and allies, for various reasons no shidduch (match) resulted.

It seems obvious to state that in a book with the agenda of transgender inclusion, the liberal (left, political and religious) is better represented than the conservative (right). However, I would argue that transgender inclusion is not a liberal agenda at all, but a Jewish agenda that should concern even the most conservative communities. The call is not necessarily for the liberalization of Judaism, but for compassionate responses from all streams of Jewish practice to people whose genders vary from the norm.

Of the non-transgender persons to contribute to the anthology, all are women. Although the call for submissions was widely distributed among LGBT Jewish channels, I received no submissions from non-transgender men, and only two submissions representing Orthodox Judaism, both written by Beth Orens. I do not mean to suggest that all contributors in this volume are wholly liberal or progressive Jews—sometimes for transgender persons, a public liberal Jewish life is shown to the outside world, and an Orthodox, stealth practice nurtures the person’s inner, spiritual life.

The book cannot be said to represent all or even most of the opinions or ideas of transgender Jews (or of non-transgender persons about transgender Jews). While the common aphorism states that for every two Jews there are three opinions, one might say of the transgender Jewish community, Two transgender Jews, ten opinions (and that’s if you ask on a Tuesday). This should come as no surprise; we are schooled through transgender experience to hold multiple truths simultaneously within our own bodies. From within a transgender body, it is no great stretch to recognize the world as multiplicity within unity. Nor does this book trace a perimeter around all possible transgender Jewish thought, practice, or political opinions. At best, this anthology represents a starting point for the intentional documentation of transgender Jewish thought and practice.

Lineage

If this book might be said to have a lineage, I offer feminism and queer theory as ancestors. Its parent literatures are those of sexuality and religion on one side and of gender transgression on the other.¹⁶ The literature of bisexual spirituality (such as Blessed Bi Spirit, edited by Debra Kolodny) is in some ways even more relevant than the literature of lesbian and gay Jews, since bisexuals are as dislocated (or bilocated) in either straight or queer sexuality as transpersons are relative to straight or queered gender. Jay Prosser’s Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality; Raven Kaldera’s Hermaphrodeities, a workbook on transgender pagan spirituality; and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott’s Omnigender: A Trans-Religious Approach qualify as cousins in this book’s lineage; and finally, Micah Bazant’s Timtum: A Trans Jew Zine is a sibling.

I have to give pride of place in this lineage to Sandi Simcha Dubowski’s documentary, Trembling before G-d. Seeing the struggle of Orthodox gay men and lesbians moved me deeply, but at the same time prompted me to realize how important it is to create cultural products that affirm, proclaim, and celebrate transgender Jewish lives. These living artifacts—our nongenetic children—can and do change the world.

How the Anthology Is Organized

Pirkei Avot (Wisdom of the Fathers) lists three pillars of Judaism: Torah, avodah (service), and gemilut chasadim (acts of lovingkindness). These categories provide a familiar Jewish structure for a series of essays about the (perhaps) unfamiliar encounter of transgender bodies with Jewish ritual and social life. The first chapter of this anthology, "Gemilut Chasadim (Acts of Lovingkindness)," begins with opened hearts and passion as a motive force, and contains intimate, first-person narratives of access and barriers to transgender Jewish spiritual experience.¹⁷ The second chapter, "Avodah (Service), concerns the hands-on experiences of transgender persons performing Jewish ritual and living Jewish lives. The third chapter, Torah (Teaching, Instruction, Law)," contains essays making space for these already engaged Jewish lives in Jewish texts, in the academy, and in the strategic thinking of our communities as they build for tomorrow.

The Audience for This Book

First and foremost, this book is for transgender and gender-variant Jews who are seeking a way into communal life. You are not alone; we are standing with you. As essays in this book will show, there are many ways to access Jewish life and culture. Some of them may work for you, or may stimulate your thinking toward an alternative that you might otherwise never have considered. If the visible or invisible mechitza prevents you from stepping into a synagogue, perhaps studying some of the classical texts might prove an acceptable alternative. If you have never participated in anything Jewish, perhaps a community near you offers a queer seder that you might consider attending next Passover. The point here is not to try to make you be more Jewish, but rather to allow you to live openly and proudly with as much individual and communal Jewish expression as you desire. As transgender Jews distributed across the United States, in Israel, and throughout the world, we are certainly a virtual community. It is my hope that this book will help to strengthen our connections to one another.

Second, this book is for those who would ally with us in the quest for acceptance and understanding. As transgender persons gain the confidence to come out into Jewish spaces without apology or shame, this book may provide resources for families and other supporters. This book may prove useful as congregations build their capacity to welcome transgender persons. Activists might find inspiration within its pages. Clergy may find information in these pages useful as they construct rituals to commemorate Jewish lives. Teachers may find engaging theoretical material.

Third, this book is for those for whom the very thought of a book about transgender Jews is deeply disturbing and even heretical. Trans inclusion and Torah to such persons may seem antithetical, but the message of Torah, avodah, and gemilut chasadim remains the same.

These are the words of scholars, activists, and spiritual leaders who are using the time-honored tools of the Jewish tradition to shape a Judaism that not only includes, but also embraces transgender persons. These ideas must be repeated in synagogues, in the beit midrash, in progressive Jewish organizations, on both sides of the Orthodox mechitza, until gender is a question whose outcome is negotiated at each meeting, rather than an assumption made once and carved in stone. The point is not to dismantle gender, but to embrace it as we do Torah, whose meaning continues to unfold for each new generation. These ideas must continue into our communal retellings of history and into the future, past tomorrow and into the realm of myth and memory. For we are transgender Jews—standing with you at Sinai and today in your community—creating a small part of the path our ancestors walked eons ago, recognizing in our own bodies the atoms that were split at the moment of creation to inject Sinai with transgender DNA. As it was then, so it is now, and it ripples until there is no Jew in the world who has

Reviews for Balancing on the Mechitza

[simchaboston · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Thought-provoking and generally thoughtful collection of essays regarding the transgender Jewish experience. Even though the editor modestly says this anthology is not trying to be comprehensive, there is quite a diversity of material here, ranging from personal stories about transition, to insights derived from rabbinic discussions of non-binary genders, to ideas and considerations for new or evolving rituals. I could've done without a couple of essays (one author in particular seemed to validate very outdated stereotypes of what it means to be well-gendered, instead of subverting or exploding the stereotypes). But overall this is a must-read for GLBT Jews and those involved with GLBT Jewish issues, especially those with specifically transgender concerns.

[shannonkearns · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a collection of essays and articles about trans* issues and experiences within Judaism. I really appreciated this collection of reflections. The first two sections of the book held the most meaning for me; I found the third section on Jewish law to be less interesting/helpful.

This is a fantastic volume, though, and I highly recommend it. My only complaint is the inclusion of some "icky" language by a couple of the cisgender contributors. Reading those were frustrating moments in an otherwise exceedingly well put together anthology.