Faith and Repro: What Does Judaism say About Reproductive Rights and LGBTQ+ Rights

From abortion, to birth control, to LGBTQ+ issues, the Jewish faith informs many advocates, leaders, and believer’s work on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, Scholar in Residence at the National Council of Jewish Women, sits down with us to talk about the ways Judaism and reproductive health and rights intersect. 

Judaism teaches that abortion is permitted and is often required if the life of the pregnant person is threatened. Some stories in Jewish texts make it explicitly clear that, if the head has not emerged from the body, the life of the pregnant person takes precedent. Other stories in ancient texts describe the permitted use of medication abortion. In Jewish communities, these are the stories that inform conversations relating to conception, personhood, and the question of when life begins. 

In the more patriarchal communities in Judaism, many practitioners approach Rabbis for permission to use birth control and continue to tie birth control usage to marriage status. Still, while Judaism has threads of pro-natalism and patriarchy within it, contraception is a much less hot-button topic than in Catholicism. In fact, when it comes to birth control, many methods are described in the Talmud. These methods include the mokh (an absorbent, wool insert) as well as the kos shel ikkarin (an herbal mix made up of roots).

Many scholars argue that mentions of LGBTQ+ issues in Jewish writings are consistently up to interpretation. Still, Jewish texts mention upwards of six or seven different sex and gender identities, and instead of rejecting, banishing, or ignoring, Judaism seeks to find ways to welcome gender nonconforming or gender non-binary people. 

Links from this episode

National Council of Jewish Women on Twitter
National Council of Jewish Women on Facebook
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s Twitter Thread
Transtorah.org

Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast where we explore all things reproductive health, rights and justice. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and I'll be helping you stay informed around issues like birth control, abortion, sex education and LGBTQ issues and much, much more-- giving you the tools you need to take action and fight back. Okay, let's dive in.

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Jennie: Welcome to this week's episode of rePROs Fight Back. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So y'all, we are still in the midst of just a whole wild season of anti repro restrictions. States are just going hog wild and introducing all of these restrictions on abortion care, on other reproductive healthcare, on LGBTQ people, especially trans people, especially young trans people who are trying to access the gender affirming care. And you know, we've talked about this before, but gender affirming care is lifesaving healthcare. And to see states attacking young people's ability to access gender affirming care is just devastating. Trans kids deserve to be loved and supported in their decision and have their healthcare choices affirmed. It is just devastating that states are making these kids feel attacked and unsupported and unloved and just… trans kids, we see you. We love you. We want you to be supported and have access to all of the healthcare and everything you need. So we'll definitely be doing episodes that we'll talk more on all of the attacks that are happening around particularly trans healthcare. We'll also do some that digs specifically on what's happening in repro as well at the state level. But I just wanna talk real quick about the scope of this, right? Like it seems like there are a lot of attacks happening on repro and you're not wrong. There are, according to the Guttmacher Institute so far this year, as of March 15th, so two and a half months into the year, there have been 519 abortion restrictions introduced in 41 states-- that is wild. Y'all, like 519 abortion restrictions. That is unbelievable. It really runs the gamut from just they're all so harmful and that we'll get into it. And a later episode until like what exactly we're seeing, but there are just so many, there are a lot of states introducing copycat laws like Texas's SB8, Idaho became the first state to actually pass a Texas copycat law, which again, horrifying.

Jennie: So just keep up what y'all are doing. If you're donating to abortion funds, they can really use your support. We need to make sure that people are still able to access care. I mean, you just see states really ramping up their attacks on abortion in preparation for basically the Supreme Court overturning Roe in June. And so you're just seeing this huge slew of restrictions being introduced to try and attack abortion access in any way they can. So if you are able to support people accessing abortion, you know, do what you can. After the[legislation], was passed in Idaho, I donated to the Northwest Abortion Access Fund. They're an abortion fund in the Pacific Northwest and that covers Idaho. So I made sure to donate to them if you're able to, I'm sure they could use your support. I'm sure Texas abortion funds can still use your support. Abortion funds everywhere can use your support. It is also fund-a-thon time for many of the abortion funds. So now is definitely, it's always a good time to donate to abortion funds, but right now is when they generally raise most of their annual budget during fund-a-thon. So if you're able to, definitely make sure to donate. So like state based restrictions and stuff, that is like one bucket of like bad repro things that have been happening, but we also saw some stuff happening at the federal level. So every year Congress has to pass an annual appropriations bill to fund the government for the year. So Congress recently just passed theirs and it was signed. And, you know, we had some really great things in the funding bills that came out of the House and came out of the Senate, the bills would've repealed the Hyde amendment. They would've made global gag repeal permanent. They would have increased funding for Title X. They would have increased funding for international family planning. Unfortunately, when it came to the committee to reconcile the two versions of the bill, it ran into Republicans and they refused to do any of the good things that were in the bill or any of the good family planning funding that was in the bill. So that means the final bill that came out and went to the White House for signature and was signed, it does not include Hyde repeal. It doesn't include permanent global gag repeal and it flat funds both Title X and international family planning and a bunch of other repro things that I won't get into, everything was taken out. This is just, it is so enraging. Like advocates fought so hard to get all of these things in, and all of them are so needed, especially the funding, especially global gag repeal…these things have been really fought for and are just so many people are in desperately need of, for them to happen. And to see them come out at the last second was just heartbreaking for so many advocates who had fought the, for these for so long. And for the people on the ground who could really use these services that were taken out, obviously the fight doesn't end, we'll keep fighting. We're pushing the president to make sure that, you know, he increases all of these things in the president's budget when he releases it. And he includes, you know, permanent gag repeal, Hyde repeal, Helms repeal, all of those things in his ask. Yeah. It's time to get ready to fight for next year's budget and to make sure we can get all of these things to happen. Oh, so yeah, like I said, there's been a lot happening. I think we'll stop there. Cause otherwise I could keep going with all of the attacks, but I am so excited for this week's interview. I really wanna just turn to that and this week I'm so I'm excited to have Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg with me to talk about faith in repro. And y'all, I'm just so excited for you to hear this conversation. I had such a wonderful time talking to the rabbi. She was wonderful and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Jennie: Hi Rabbi. Thank you so much for being here today.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Thank you so much.

Jennie: So before we get started, do you wanna take a quick second and introduce yourself and include your pronouns?

Rabbi Ruttenberg: My name is Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. My pronouns are she and hers. I'm the Scholar in Residence at the National Council of Jewish women, which is a grassroots movement for, uh, women, children and families fighting for justice, especially reproductive justice for everybody. And, um, I've got a new book coming out called on Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World. You can get by preorder already. It's coming out in September, and I've got a book called Life is a Sacred Text where I do an everybody's celebratory justice centered, slow journey through biblical texts. If that's your sort of thing,

Jennie: I am so excited to have you here today. We've been trying to make sure that on the podcast, we're talking to faith voices to talk about that, just the loudest voices that are often represented aren't the only voices. And I'm so excited to have you here to add to that slate.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: I am delighted to be here to slate on!

Jennie: So maybe we should start with like, how does your faith inform your work on issues around reproductive health? I know that's, let's just start small.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: No, not a huge question! Yeah. Just not much to say there, except for how it's totally fundamental. I mean, it is, and it isn't, listen… I was a feminist, even before I was in religion. I was obviously born a well, not obviously, but I was born a Jew and, but before I was really religious, I was a feminist and clinic defense was really my first entry into activism. So, you know, I've been involved in repro, fighting for repro justice since I was in high school. But now, I mean, you know, listen, Judaism teaches that abortion is permitted, and it is sometimes required when the life of the pregnant person is at stake. And for me as a Jew and as a rabbi, it's fundamental, right? That for us, we're commanded to take care of one another. We are commanded to honor everyone's dignity. We are commanded to recognize that everybody is created in the divine image, right? We are commanded to pursue a just society and fighting for abortion justice, fighting for reproductive justice, which is making sure that everybody not only has access to abortion care, but can raise the children that they choose to have an a safe and healthy society. And that their bodily autonomy is cared for in every way. That's, that's all part of our divine mandate really. And in Judaism, the fetus is considered part of the pregnant person's body, right? It's considered mere water for the first 40 days after conception. That's what the Torah says. And then from then on it's like a body part. And so, uh, the concept of, of reproductive autonomy is just like deeply in the DNA of everything we are and teach really.

Jennie: I really love that your story started with clinic defense because mine was almost exactly the opposite in that I went to Catholic school and in like, I don't know, fifth or sixth grade, one of the girls was like, “do you wanna come to Madison with me and help save babies?” And like, “yeah, obviously, obviously this is exactly, I need to go save babies!” And my mom like sitting me down when I get home and being like, okay, like, have you thought about this? And like asked some really basic questions of like, have you thought about the pregnant person? Obviously this was like early nineties. So it was, you know, not a person, but like, have you thought about this situation or that situation? And then gave me the autonomy to be like, okay, if you still wanna go, you can go. And like, that was like amazing on so many levels. Like one, she gave me the ability to make up my own mind. But yes, that's like where my like repro journey started.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Amazing.

Jennie: I mean, obviously it didn't go.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Yes. Right. I'm glad, good. I'm glad if you had been in the Chicago area and have to be, you know, like screaming at you and patients asked you to get them to the clinic. Yeah.

Jennie: Would’ve been a little awkward.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Yeah. But it's been, it's been a really, you know, it's been very gratifying to be able to, you know, having gotten to rabbinical school already with my feminism fully intact, you know, and my commitment to liberation and trans liberation, all of that was already, that was already there. And to be able to see in the sources, like I wouldn't have gone to rabbinical school. If there had been any question that me or anybody else's humanity was, was at stake. Okay, listen, there are threads. There are plenty… there's, there's plenty of garbage in Judaism. Like let's not, let's not sugar coat. And there are the threads that are challenging. And even around abortion, you can, you know, there's the, there are two strong threads in Judaism. There's the Torah is very clearly, is clearly in Hebrew. And we can talk about the translations if you want. There's a case in Exodus where a pregnant person, it says woman--so the right gender of the person who was pregnant is, is as a woman, as I'm sure is covered many times in this podcast, obviously not all people who can get pregnant are, are women, but, and not all women get pregnant, but a woman is pregnant. She is knocked over ‘cuz two men are fighting and the, a miscarriage is caused. If it's just a miscarriage, you pay monetary damages. And if she dies, if there's a disaster, which is understood very clearly to be, if she dies, then it's treated as manslaughter, which Judaism's like, great… fetus does not have this status of a, you know, like it, it's not murder, right? It's not, it's not manslaughter. Fetus does not have the same status as a, a person who is already on the outside. And a lot of our stuff around abortion flows out from there. We can talk about the translation stuff and the game of telephone. Do you wanna talk about the translation?

Jennie: Why not?

Rabbi Ruttenberg: OK. So in Hebrew it says disaster, right? If there's a disaster, then it's eye for an eye to, tooth for a tooth… by the way, [some] rabbis are like eye for an eye to, tooth for a tooth oh, that means you pay monetary damages, right? Jews are not biblical literalists I note, but the translation of the Torah from Hebrew into Greek a few hundred years before the common era, for some reason, and there's a lot of academic speculation about what happened, whatever translated harm, if there's harm or disaster or damage or whatever, that word, they translated it as in the form. Okay. Right. Does not make any sense, but the Greek word is in the form. So now we get, he pushes her over. If, if it's not in the form, there is money. You pay money. If it is in the form, it's treated as manslaughter, which suddenly you get Augustine being like, “oh, so if the fetus is a certain amount gestation, it's you pay financial damages. And if it's further along gestation, then it's treated as manslaughter…”

Jennie: Oh, oh, oh.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: And that's where the Catholic church starts to sort of take a log in being opposed to abortion. And then the King James version translates it pretty accurately as mischief, which 16th century mischief as harm kind of works, but evangelical Christians, many evangelical Christians consider the King James version to be authoritative. And they open up the King James and they say, oh, if's there's mischief, then it's eye for an eye. And it's like, well, what does that mean? If there's mischief, right. If you're in 2022, like you can't totally get what's happened. Right. Like she died. Right. So, so it's not hard to understand the story if you're reading the King James version. So anyway, so you want this thing. And then for us, then we have another case in another really authoritative text where it says really, really explicitly somebody's in labor. They're about to die. It's a life-or-death scenario. If the head has not emerged, then you can literally go, go in and take the life of, of the, the fetus or the baby. As long as the head has not emerged. And it says explicitly in this text that dates to about 2,000 years ago, 2,000 year-old text, if the head hasn't emerged, her life takes precedent. Cause she's more. And ‘cuz she's already out, she's on the outside. She matters, right? The pregnant person's life is more important. And if the head has emerged, then we they're both considered people. And that's when the, we talk about baby and personhood and stuff like that. When does life begin? Right? And Jewish texts trace back when life begins to Genesis where it's like, well God put the breath of life in Adam at that first breath. Okay. First breath right after the world. So then from there we go like, well clearly when somebody's life is in danger, there's no question about abortion, right? You will not find a Jew who will dispute that. And then some people will say like, well it’s required if your life is in danger permitted any other time. And then you will find Jews who say you shouldn't, you know, only, only permitted if your life is in danger, you'll find, you will find that argument. Um, but then number of authoritative ultra-Orthodox like major, major, major legal voices that say things from like the 17th century, emotional pain is as significant as physical pain, mental suffering is as important a reason to abort as physical suffering, as material suffering. Like, you know, there's a 17th century rabbi in Algeria who finds out that a bunch of women is his community are doing self-managed abortion with some sort of medication abortion, presumably herbal. And he like goes through the argument and he's like, yeah. Okay. There's no, they have to check with their husband. But that's problematic for this reason. He just kind of goes checks through and he's like, well, this person says it's it's, you know, it's not homicide. And well, what about this argument? Well, that doesn't apply and yeah, no, that's fine.

Jennie: Again, it's so funny to think that, so this, I have another story that actually involves the same person connecting with me after I started working at Population Institute and we were working on like starting our Facebook page and like getting it built and I was trying to, you know, attract people to it. And this was back when there was a woman-- again that's… but the data is, this time, a woman was dying every minute in childbirth, somewhere in the world. And so I was like help, you know, work on this, whatever, come like our page, whatever. And she came back and was like, “um, a woman's greatest pleasure should be to die giving birth.” And I was just like, I'm sorry, what now? Like I, what? I was so thrown now. I don't feel like she is like, beyond like the ultra-conservative Catholic. So like not, I think, I, I think one that view, if, you know, you listen to the data from Catholics for Choice, that's not the view. Like most Catholics would [not agree]. Right. But I, it, it like blew me outta my chair when I read that comment, I was just like, that is the wildest thing somebody has said to me.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Talk about being like carrying water for the patriarchy. Yeah. Like dead women. Great. Yeah.

Jennie: And it was so weird. That was the same person. Anyway.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: I really feel that in a very full circle way. And I'm really glad that you decided not to go hang out with her some more.

Jennie:Yeah. Okay. So that's like that's the abortion. I think like one of the other ones… like again, coming from the Catholic background, like birth control is like another thing that we've seen a huge fight over, which apparently seems to not be dying anytime soon. So maybe let's talk about that next. Um, again, the loudest voices are like, “it's abortion!”, but that's not everybody.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: No. I mean, you know, listen, Judaism is very pro-natalist. That is a thing some of that is because God said “be fruitful and multiply” though, notably it is that commandment, that mitzvah is considered only on men and I'm using the traditional language. You know, again, I clarified earlier that the language I'm using is traditional and, and is complicated by how we understand gender's reality today. But only men are obligated to the mitzvah of making babies. Why? Because you, you can't obligate somebody to a commandment that might kill them. Right? But there is a thing, there is like making babies is a good thing. And then you get to like, you know, like small communities and then there's, they're, they're like totally the like repopulating after the Holocaust. So sort of like there's that Jewish continuity, there's that whole stream and you know, listen, birth control is described in [texts], they talk about various birth control methods. There's the mokh, which was like, basically a wool insert is kind of like a diaphragm. You basically just… vaginal insert basically, wool that I guess would absorb the semen. We don't know how, how effective it was or not, but, and there also was some sort of herbal sterilization potion kos shel ikkarin, either a cup of roots or the cup of uprooting things. And, and like, there's a story where, you know, rabbi whoever's wife goes and takes it and he's mad. Not that she did the forbidden thing, but that they like didn't have the conversation he wanted beforehand. Right, right. There's nothing wrong with doing it. And now in Judaism, basically like there's a whole hierarchy of which birth control methods are pre preferable and which ones are less preferable. Traditionally, there’s a whole, there's a whole thing. And I can go into like, why I think it's stupid, but like there's a whole thing about not spilling seed because of the one story of the guy who went up Tamar's husbands that should have, you know, had sex with her. And instead he did some, you know, premature, uh, trying to remember the, the name of the birth control method this is connected to I'm blanking. You know what I'm talking about?

Jennie: Oh, withdrawal.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Withdrawal. Yeah.

Jennie: Sorry. I wasn't sure if you're looking for something specific.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Yeah, no, I just, you know, there's like the, the little, little blank in my brain where it just vanished.

Jennie: I know how that goes. Yeah.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: He did the withdrawal method and then he got zapped. So the reason he got zapped is ‘cuz he tripped a, the responsibility and this is referred to as masturbation. Like the whole thing is just a weird thing

Jennie: Yeah.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: But so for a long time, like condoms were considered like the bottom of the barrel because like better, like less than birth control ‘cuz birth control, at least the semen goes into the, the person. But then, you know, in the AIDS era then suddenly people were like, well, saving lives is the most important thing. So then condoms like blah, blah. Like, you know, so anyway birth control. Okay. It is not the shocking problem that, you know, it's not in the Catholic church. Like we are pro-natalist but there’s precedent, you know, and we sometimes prevent pregnancy. People always have.

Jennie: It's not something new.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Yeah, yeah,

Jennie: Yeah. That one still blows my mind that it's still like it, it is 2022. And how is this still controversial? I mean, how is a lot of it controversial, but like it, that one still really blows my mind.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: I mean, listen, it, the parts of the Jewish world where people are more uptight about birth control, and where you need to go to the rabbi in order to get permission who use birth control for a year, you know, after your marriage and are the more patriarchal communities in Judaism, right? Everywhere you go where abortion and birth control areissues are more patriarchal corners of the universe. And it's just…

Jennie: I mean, I'm sure that's totally unrelated.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Yeah.

Jennie: Okay. I think like the next big bucket of things where we see like really loud faith voices and it's a large bucket, cause in includes a whole range of issues, is LGBTQ+ issues. And I know it's like hard to be like, you know, this one thing because it is a lot of things.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: It is so many things. Yeah. And you know, we were chatting before the, before we started recording and I said, well, you know, LG is uh, at least Jewish-ly really different than well, GB is different for us than I think T and I like, you know, trans intersection stuff are connected. Should we just do like the textual breakdown? Should I just start? Should we bring it? Okay. Leviticus “man shall not lie with man as with a woman,” actually let's start a little earlier. The story Genesis 19, people talk about that as like, oh, those people are going to try to have sex with, you know, these men and guests. But if you look at Judges 19, there's the exact parallel story, exact same language, except they're trying to have sex with a woman. And it's clearly a bad thing. This in there is hospitality or worse. I'm just gonna throw that like anybody who wants to open a book and play parallel story, looking Genesis, look at, just look at Genesis 19 and Judges 19 together and like trigger warning ‘cuz Judges 19 is one of the worst stories in the Bible. And there are a lot of really bad stories in the Bible. There's your, yeah, there's your story. Anyway, Leviticus “man shall not lie with man as with a woman. It is abomination”... Other things that are “an abomination” include eating pork. Just want to note. So if avoiding abominations is a big deal for whoever's yelling about this, there's your first thread. Things that scholars think this might about number one, idols. It may be that in the temple cults in Canan temple cults, one person dressed up as the goddess and one person got to have union with the goddess. And if you look in context of how the verses are ordered and what's around the, and it might be referring to that, it may be referring to specific kinds of incest. ‘Cuz if you look at the context of the verses, it's all basically forbidding incest. And um, some people who have looked have done some they're, you know, biblical scholars who can do like, you know, parsing out the order of the words and the specific, you know, they used this word and not that word. And so that tells us it was from a later stratum of the editing of the Bible and that it's forbid sex with male relations. And that that was is what is being forbidden. Uh, people posit that it was forbidding rape because you know, in the ancient world, um, it was probably about rape and domination, there are a lot of different ideas. What seems to be unanimously understood about from various scholars is very unlikely to be about a consensual loving relationship between two men who adore each other and want to have, have some sort of, you know, ongoing or even just for, you know, one lovely night kind of a connection…and certainly homosexuality, as we understand it today is a much later construction than whatever was going on in the ancient world. So is homosexuality forbidden in the Bible? No, I don't believe it was, bottom line. You know, I have a whole thread on Twitter about this, you search my Twitter handle and same sex. You will find it. And I link to a bunch of different articles with a bunch of these different theories, but you know, if anything, the bottom line is like, there's nothing that's clear cut here. And if you are like me, someone who believes that the Bible is a sacred text that was written by human beings and that we are ongoing receivers of to, and you know, ongoing participants in its co-creation and that everyone is created in the divine image and human dignity is, you know, one of the core principles of that then the, ambiguity of this verse and the centering of love and dignity means that we're gonna send love and dignity… I will note that lesbianism is completely absent from like Jewish text. Totally completely entirely, probably because like, if there wasn't a piece of penis involved, it wasn't really sex because patriarchy. Right. And you know, and like eventually later on and like, you know, gets like a couple of places where they're like, “oh, girls ha you know, don't do that,” but it's not, it's not taken seriously. Cause the women's desire is not taken seriously. No, that's not true. There are places actually where women's desire is centered in really interesting ways. I could talk about that, but not women's desire. So, so, you know, as somewhat annoying as it might be, it also is like right. Door, door’s, open walk on in ladies, you know.

Jennie: Whatever, I guess. Thanks for ignoring us this one time.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Exactly. So that's basically… should I talk about non-gender stuff?

Jennie: Sure.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: I just, I mean, I can just keep going.

Jennie: No, let's get, get to it especially cause right now it seems super important.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Has always been as far as I can tell, but definitely now dear God, please don't legislate hate or trans people. Well, I know that, you know, it's, it's, I, I saw somewhere that 280 bills, you know, that are hateful to trans people have been introduced this year already.

Jennie: Like it is, we're recording this in early March. Like that is one it's wild if it was like all year, but like I, yeah, it boggles my mind.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: It's I, you know, I'm gonna com compartmentalize a little bit, so I don't start sobbing, but yes. Yeah. So in Judaism, a somebody's gonna bring this up. The verse about prohibitingcross dressing in the Torah is interpreted by our tradition to be that a woman should not dress in men's clothing so that she can go then hang out with men and solicit them for sex. It's about not deceiving. And it's about not using gendered presentation as an opportunity to do stuff that is considered not appropriate to do. Now we can have the sex work is work conversation. Is it like a different thing, but what is being prohibited in the Torah is not cross-dressing, first of all. And second of all, like if someone is a trans woman, then she is wearing her clothes. And if somebody is a gender, gender nonconforming person or non-binary person, then they are wearing whatever they’re wearing. They're whatever the heck they're wearing it's fine here. We're all adults here and that is their clothing. So that verse wouldn't apply to them. Anyway. It's not about trans stuff, but even people who are doing drag, if the intent is not to deceive, it's, you know, it's fine. That's oh, and there's also the, saying that cross dressing is fine because it's done in the spirit of joy. So also you can gender bend if it's done with joy. So you should…

Jennie: I mean, I kinda love that.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Yeah. Done with joy, like yeah. And you know, gender is a playground, so you should play. Right. And that is a great, you know, like people who are men who identify as men, that's the correct label and wanna wear a skirt, like a, you're a man in a skirt, that's your skirt. And second of all, be joyful, you know?

Jennie: Awesome.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: And then in terms of gender stuff… the oral Torah is besides the, to itself is the most authoritative text. It's the base text of the, trying to find the English word that that will make like, you know, I'd say, I say “redacted”… people edited out, codified, solidified or around 150-200 CE after the common era says that it talks about six or seven different gender categories… sex, gender categories. So there is cisgender male, cisgender female there's androgynous. I'm like the word is not coming. Cause I'm like Hebrew, uh, androgynous. Right? But [that] is somebody who has quote unquote, both sex characteristics. [There is] is someone who has quote unquote neither sex characteristics and, or they are indetermined or hidden. And that is the information we are given, uh, is someone who was, I think, assigned male at birth. And then at puberty develops female sex characteristics. So is somebody who is assigned female at birth and then at develops male sex characteristics. And then there's…somebody who is assigned male at birth and develops female sex characteristics through human intervention. That is to say presumably removing of testicles. And I, you know, maybe other stuff too, but that is my guess that's, you know, but it's like, we, we only have so much information, presumably they're talking about various intersect folks and people have done the thing of trying to, you know, make guesses about what's going on. You know, the thing that is important and notable is that like, Judaism's a very gendered religion traditionally, right? And these are the… it's vote that women do and you get has gone through and we we've bashed all we've, we've destroyed all of that. Thankfully, you know, Jews do things, but traditionally like men are obligated to this. Women are obligated to this and men are… and the rabbis are then confronted with people who don't fit cleanly in their categories and are like, oh, Jews, what do we do now? And the answer is not kick them out or legislate them away. Right. Or send them outside the camp so to speak. There's a set of texts that go well, okay…And they try to figure out how this person who does not fit binary, gender fits into their binary system.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Cause the question is how, how does this person fit into our community? How is this person going to serve God? How is this person going to be married? Because of course they are going to not just be part of our community, but they're going to have love and caring and connection. Right. And cause they are, I think that's really, really important. And, and it can be a really important model for us as a society. Like I, you know, I think in some ways we're asking the wrong questions, right. Or at least some parts of our society are right. Like for some of us it's human beings are human beings and yeah, right. Like what if two human beings can love and support each other full stop. And, and that's just it and that's it. And, and our community can love and care for them and they can love and care for us. And that's it. But you know, second century Judaism got the memo and I, you know, there are places where, where we were hit and miss around things, but like, you know, I'm proud of us for that. I wanna shout out transtorah.org …[ the rabbis] have done a lot of really amazing work around this. And Rabbi Zelman has a beautiful essay on this, where he talks, he compares [being transgender, gender non-conforming, and gender non-binary] to twilight…you know, it's a time that is neither day nor night. And um, you know, how do we talk about that? And, and the beauty of it. And…

Jennie: I like that.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Isn't that lovely? Yeah. So, yes. So there's always there, you know, as trans people say, you know, we've always been here and, you know, intersex people, certainly same percent of the population as people with green eyes or people with red hair, as far as I understand, like, you know, always been part of our history and trans stuff. We see texts, we see things, you know, glimmers here and there. Somebody named Noam Sienna is a professor, amazing, wrote this, pulled together this amazing book called A Rainbow Thread of trans sources throughout history. That's like, I don't even know where he found these things. Um, just from all over the world, 2000 years of stuff, you know, there have always been trans Jews, but you know, in terms of more recently, like from the early nineties, early mid-nineties, there's a, an Israeli singer named Donna International who won the Eurovision song contest; she's trans. And so of course all these, you know, ultra-Orthodox rabbis are like, oh no, do we do, does she count in a like, do we, oh, no, like what's her status? Like, do we have to? And so like, like we've got literature and anyway, there's, there's stuff, permitting gender transition already on the books. And can I share my favorite gender transition…

Jennie: Always, always.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Okay. It takes a second. So in the book of Kings, we've got the prophet Elijah who gets sucked up into heaven, like in a whirlwind. And then in the middle ages, a bunch of rabbis are like, okay, well what's the set of status, his wife. Cause she wasn't a widow cause he didn't die. He got sucked up into heaven in a whirlwind. Right. And she also didn't get a divorce. Like he didn't give her the paper that's part of a divorce process. So like could she remarry? And they conclude that the marriage was annulled. She was no longer married to a man, but rather to an angel; angels are canonically non-binary and a change in gender status results in a change in legal status.

Jennie: Wow.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: And this rabbi who like, this major ultra-Orthodox medical ethicist used that story as the basis for his permitting Donna International, like for saying that like Donna International’s transition is kosher. He's like, oh yeah. Well, you know, if Elijah can turn into an angel, then Donna International could certainly, you know, like she's a woman. That makes sense.

Jennie: I mean, yeah. It's the getting there, okay with how with, if that's the story that's that get to there.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Right? Yeah. And now, you know, whenever we got there, but you know, I'm more to the point like trans Jews are now running the show. There is something my friend, rabbi, uh, Becky Silverstein has run, [inaudible] project where it is now. Now, you know, trans Jews, Becky's trans and is doing this. And they're both trans and they are, it's sort of trans run trans led, creating new solutions to Jewish legal problems that have not existed. You know, or that question that haven't, or the problems have always been there, but, but we need trans voices addressing them. So there, you know, like there's a whole new movement of stuff happening. We the art and the podcast and the studies and that like, you know, there's a whole wave of amazing things happening now. So

Jennie: That's so exciting. Yeah. And I wanna be super respectful of your time. So we're getting on. So maybe we'll wrap it up with, you know, I know you do a lot of talking about these issues. How would you advise other people of faith who want to speak on this range of issues?

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Wherever you are religiously, there are people who are already doing the work, right? None of this is new and there are people in academia. There are people who are feminist and trans and who are already speaking out. So go find the folks who are doing the work and follow them on Twitter, read their books, you know, listen to their podcasts, do some learning, amplify their voices. And don't be afraid to say, we are all created in the image of God. And I'm pretty sure that God doesn't want us oppressing and hurting each other. Right? Like do not be afraid to speak from this sort of basic prophetic place. Cause it's your faith and your tradition too.

Jennie: Well, rabbi, thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Rabbi Ruttenberg: Thank you for having me and letting me go on and on and on about a Jewish texts.

Jennie: Okay. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with the rabbi. Like I said, I had a wonderful time talking with her. It's always great to talk to people of faith about repro. I feel like so often we are only hearing from one side in the faith argument. They're very loud. They're not the majority, they're the loudest group. And it's so important that we are hearing from all of the other faith voices who are speaking out in support of repro, cuz there are a lot of them, and so I'm just very grateful that the rabbi took the time to talk to us.

Jennie: Thanks for listening everyone. And we'll see you on our next episode of RePROS Fight Back. For more information, including show notes from this episode and previous episodes, please visit our website at reprosfightback.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at RePROS Fight Back, or on Instagram at reprosfb. If you like our show, please help others find it by sharing it with your friends and subscribing, rating and reviewing us on iTunes. Thanks for listening.

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