Is There a New Judaism for Gender Identity?
By Dinah M. Mendes · September 3, 2013
http://www.momentmag.com/is-there-a-new-judaism-for-gender-identity/?t=Is%20There%20a%20New%20Judaism%20for%20Gender%20Identity?"There is no new thing under the sun," declared King Solomon in Ecclesiastes, the literary, somewhat world-weary distillate of his lifetime experience. But if the wise old king were catapulted into our new gender-relaxed world, would he still opine thus? Would he stick to his guns if the Sunday Times landed on his breakfast table, the "Vows" section filled with the nuptial announcements of gay couples? Or if he were to glance at the cover article of a recent issue of The Atlantic entitled "What Straights Can Learn From Same-Sex Couples," positing the higher level of fulfillment enjoyed in many homosexual unions?
Although legally sanctioned anti-Semitism ensured Jewish cultural separatism and prevented full participation in the larger world for much of Jewish history, Jews living today are, for the most part, free to design the parameters of their dual citizenship. This is not much of an issue for ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are largely self-insulating, or for relatively assimilated Jews at the other end of the spectrum, who are unburdened by the yoke of religious Jewish authority. Ultimately, only traditional and Modern Orthodox Jews, who aspire to inhabit and integrate two worlds, confront serious challenges at points where the values of the two cultures clash with each other.
One of the most powerful cultural forces in recent decades has been the widening scope of gender expression–a designation including feminist initiatives, as well as the demands for freedom of expression and inclusion by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Within the traditional Jewish world, the first rift in the established gender-ordered system was sparked in the early 1970s by the protest of feminist Orthodox women against the use of Jewish divorce law to constrict women's freedom (agunot), and, more generally, against the exclusion of women from the realms of higher Jewish learning and participation in synagogue service.
