While the Jewish mainstream still argues about homosexuality, transgender
and gender-variant people have emerged as a distinct Jewish population and as
a new chorus of voices. Inspired and nurtured by the successes of the feminist
and LGBT movements in the Jewish world, Jews who identify with the “T” now sit
in the congregation, marry under the chuppah, and create Jewish families. Balancing
on the Mechitza offers a multifaceted portrait of this increasingly visible
community.
The contributors—activists, theologians, scholars, and other transgender
Jews—share for the first time in a printed volume their theoretical contemplations
as well as rite-of-passage and other transformative stories. Balancing on the
Mechitza introduces readers to a secular transwoman who interviews her Israeli
and Palestinian peers and provides cutting-edge theory about the construction
of Jewish personhood in Israel; a transman who serves as legal witness for a
man (a role not typically open to persons designated female at birth) during
a conversion ritual; a man deprived of testosterone by an illness who comes
to identify himself with passion and pride as a Biblical eunuch; and a gender-variant
person who explores how to adapt the masculine and feminine pronouns in Hebrew
to reflect a non-binary gender reality.
Verlag: Random House N.Y.
Seiten: 288 S. Erscheinungsjahr: 2010 Ausführung: Kartonierter Einband (Kt)