INDEX
Note: page numbers followed by n refer to notes, with note number.
Abba, Rabbi, 59
Abraham: abandonment of father, 42–43, 43–44; author’s recognition of own experience in, 43–44, 72–73, 80–81, 107; banishment of Hagar and Ishmael, 52; child with maid Hagar, 46–47, 52; and circumcision as manhood-altering, 44–45, 51–52, 153–54n12; God as source of trans experience of, 42, 43, 46, 58; God’s appearance to, as traveler, 74–75, 161n12; God’s promise of offspring to, 76; rabbinic tales about, 161n11; relationship with God’s formless and human forms, 73, 74–75, 76–77, 161–62n14; and Sarah’s miraculous conception, 47, 48, 49–51; silence about God, 161n11; Torah’s silence on feelings of, 45–46; trans experiences of, 42–45, 107; unquestioning obedience to God, 73. See also Akedah; Sodom and Gomorrah, destruction of
acceptance of transgender persons: acceptance of gender-vs.-sex distinction and, 20; vs. intersex persons, 20; by religious institutions, increase in, 31–32; scriptural models for, 121, 136
acceptance of one’s identity, Book of Jonah as story about, 4–7
Adam and Eve: eating of Forbidden Fruit, 68–70, 71. See also Genesis creation story
adolescence, brief trans experiences in, 35–36
Akedah (God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac), 53–56; alternative readings of, 59; author’s identification with, 55–56; as entry into moral wilderness, 58; and God’s identity as unknowable, 82; and incomprehensibility of God, 63; Isaac’s experience of, 58–59, 157n29; and Isaac’s relationship with Abraham, 56; and Isaac’s relationship with God, 56–57, 157n30; and moral wilderness, maintaining human values in, 60; parallels to family sacrifice of LGBTQ persons, 55–56; as trans experience for Abraham, 53–54, 55, 157n27; as trans experience for Isaac, 55–57
Allen, Woody, 17–18
Ammi, Rabbi, 154–55n18
Annie Hall (film), 17–18
Ashkenazic rabbis, and kitniyot rules, 118
Auden, W. H., 93
Back to the Sources (Holtz), 10
Bettcher, Talia, 153n6
binaries: as convenient generalizations, 22–23; tendency to accumulate symbolic meanings, 22; use in Genesis creation story, 21–23, 27–28. See also gender identities, binary; Passover, binary distinctions asserted in
Bornstein, Kate, 31, 157n28
Butler, Judith, 150n2
census, US, invisibility of transgender persons in, 99–100
circumcision: of Abraham, as manhood-altering, 44–45, 51–52, 153–54n12; and Jewish identity, 167–68n22; as sign of Abraham’s manhood-altering covenant with God, 45
clergy, openly-transgender, 31–32
cross-dressing, Biblical prohibition on, 94–95, 97, 102, 105, 165n3, 165n8
Du Bois, W. E. B.: as activist, 171n8; experience as hyper-minority, 131–32, 134, 170n5, 171n6
Dzmura, Noach, 150n4
Elijah, God’s appearance to, 84
estrangement from community (hitgayer): adoption of ger (stranger) ident...