Ancient religions & genders
Ancient Judaism recognized eight genders. Modern Judaism recognizes thousands of allergies.
Hi Everyone,
Happy hump day and thanks so much for reading the ADULT SEX ED newsletter!
This is a weekly newsletter from me, Dani Faith Leonard, a comedian and film producer (you can follow me on instagram). It’s an extension of the live comedy show ADULT SEX ED that I’ve hosted since 2018. The show and this newsletter is about plugging the holes in our education as adults (if you want to know more, here’s a description on substack).
A week of celebration.
First of all, I want to wish everyone a HAPPY PRIDE! It was wonderful being in New York City this weekend.
THANK YOU to everyone who came to the ADULT SEX ED live show on Thursday night at the Midnight Theatre in NYC. There was a crazy heckler who kept the show interesting and it was an overall great time. Thanks to my guests Katie Haller, Gabe Mollica, and Dylan Adler.
If you’re celebrating Independence Day in the U.S. next week, I wish you a happy 4th!
Ready to get a little smarter? Okay, let’s go!
Dani
This newsletter is a quickie, but important. In honor of pride month coming to a close, I wanted to focus on one of the “lessons” I researched for the live show a couple of years ago. Throughout world history, many cultures have recognized gender identities other than male and female. Nonbinary people have often occupied special positions in these societies, serving as priests and leaders.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the rejection of the gender binary in indigenous cultures. “Two-spirit” is a well known term (actually created in 1990) that refers to a person who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit, and is used by some North American Indigenous people to describe their sexual and/or gender identity. Recently, on Eva Logoria’s CNN show, Searching for Mexico, she visited Oaxaca and a group that has defied the gender binary for generations. Muxes, a group long recognized within the indigenous Zapotec people of Mexico, are often referred to as a third gender.
But what if I told you that Ancient Judaism recognized up to eight genders? Add that to the list of things I didn’t learn in Hebrew School! This information can be found in the Talmud, an Ancient Jewish text which is traditionally only studied by men. If you remember the plot of Yentl, this is what sets everything into motion.
According to the ancient text, the genders assigned at birth are zachar = male; nekevah = female; tumtum = lacking sexual characteristics; androgynos = having both male and female characteristics. The genders that can be assigned later in life are aylonit hamah = identified female at birth but later naturally developing male characteristics; aylonit adam, identified female at birth but later developing male characteristics through human intervention. Saris hamah and saris adam follow the same structure for those identified male at birth. There isn’t necessarily an exact equivalence between these ancient categories and modern gender identities.
This conversation, like so many others involving gender, has stirred up controversy. In March, Rabbi Elliot Kukla wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “Ancient Judaism Recognized a Range of Genders. It’s Time We Did, Too.” The rabbi cited trans and nonbinary young people’s deaths by suicide and encouraged people to learn about the genders beyond male or female that appear in ancient Jewish holy texts hundreds of times. Modern day Judaism is very gendered and the backlash, especially from Orthodox rabbis, was severe.
I grew up in a mostly liberal, culturally Jewish family (think Seinfeld, not Fiddler on the Roof), and I doubt any of us have sat down to read the Talmud. When I get together with my family, we greet each other by sharing our allergies and updated food preferences, so I guess sharing pronouns wouldn’t be such a big deal. Happy pride and L’chaim!
P.S. If you send me hate mail about this I’m responding with clips from Yentl.
Adult Sex Ed recommends: Risk!
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