People Who Change Genders

How does Orthodox Judaism deal with people who are gay, lesbian, or transgender when the synagogue has a mechitzah? The answer is not clear-cut. According to Jewish law, gays and lesbians must sit on the side of the mechitzah with their assigned gender. However, there is a lot of debate regarding how to *“classify”* transgender people, who do not identify with their assigned gender at birth. Judaism, like the United States and many other cultures, is built on a binary system of genders, meaning there is only male and female with nothing in between for people who do not identify as either male or female. The binary system causes many problems when it comes to separating men and women. Transgender people identify with a different gender than they were assigned at birth. But we are forced to ask, what does G-d say about changing genders?

Other questions we must ask ourselves when attempting to separate transgendered people in Orthodox synagogues include can a man be called to the Torah if he was born a woman and can a man count as one person out of the ten people needed for a minyan if he was born a woman? While there is not one simple answer to these questions, rabbis and other people have come up some theories that answer these questions. Some people say that if a person has surgery to change his/her sex, than that person can sit on the side of the mechitzah with their new gender and do not sit with the people of the gender they were born. As a result of sex-change surgery, people have a new gender and according to Jewish law, after having the surgery, people are a part of the new gender. Regardless of whether the person went from being male to female(MTF) or female to male(FTM), a person who became a female will sit on the woman’s side and people who became male will sit on the men’s side of the mechitzah. If the person became a male, he can count as part of the minyan and can read from the Torah just like any other man even though he was born a female. However, if a man becomes a woman, she can no longer read from the Torah or count as part of the minyan after her surgery. Like I mentioned, there is some controversy over transgendered people. While some people follow the belief I mentioned above, others believe that once a person is male, he is always male. The same goes for female. As a result of this view, even if a person has surgery to transcend genders, that person cannot read from the Torah or count as part of the minyan (if he became a male) and has to sit with the people of his/her birth gender.

Through reading articles on how Orthodox Judaism attempts to separate men and women, I learned about the problems that arise from separating genders during prayer. I believe that each individual Orthodox synagogue should collectively decide how to separate transgendered people. To me, it makes sense that if a person has sex-change surgery and becomes a male, then he should have all the rights that person born a male have in synagogue. If a person thinks he is a male, he should have the same rights that a man has in Orthodox Judaism. The same goes for females. At the same time, it makes sense to limit the rights that some people have if they change genders. Each synagogue, because of it's rabbi and congregants, has a slightly different belief system despite still being Orthodox, which is why I believe that each synagogue should decide how handle a situation where a person changes gender.

Sources:
Orens, Beth. Judaism and Gender Issues. n.d. Web. 15 April 2010.