PART I
BERESHIT
The Book of Genesis
ONE
Male and Female God Created Them
Parashat Bereshit (Genesis 1:1â6:8)
MARGARET MOERS WENIG
âAnd God created the human being bâtzalmo in. . . [Godâs own] imageâ (Genesis 1:27a).1 Perhaps no Biblical verse has meant more to gay people than this one. It confirms what LGBT people know in their hearts to be true: We too have been created in Godâs image. We too deserve respect as Godâs own handiwork. Our sexual orientation is part of creationâs original design. We are as much a reflection of God as any straight person may claim to be. We are entitled to as much dignity, as many rights, and as much happiness as any other child of God.
This verse has challenged readers of Torah to reconsider their views of homosexuality and the place of gay and lesbian people in civic and religious life.
But the challenges of this verse do not end there. For the assertion that God created human beings in the divine image comprises only half of the verse. The verse continues with an equally challenging second half: âmale and female [God] created themâ (Gen. 1:27b). This assertion is a challenge of a different kind, for its simple statement appears, at least on its surface, to fly in the face of what many know to be true: that gender and gender identity cannot be neatly divided into immutable categories of âmaleâ and âfemale.â
Our Sages understood this complication as early as the 2nd century. The questions they asked and the questions we now ask lead us to a deeper understanding of the second half of this crucial verse.2
Challenge Number 1: Not All Human Beings
Were Created Wholly Male or Female
Among even those who do not take the words of Genesis literally, most people do place great stock in the notion that human beings are either male or female. On a birth certificate, a driverâs license, or a passport our society insists on knowing: is a person male or female? When we name a baby, call someone to the Torah as a bar or bat mitzvah, or write a ketubah (a Jewish wedding contract), we presume to know whether the infant, adolescent, or adult before us is male or female. Yet some scientists estimate that 1.7 percent of infants are born intersexed, with their chromosomes, internal reproductive organs, or external genitalia not consistently male or female but some combination of the two.
True stories:
âBeautiful. . .,â the doctor says. They place the baby on the motherâs stomach, clamp the cord and hand the father a pair of slim scissors to cut it. The next day the doctor comes in and sits down and speaks softly: âYour baby will be fine,â he says. The parents brace themselves. . . . âSomehow your babyâs genitals havenât finished developing so we donât know quite what sex it is. Weâre going to run a couple of tests and weâll know very soon. . . . It may be that some cosmetic surgery is required. But donât worry. . . . This will be okay. We can solve this in just a few days. The sooner the better. . . .â This scene occurs about 2,000 times a year in hospitals all over America.3
At her birth, in suburban New Jersey, in 1956, baby Chase presented a case of âambiguous genitalia.â Instead of a penis and testicles there was a somewhat vagina-like opening behind her urethra and a phallic structure of a size and shape that could be described as either an enlarged clitoris or a micro penis. After three days. . ., the doctors told Chaseâs parents that their child should be reared as a boy. She was christened Charlie. But a year and a half later her parents. . . consulted. . . other. . . experts. They reassigned her as a girl. . . . Her parents changed her name. . . to Cheryl and the doctors removed her clitoris. Chase was raised without knowledge of her true birth status. She experienced childhood punctuated with mysterious unexplained surgeries and regular genital and rectal exams. She grew up confused about her sex. By age 19 Chase had done some of her own medical sleuthing and understood that she had been subjected to a clitorectomy as a child. . . . It took three years for her to find a physician willing to disclose medical records. . . then. . . Chase read that doctors had labeled her a true âhermaphroditeâ a term that refers to people whose gonads possess both ovarian and testicular tissue.4
Challenge Number 2: Not All Human Beings Identify with the
Gender in Which They Appear to Have Been âCreatedâ
Some people who are born with consistently male genes and anatomy or with consistently female genes and anatomy are convinced in their innermost hearts that they are not the gender they appear to be, and they choose to live as the opposite sex.
True stories:
Lilly will never forget her seventh birthday party. The entire family gathered around to watch her blow out the candles. âMake a wish,â her mother urged her. . . . Lilly blurted out, âMy wish is to grow a penis before my next birthday.â5
Many of these kids fall asleep at night praying, hoping, dreaming about waking up in the morning the ârightâ sex.6
Andy remembers contemplating suicide on a regular basis. âI had so much anger all through my growing-up years because of a situation that was not of my choosing. . . . My existence, my maleness, was a nightmare a purgatorial madness.â7
And some people who identify as male derive a profound sense of âpeace,â âintegration,â and pleasure from dressing as women. And yet they face ridicule and physical danger for doing so.
A true story:
âI openly cross-dressed at home from my teens on, and although my mother grudgingly tolerated it, she was adamant about not letting the neighbors find out.â8 Once he cut his hand and had to be rushed to the hospital before he could change out of the dress he usually wore around the house. His mother insisted that he enter and exit the car through the garage so that no neighbors would see him.9 âMy mere presence was an embarrassment to her and she didnât want to be seen with me although in the hospital she had no choice. On the way home as soon as we got to our street she insisted that I scoot down on the seat until she pulled the car into the garage. I became so nauseous with self-loathing that I collapsed on the kitchen floor in a fetal position and couldnât move. I remember sobbing over and over: âI am a person, not a thing. I have value and worth.ââ10
Challenge Number 3: What Should Parents or Society Do When a Personâs
Gender Does Not Fall Neatly into the Categories âMaleâ or âFemaleâ?
âIf a child is born with two X chromosomes, with oviducts, ovaries, and a uterus on the inside but with a penis and scrotum on the outside,â11 should the parents raise this child as a boy or as a girl? Should a surgeon remove the childâs penis, open the scrotum to form two labia, and fashion a vagina that will have to be deepened through repeated surgeries as the child matures?12 Or should the ovaries be removed so that at puberty this child with a penis does not develop breasts and a female form? Or should the child be allowed to grow up without sex-assignment surgery and be allowed to choose to identify as male, as female, or as neither?
How about an adult who had been born with XY chromosomes, undescended testes, and a vagina who developed breasts in puberty? And what of the person who has both an ovary and a testis or who has gonads with both ovarian and testicular tissue? Should a U.S. court consider this person a man or a woman? If 1.7 percent of the population is intersex, how absurd is it that the granting of marriage licenses is limited to couples that can be defined as a male and a female!
And what of a male-to-female transsexual: will the company she works for permit her to use the womenâs bathroom? May she legally marry a man? What if she is pre-operative or has no intention of having sexual-reassignment surgery? Is this person a man or a woman? Who gets to decide: the person or the courts?
And what if the husband in a heterosexual marriage turns out to be genetically female or decides to live as a woman? If the couple wants to stay together, may their marriage remain a legal marriage in a state that does not yet permit same-sex couples to marry? If they are Jewish and decide to separate, will a bet din (a Jewish religious court) require a get (a Jewish divorce)?
Until a few years ago, an intersexed child born with XY chromosomes whose penis at birth was under one-and-a-half centimeters most likely would have been surgically assigned female, castrated, and raised as a girl. An intersexed child born with XY chromosomes whose penis was larger than one-and-a-half centimeters would have been raised as a boy.
What if an intersexed child is born to members of a Jewish congregation, and they ask their rabbi, âWhat can the Torah teach us about how to raise our child?â What would you want the rabbi to say? What would you say to a little boy in your congregation who insists on wearing girlsâ clothes to religious school? What would you say to your own son?
Challenge Number 4: Do Genesis 1.27b and Others Prohibit Cross-
Dressing and Transitioning from Male to Female or from Female to Male?
Jewish tradition has long understood that gender is more complicated than simply âmale and femaleâ and that some people might want to cross-dress and that others may not identify with the gender assigned to them at birth.
Although it appears as though Parashat Ki Tetse, discussed later in this book, prohibits a woman from wearing kli gever (manâs apparel) and a man from wearing simlat isha (womenâs clothing),13 there is, in fact, extensive debate in rabbinic literature about the meaning of this prohibition.14
Parashat Emor prohibits offering as a sacrifice any animal with a blemish including bruised, crushed, broken, or cut testicles.15 The words lo takrivu lâAdonai (Donât sacrifice [such an animal] to God) are followed by uâvartzechem lo taasu (And in your Land, do not do [this]). The rabbis extended the Biblical prohibition against animal castration to human castration, but the Babylonian Talmud asks whether this prohibits only direct castration or sterilization by medicinal potion as well.16
Although liberal poskim (rabbinic authorities offering decisions in Jewish legal matters) permit sex-reassignment surgery for the mental health of the adult requesting it, most orthodox poskim prohibit it lâhatchilah (before the fact).17 However, bâdiavad (after the fact), even orthodox poskim have to address the status of a post-op transsexual: Can an Orthodox male-to-female (M to F) be married as a woman?18 Can an Orthodox M to F give an ex-wife a get. Is a get even necessary?19 Are Orthodox men permitted to listen to an M to F sing, or would that violate the prohibition against hearing a womanâs voice (kol isha)?20
The responsa reflect a surprisingly diverse range of answers.21 Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg (a posek in Israel who has written volumes of responsa especially on medical issues) has even suggested thanking God for a sex change.22
A Response to Some of the Challenges Posed by Genesis 1:27b:
Our Sages Were Well Aware of Gender Diversity in Human Kind
Rabbinic tradition, which obsessively separated men and women and assigned distinct roles to each, was remarkably appreciative of the fact that some people do not fit neatly into one category or another. Chapter 4 of Mishnah Bikkurim23 discusses the androginos, about whom it says,
Yesh bo drachim shaveh lâanashim.
Yesh bo drachim shaveh lânashim.
Yesh bo drachim shaveh lâanashim ulânashim.
Yesh bo drachim shaveh lo lâanashim vlo lânashim.
(There are [legal] ways he is [treated] like men.
There are ways he is like women.
There are ways in which he is like men and women.
There are ways he is like neither men nor women.)
For Rabbi Yose, the androginos belongs in none of the above categories but is bifney atzmo hu, a human being âunto itself.â
Our tradition knows not only of the androginos (a hermaphrodite with both male and female sexual organs) but also of the tumtum (with hidden or undeveloped genitals), the aylonit (a masculine or infertile woman), and the saris (a feminine or infertile man).24 So prevalent are these terms in tannaitic and amoraic literature that in the Encyclopedia Talmudit, the list of citations of aylonit fills five and a half columns, citations of androginos fill eleven columns, and citations of tumtum fill sixty-six columns, or thirty-three pages.
Aggadic literature imagines the main male character of the Purim story, Mordechai, suckling Esther when no wet nurse could be found25 and imagines God changing the gender of a child even âon the birthing stool.â26 It imagines that when God first created âthemâ male and female, the creation known as âAdamâ was one creature both male and female.27 To the saris âwho holds fast to the covenant,â Isaiah promises âa place in Godâs house and yad vashem, a monument and a name, better than sons or daughters, an everlasting name which shall not perish.â28 Can we imagine a place in the Jewish community, in our synagogues and seminaries, for the intersexed and the transgendered?29
The Mishnah anticipated in its discussion of the androginos what scientists now understand nearly two millennia later. There are not two but five sexes, argues Anne Fausto-Sterling, an embryologist at Brown University. âIn addition to males and females [there are]. . . true hermaphrodites born with a testes [sic] and an ovary [and those] born with testes and some aspect of female genitalia and. . . [those] born with ovaries and some aspect of male genitalia. . . . While male and female stand on the extreme ends of a biological continuum, there are many other bodies. . . that. . . mix together anatomical components conventionally attributed to both males and females.â30 Some scientists now speculate that the brain is actually the dominant sex organ in the body.31 Add nonbiological factors into the mix of gender-shaping influences and you may find a chromosomal, hormonal, and genital male with a female gender identity.
Rereading Genesis 1:27b
âZachar uânikevah bara otam.â Read not âGod32 created every single human being as either male or femaleâ but âGod created some humans male, some female, some who appear male but know themselves to be female, others who appear female but know themselves to be male, and others still who bear a mix of male and female characteristics.â âZachar uânikevaâ is, I believe, a merism, a common Biblical figure of speech in which a whole is alluded to by some of its parts. When the Biblical text says, âThere was evening, there was morning, the first day,â it means, of course, that there was evening, there was dawn, there was morning, there was noon time, there was afternoon, there was dusk in the first day. âEvening and morningâ are used to encompass all the times of day, all the qualities of light that would be found over the course of one day. So, too, in the case of Genesis 1.27b, the whole diverse panoply of genders and gender ...