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for separate-but-equal status; transgender half cannot be exempted, so must, for this persons argue that sex and gender are no moment, be equivalent to a man. The rabbis longer “real enough” categories to classify have opened a door. If half a body can humans. Everything a person does to be change gender without having the requisite Jewish is based on categories, then, that genitals, perhaps it is no great stretch to don’t work. change the gender (and not the sex) of a Mishnah Androgynos is a rabbinic text ad- whole body. For the hermaphrodite, gender dressing the exceptional case of a hermaph- is a “both, and” proposition. The hermaph- rodite human (a person with two complete rodite has a fuzzy dual gender that wobbles sets of genitals, one male and one female). around an always dual sex (continuous state) Androgynos prescribes a legal alternative to and at the same time a series of single-gen- the one-sex-one-gender binary system. In this ders within each narrow legal context (dis- alternative, an individual regularly appears in crete state). Today, wherein a gender binary the garb of one gender even though only half is competing with newer non-binary forms of of the individual’s body maps to that gender’s gender identification, a “two-state solution” norms. The hermaphrodite, then, is directly to gender seems like a responsible — and enabled by the community to function as a achievable — strategy. unique member. A similar adaptation might The deeper question raised by “trans- be useful in communities working to include gender” is this: Since a dual-to-many rela- transgender Jews. tionship has precedent, why base our The hermaphrodite’s gender is always interactions on a one-to-one relation be- ambiguous. S/he appears male but possesses tween sex and gender? Even Jews not bound a female “half” and sometimes performs fem- to the law recognize the effects law has on inine obligations. Rather than reacting to a tradition and custom. If sex and gender are Noach Dzmura, a 2007 “man” performing female obligations as a not stable, why base obligations — or cus- graduate of the Richard transgression, community members must toms — on them at all? Since male and fe- S. Dinner Center for Jew- recognize the hermaphrodite’s duality as male genitals emerge from identical tissue, ish Studies of the Gradu- both man and woman. Though the her- why not obligate from the point of similarity ate Theological Union in maphrodite in other instances is said to have rather than the point of variation? Since gen- Berkeley, is a community a single gender, legal discussion concerning der is negotiated between us rather than con- educator. The recipient of circumcision suggests that the hermaphro- tained inside, why not negotiate obligations the 2006–07 Haas– dite has two distinct masculine genders. In between members, “fixing” an obligation Koshland Award, he was Talmud, a hermaphrodite is “certainly male” only when it fits a specific community’s privileged to teach about and must be circumcised. In another pas- need? In such an environment, a heterosex- Gender Variance in Mishnah during last sage, a hermaphrodite is a “doubtful male” ual — or gay — couple might marry as year’s World Pride Cele- whose circumcision may not violate the Sab- equals, and a transgender woman may be vis- bration in Jerusalem. bath. S/he is “doubtful” because the female ible as formerly male and currently female He can be reached at half diminishes his/her masculinity. When a without shame. The Androgynos offers [email protected]. hermaphrodite is circumcised, the female precedent for such moves. Queer Jews Studying Talmud Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, Associate Pro- of the androgynos, a person with both sets of fessor of Religious Studies at Stanford University genitalia: “He conveys ritual impurity by his ,and her PhD student, Max Kayla Strassfeld, dis- white or by his red genital emission.” cuss studying the talmudic text, Androgynos. (Bikkurim 2:3–7) Charlotte Fonrobert: I “discovered” What a bizarre and yet wildly interesting the androgynos many years ago when I stud- text, full of tensions and indeterminacies in ied a variety of talmudic texts that touched matters of gender. The androgynos and tum- upon gender questions. Looking for texts tum, two figures that roughly cohere with December 2007 Tevet 5768 having to do with women’s bodies, I stum- what today is called “intersex,” show up all To subscribe: 877-568-SHMA bled across a long list of laws the rabbis com- over the rabbinic corpus, in a vast variety of www.shma.com piled to circumscribe the legal phenomenon different settings. Coming from a heterosex- 6 ual, but perhaps heterodox, perspective my strictive rules take on a new life when read in ongoing interest in the rabbinic androgynos the light of contemporary discussions in and tumtum has been driven by a curiosity to American and European law about trans and find a way to shake up the strictly dual-gen- intersex marriages. der nature of Jewish law. Strassfeld: The four lines I am stalking Max Kayla Strassfeld: I love Talmud are from Yevamot 84a: and when I was applying to graduate school It was taught in a baraita that Rabbi [Yehuda I became obsessed with four lines about the ha-Nasi] said: When I went to learn Torah with androgynos and tumtum that I continue to Rabbi Elazar ben Shamua his students banded to- stalk. Another reason to study the androgy- gether against me like the roosters of Beit Bukya nos and tumtum, though, is because I love and they only allowed me to learn one thing in our community and my community needs teach- mishnah: Rabbi Eliezer says that [in the case of the] ers. Like many other Jews, I am regularly de- androgynos: stoning is required as it is for a male. nied access to Jewish tradition because I ask The basic plot line is this: Rabbi Yehuda the wrong questions, know the wrong things, ha-Nasi goes to study with a teacher but the and cause trouble — often by simply existing. teacher’s students restrict access. Rabbi is Even when we manage to “pass” enough only allowed to learn one (by implication to get access to traditional learning, we often unimportant) text: if the androgynos is anally find that the texts we are most drawn to are penetrated by a man, then he earns the pun- exactly the texts that our teachers avoid. Tal- ishment for mishkav zakhar (men lying with mud, in many ways, epitomizes this problem; men), which is stoning. This is the gender- it remains at the core of Jewish literacy and queer equivalent of Leviticus 18:22, the bib- yet it is one of the most difficult Jewish texts lical verse that has haunted the Jewish gay to access. The opportunities to study tradi- and lesbian community for decades. It is an tional texts in a setting that not only wel- uncomfortable text about transgression and comes but also teaches queer reading punishment, and a text that seems to present strategies are few and far between, and find- the androgynos as marginal to the corpus. ing a place to learn seriously about the an- There are many strategies for rereading drogynos and tumtum is a real struggle. a text as violent as this one, as creative femi- Fonrobert: For me, these texts have nists and queer Jews have been doing for taken on a whole new life as we read them in decades. One way to read it is to unpack the the context of contemporary transgender various levels of gender interplay: the stu- politics. dents who are compared to the masculine Strassfeld: My relationship to these image of an aggressive rooster form an im- texts is complex. It is comforting to read penetrable barrier around their teacher. Not about gender ambiguity in my tradition, to coincidentally, they allow only a text about a know that perhaps trans and intersex Jews doubly penetrable and transgressive androg- have ancestors of a sort, even though one ynos body to slip through. These four lines cannot connect a “straight” line between the have enough complex gender play to occupy androgynos and tumtum and the modern me for years to come. trans and intersex identities and bodies. But But it is also simply a good story in four the texts, as text, are not always so comfort- little lines of text: this is the parable of the Jew ing. While sometimes they express an ac- who comes knocking on the door of tradition ceptance of these categories as a natural looking for a teacher. And the shortsighted variation, a reading that is revolutionary students turn him away, spitefully teaching from a modern gender-binary perspective, him only one text. It is a text that is about a at other times the text is much darker and marginal topic; it is almost a taunt rather than more problematic. a teaching. They do not recognize the value Fonrobert: This is absolutely true. It of what they have let slip through their ranks. wasn’t that the rabbinic sages wanted to ac- And yet, this little line of Gemara raises ques- knowledge gender ambiguity, but rather to tions that go to the heart of our gendered December 2007 avoid male–male sexual encounters: “like legal system. With this text, queer Jews are Tevet 5768 men, the androgynos can take a wife but can- given a tool with which to crack open the gen- To subscribe: 877-568-SHMA not be taken as a wife.” Yet, even those re- der binary and peer inside.

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