by Rev. Louis Mitchell, Senior Pastor at Rincon Congregational UCC
Wikipedia offers this: Jewish law, or halacha, recognizes intersex and non-conforming gender identities in addition to male and female. Rabbinical literature recognizes six different sexes, defined according to the development and presentation of primary and secondary sex characteristics at birth and later in life. Jewish literature describes what today would be referred to as intersex such as the concept of a Tumtum being a person of ambiguous gender and/or sex as is the concept of the androgynos, being a person characterized with elements of both sexes. One aspect of Gender and Jewish studies is considering how the ambiguity recognized in Rabbinical literature has been erased and constructed into a binary and how this translates into Jewish practices.
It’s also been amended by some to include eight gender designations found in the Talmud –
The 8 Talmudic genders identified are as follows:
(1) Zachar (male), (2) Nekevah (female), (3) Androgynos (having both male and female characteristics), (4) Tumtum (lacking sexual characteristics), (5) Aylonit Hamah (identified female at birth but later naturally developing male characteristics), (6) Aylonit Adam (identified female at birth but later developing male characteristics through human intervention), (7) Saris hamah (identified male at birth but later naturally developing female characteristics), and (8) Saris adam (identified male at birth and later developing female characteristics through human intervention).
But what is the Talmud?
The Talmud (/ˈtɑːlmʊd, -məd, ˈtæl-/; Hebrew: תַּלְמוּד, romanized: Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (halakha) and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewish cultural life and was foundational to “all Jewish thought and aspirations”, serving also as “the guide for the daily life” of Jews.
The term Talmud normally refers to the collection of writings named specifically the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli), although there is also an earlier collection known as the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi). It may also traditionally be called Shas (ש״ס), a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, or the “six orders” of the Mishnah.
The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah (משנה, c. 200 CE), a written compendium of the Oral Torah; and the Gemara (גמרא, c. 500 CE), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. The term “Talmud” may refer to either the Gemara alone, or the Mishnah and Gemara together.
The entire Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in the standard print, called the Vilna Shas, there are 2,711 double-sided folios. It is written in Mishnaic Hebrew and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic and contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of rabbis (dating from before the Common Era through to the fifth century) on a variety of subjects, including halakha, Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, and folklore, and many other topics. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law and is widely quoted in rabbinic literature.
I’m not a Hebrew scholar, but I wonder when these observations of our ancestors of faith became unacknowledged and a hard binary came into being.
Even as many feel that this “new thing,” gender expansiveness, is confusing and born in modernity, there is much evidence that we have always existed all over the world and in most every culture.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history
All of this to say, names and pronouns are important. When someone trusts you enough to tell you who they are and how they’d like to be addressed, try not to take that tender trust lightly.
In our radical and expansive welcome, we will all have to learn, shift, and grow. I believe we’re ready and able to the task!
Be thoughtful, listen well, and love with your language.