IN THE IMAGE OF… TOWARDS A TRANS TALMUD 

Laurence Myers Reese

Torah is white fire and black fire. The ink is revelation. And the space between the ink is revelation. -Binya Koatz

Today, for the first time in history, Queer Jews are learning Talmud as Queer Jews and seeing in it things that our teachers never taught us. - Rabbi Benay Lappe

Towards a Transgender Talmud

A lot of writing on transgender Jews identifies the conflicts between Jewish and trans, or where custom and tradition clashes with a here and now. What the texts often miss out on is the potential creation of a new body of texts that canonizes intersex, non-binary and trans experiences. I am inspired by the layout of the Talmud, in which areas of the page correspond to areas of time or culture. I set out to create an exhibition and book that overlap texts, displaying conflicting information alongside and ontop of one another, thus building up a narrative of trans presence in religion through a queer aesthetic lens.

The exhibition title includes the phrase “towards a trans talmud,” referencing contemporary religious scholars’ work: Joy Ladin’s 2018 article “Towards a Trans Theology,” and Max Strassfeld’s forthcoming monograph Trans Talmud. This art installation does not proclaim itself to be a complete work or a halachic authority. However, it is not a mere aggregation of quotes that define transgender existence. The goal is to use the act of projection, painting, erasing, and audio to build an environment in which multiple viewpoints are taken into account.

The Exhibition

Texts from prominent transgender theologians and the Babylonian Talmud are painted on walls to envelop the reader in text. These writings include debates of the gender of Abraham and Sarah as eunuchs, gendered prohibitions against clothing and ritual garments, and the tale of how a man developed the ability to breastfeed a child. This thesis looks at the talmud through the lens of a transgender artist, and questions what it means to be a transgender Jew throughout history. 

The installation uses painted text and audio to create a space in which visitors are enveloped by the writings. The text is anamorphically projected and painted. This creates a variety of viewpoints in which viewers must physically situate themselves in order to see the text straight on, as a way to comment on the placement of transgender individuals in religious spaces.

As viewers walk through the texts, they are surrounded by the sound of blessings, readings, whispers, an upheaval of narrative reading. To guide the viewer through this mess and tumult of noise and visuals, a companion booklet is produced. This serves as a guide to the mural and audio, providing context, sources, and information for the viewers, while exploding the formula of a traditional book page with overlaying, warped texts.  The graphic designer, Monet Green, is a young student, a queer artist, and has worked for the university’s center for social justice. This way-finding booklet draws on the visual references of the Talmud (with texts organized in a spiral), feminist zines, and Jewish folk art. 

The thesis exhibition closed with a performance involving handcrafted ritual objects, observing the ending of Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath), and the exhibition, marking a new week and a new beginning. 

Aesthetic Framework 

Much of the impetus for using text instead of imagery comes from a tradition of Iconoclasm in Jewish art, which broadly interprets the second commandment to apply to figures. “Jewish art has always existed in not existing” says Harold Rosenberg in his 1966 lecture “Is there a Jewish Art?” 

There is a small community of queer Jewish artists, and the style leans towards a DIY punk aesthetic that is best seen in the zine TimTum by the pseudonymous “Micha” and the various zines and by Rena Yehuda Newman. Beyond this DIY aesthetic, other Jewish artists are investigating text and gender, including Yael Kanarek, who in part has founded Beit Toratah or “the house of Her Torah,” where she and other scholars have worked to re-translate the entire Torah swapping genders. 

What happens to our central narratives if our main prophet is instead a woman who was found and nursed by a man? Or if our original matriarch goes to sacrifice her daughter up on a mountain? Swapping genders does not make the Torah a feminist paradise, but instead forces us to investigate how our narratives of family and society shift when the genders do.

Kanarek has worked to create designed biblical art through her reinterpreted work, I also look at her stylized work as a performance artist, writing on walls and carving out.

The work is also inspired by the aniconic middle eastern tradition of Jewish art that places a higher value on text. Under Muslim rule in the middle ages, Jewish art was primarily illuminated manuscripts, with special attention paid to transcribing the Torah by hand. Still today, the Torah scrolls are hand written by expert scribes, soferim, who receive special training to properly write and rewrite scrolls for the Torah, mezuzot, and tefillin. 

The care and fluidity of the hand in writing informs the way I applied paint to the walls. I watched numerous videos of Hebrew calligraphic artists and soferim writing in Hebrew in order to inform my own hand and method of painting.

Talmudic Framework

The Babylonian Talmud is a series of writings that span centuries pertaining to Jewish laws and customs, including stories and legends among the intense legal arguments. The Talmud consists of 63 tractates. In Daf Yomi, practitioners read a page of Talmud each day over a period of 7 years. Other practices of Talmud reading include deep study into one page at a time, or one sugya (argument) over a series of pages.

The Talmud’s framework of research involves a single statement from the Mishna (the “oral Torah”) with commentaries, proof texts, arguments, and related stories that span over the course of a thousand years of dialogue, all on the same page. These pages are organized in a spiral-like pattern, in which separate areas of each page are associated with different periods of times or styles of commentary. 

Theoretical Framework

In Cruising Utopia Esteban Muñoz argues that queer identity is not a “here and now” but a “then and there,” in which queer identity is formed by looking at our histories and speculating on a future that is different than where we are. The simultaneous looking forward and looking back is present in the dream of a utopian future through Jewish queerness, or trans yiddishkeit.  The archive can act as this utopian dream space in which the past and future are married through the imagination.

The works in the exhibition comb the archive for hints of self and future selves, while maintaining a sense of impermanence. At the end of the show, the exhibition is erased, painted over, and only exists in documentation and memory. Textuality often lends itself to permanence. Here, the works will be erased after only a week’s time. The exhibition begins on a shabbat, celebrating the holiness of the day, and ends on a Havdalah, the end of shabbat, “separation,” in which the binary of holy and profane are seen. This binary is ever present 

By reading the archive “diagonally” (Andy Campbell) through my queer, transsexualized gaze, I see the radical ideas of the renegades in the margins or empty spaces in the archive. False messiahs, pariahs, and outcasts find their way into the margins of the pages (walls).

Discussion & Conclusion

The findings of this research show, like Benay Lappe has said that “Queer Jews are [reading texts] as Queer Jews and seeing in it things that our teachers never taught us.”I see this work as something that is identifying a need and a presence. There are plenty of transgender Jews who are interested in Jewish texts and Jewish religion and scholarship - There are a plethora of vocal transgender Jewish scholars, myself included, which is a sign that textuality is important to the transgender Jewish experience and that our voices and opinions are important in codeifying and bringing together a presence of trans, intersex, and non-binary individuals within religion. 

Most importantly, I see this as not just representation, but needed expression for vulnerable populations, especially trans and intersex individuals. ​​I watch with a heavy heart from afar the debate in Texas over whether or not gender affirming care is considered child abuse. Our bodies are systematically and structurally treated as a degenerate “other.” In this fraught environment, visible queerness becomes a way to rally and encourage others that they are not alone. I’ve had students, colleagues, friends, and strangers privately come out to me because I was visibly trans. 

Last summer, I led the art program at a Jewish sleep away camp. While there, I got to express to parents, counselors and Rabbis that transgender people can live fulfilling Jewish lives. I had the priviledge of mentoring and working with queer camp counselors, staff, and young people who saw me as representation in a heteronormative environment. I also had difficult conversations with Orthodox parents and Rabbis about trans Jews, and how the rules that split individuals along a strict binary, act as tools of individual exclusion instead of spiritual contemplation. 

Art, representation, and positive media portrayals are not a quick fix, or even a salve for the wound of oppression. But it can act as a tool for conversation and empathy. I see this project as a way to make very visible the existence of trans people in religious spaces and the importance of deconstructing the wall that separates queer people from spiritual community.