Dvar Torah Toldot November 22 B’nai Brith Somerville. Jacob and Esau and Trans-Experience
Good Shabbos. I’m here to say a few words about today’s Torah portion in observance of Transgender day of Remembrance, which was November 20, and Transgender Awareness Week, which occurred the week leading up to TDOR. I offer my words with diffidence – as an ally of the trans community, where I have dear friends and chosen family – to encourage all of us to think deeply and care deeply and to continue our actions towards a better society. One motto I have seen for TDOR is “Mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living.” As we mourn, we also must be aware of and celebrate the resilience and creativity of the trans and gender non-conforming community.
Transgender Day of Remembrance was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. It has continued as an annual observance on November 20 to honor and mourn the memories of the transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence in the previous year. I want to call out, as well, the violence which continues to be perpetuated against trans and non-binary and gender-fluid folks on a daily basis. Violence to their persons, violence to their birth rights, violence to their freedoms. As Joy Ladin has said: “Today is the first Trans Day of Remembrance to be observed during a federally empowered backlash against trans and nonbinary people – really, against anyone who doesn’t fit conservatives’ ideas of gender.” (Oral communication)
For those who may not know Dr. Ladin, she is a gifted poet, teacher, essayist, speaker, theologian, and political thinker. She served as the first ever out trans professor at Yeshiva University, until her retirement due to chronic illness. Dr. Ladin’s book, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective partially informs my reading of our Torah portion, but the reading is also mine. We will look at Dr. Ladin’s definition of what she calls “trans-experience” and at how that relates to the story of Jacob and Esau, with reference to her article “How to Read the Torah from a Tran Perspective (Even If You Aren’t Transgender).”
Our Torah portion, Toldot, tells the story of Jacob and Esau. By order of birth, Esau is assigned a social/gender role of first son, while Jacob is assigned second son. Jacob purchases Esau’s birthright from Esau and through impersonating Esau, fools their father Isaac into giving Jacob the first son’s blessing. Although it is obvious that Jacob intentionally transforms his social/gender role, I suggest there is a hint that Esau is not comfortable with his assigned gender/social role as first son and “man of the fields.” Esau barters his birthright away for a bowl of porridge. Does it make sense that he could be that hungry? He is an excellent hunter and could easily fill his belly at any time. Is it possible that in his heart of hearts he does not feel that he wants the role of first son and therefore readily acquiesces in taking on the role of second son? Is it possible he would have preferred to be “a quiet man dwelling in the tents”? The word used in the text for how Esau gives up his birthright is va·yi·ḇez. He despised, spurned, belittled it. Clearly Esau, as we will see in a moment, did not choose to spurn his father’s blessing but I find it intriguing that he may have not felt comfortable in his assigned role.
Dr. Ladin suggests we can read Jacob from the point of view of trans-experience, as “someone who must abandon the gender roles he was assigned at birth in order to become the person who, as God’s prophecy to Rebekah tells us, he was created to be.” (Stranger, pg 39). I emphasize that Jacob’s transition is sanctioned by the Divine and is not considered to be a disruption of the divine order. Jacob in fact is the male progenitor of all the 12 tribes of Israel, along with Dinah, one of the bravest of young women who dared to “go out” on her own.
Dr. Ladin’s concept of “trans-experience,” as she defines it in her article, does not call for reading Torah “from a transgender-specific perspective, a perspective available only to those on [one] side of the trans/cis binary, but.. reading in light of the trans experiences all human beings have of not always fitting identity-defining roles and categories… all of us have trans experiences,… trans experiences such as feeling too different to belong; being other than what people around me believed I was; hiding parts of myself I feared others wouldn’t accept or understand; or trying to pass as someone I knew I wasn’t.”
Trans-experience is not necessarily smooth-going. Although Jacob is aided and abetted by his mother there is much familial pain. It appears that Isaac may not have known his sons very well. He thinks he hears his son Jacob, but is fooled by a goat skin and Jacob’s words and the cooked food. Does that mean that Isaac has never truly heard Jacob’s voice and maybe never understood his son Esau? It is heartbreaking to think of. Consider what trans folks say about not being heard.
And Esau. Although I raise the question that perhaps Esau was not comfortable with his assigned social/gender role, both he and Isaac are very hard hit when they find that Isacc has given away to Jacob the spiritual blessing which father Isaac should pass on to his first born. When Isaac understands that he has given away Esau’s blessing to Jacob, he is seized by a great trembling like the trembling of Mount Sinai. Esau reacts to Issac’s revelation by bursting into an exceedingly great or wild and bitter sobbing. Aviva Zornberg catches this moment so well in The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious. [pg 261-2]
“[S]urprise and terror resonate in Isaac’s voice, as Esau abruptly rouses him to the world of consciousness… Isaac’s cry registers the stages of his response; bewilderment, detailed memory of his experience, in all its plenitude, recognition of an irrefutable encounter. Perhaps this is the most poignant moment in his story.”
With his father and brother in uproar and his family home no longer a safe haven, Jacob flees for his life. Jacob has the great fortune to have his mother Rebekah firmly in his corner, and to have a designated place of refuge. Consider the many trans folks today who feel the necessity to flee their homes, to flee the country, with no guarantee of safe refuge. Particularly under the current regime, under this “federally empowered backlash.” Those trans and gender-nonconforming folks who may have slipped under the radar, although always vulnerable, along with immigrants and people of color, are more than ever unsafe at home and persecuted and endangered at every point of their daily lives. Nevertheless we persist.
Bibliography
Ladin, Joy. “How to Read the Torah from a Tran Perspective (Even If You Aren’t Transgender).” https://www.sourcesjournal.org/articles/how-to-read-the-torah-from-a-trans-perspective-even-if-you-arent-transgender
Ladin, Joy. The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective. Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis, 2018.
Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious. New York: Schocken Books, 2009 ZORNBERG DEEP.