Community Blog

          Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Toldot, in which we read about the birth of and struggle between the twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca: Jacob and Esau. There’s a lot going on in this parasha, a lot of ways to read the dynamics between the brothers and between each of them and their respective parents, and many midrashim, modern and traditional, to help fill in the gaps. In honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance, I want to return to a theme I wrote about once before, the year before my ordination. That is, the performance of gender we see in this week’s parasha.

          Jacob is portrayed as a feminized man: he has a special closeness with his mother, he likes to stay near the hearth and do the cooking and homesteading, his strength lies in his cleverness rather than his physical brawn. Esau is the opposite: he has a strong bond with his father, is a rugged woodsman, large and hairy, a bloody meat-eater. The Torah and the ancient commentators do not address the gender performance aspect of the story directly, but it is clear that the hero is Jacob and the villain is Esau. Jacob’s commitment to hearth and home is what will lead him to being the father of a great nation, while Esau’s dedication to the hunt leads him to an ever-nomadic life of living by the sword.

          I have had the privilege of hearing Dr. Joy Ladin, the first openly trans employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution, speak a couple of times in person, as well as listening to interviews between her and Krista Tippet of OnBeing, and other notable podcasters. At least once, I heard her discuss this parasha and its treatment of gender performance. When Jacob has to “butch up” to pass as his brother and receive the blessing from his father, Dr. Ladin says that hit a bit to close to home for her as a closeted trans child. It is painful to think that even today, with all our progressive social values, and without the same sort of inheritance customs that naturally breed weird family dynamics, there are still children in our communities who feel they have to emulate someone they are not in order to receive the love and attention they desire, that have to perform masculinity or femininity in order to be seen as legitimate.

          Now, there is the issue of course that Jacob wasn’t really legitimate in this moment either. He was coerced by his mother to trick his father and take through dishonest means that which legally belonged to his brother. But it still required this donning of masculinity that Esau so embodied. I can’t help but also think about the way gender norms have been subverted in Jewish communities in similar ways in more recent centuries.

Often, at least in Ashkenazi communities, this homebody man, as Jacob was, was the norm. Jewish men studied and had merchant jobs, maybe were farmers, they had the final say in family business but deferred greatly to their wives as well. They were (stereotypically, sometimes through antisemitic segregation and barring of certain positions) not likely to be soldiers or fighters or hunters in the Old Country. In Victorian Europe, there was plenty of antisemitic propaganda that illustrated the perversion of the feminine Jewish man and the masculine Jewish woman according to the dominant standards of gender identity and performance at the time. This view of gender norms followed Jewish immigrants into WASP-dominated America, where part of assimilation efforts became about the power struggles of the home, trying to embody to ideals of white European gender identities (and, relatedly, beauty standards).

The recreating of the Jewish man as a part of the creation of the Zionist efforts similarly insisted on masculinizing the idea of the Sabra. In writing about establishing the land of Israel as a Boer state, rugged farming and pioneering, abandoning the bookish, nebbishe city Jew of European stereotypes and antisemitism, Herzl was quoted as saying, “They’ll see how German we really are.” This idea that real manhood is about physical strength and connection to the land, assertion in one’s one home over the desires of the lady of the house, and such, would seem to teach us that Esau was a real man, while Jacob was not.

Perhaps, to read a bit more into Dr. Ladin’s relationship to this text beyond what I recall her actually saying, that is because Jacob was not really a man. Perhaps Jacob felt forced into this portrayal of masculinity as much as we know he felt forced into tricking his father. Perhaps, he never really saw himself as a man and did not want to butch up, and would never be able to conceive of himself as corporeally existing as long as he was still being compared to the manliness of Esau.

And also, perhaps our conceptions of gender identity and performance are arbitrary and silly. Jacob is our patriarch, he is Israel, the father of the tribes of our people. It would seem by all accounts that he was a real Jewish man. Meanwhile Esau goes on to become the symbol of Rome and early Christian antisemitism. Is that the view of manhood we want to teach our boys? Being hairy and large and physically strong isn’t what makes someone a man. Being bookish and liking to cook are not inherently feminine qualities. If a self-identified man wears a dress, he’s still a man. If a self-identified woman grows a beard, she’s still a woman. If someone has both a dress and a beard, and identifies as neither a man nor a woman, they’re still a beloved human in the Image of God and deserving of all the birthrights and blessings of their people.

Forcing people into unrealistic binaries and expecting them to perform their gender identity a certain way in order to be worthy of love and blessing is what leads us to need this Trans Day of Remembrance. Dr. Ladin has said that the point at which she decided to come out, she knew it would have a negative impact on her family, her friendships, and her career. But she had reached a point where she truly felt her only two options were to transition or take her life. I’ve discussed before the tragically high rates of depression, anxiety and suicidality in LGBTQ teens, especially trans and gender non-conforming youth.

This Day of Remembrance, let us offer up our blessings for all the people in our lives and communities, regardless of their birth order or gender presentation. Every single one of us is created B’tzelem Elohim, has the Divine Spark within, and is deserving of living our own truths as the proper manifestation of that Divine Spark. Let not one more trans life be lost solely because of their gender identity or presentation. May we all embrace the beautiful diversity of life and celebrate the amazing variation of the human experience. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.