Gender, sexuality and queer in modern Jewish studies
Henriette Dahan KalevJournal of Modern Jewish Studies
This Special Issue of the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies focuses on Women, Gender, Sexuality and Queer studies in the modern Jewish world. We have included articles from history, literature, religious, communication and Middle Eastern disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary fields. The authors have contributed papers that discuss these topics within a modern Jewish context and their articles present new research in these areas, which have come to occupy an important space in the discourse in the humanities, in transgender, queer and gender studies, in the last few decades. The articles define new stages in these fields, explore areas that have not been covered before, including one article about a Jewish community beyond those of Western Europe, Israel and the USA, in Morocco. Various areas of research that have not been traditionally part of Women's/ Gender Studies are covered in the articles, which suggest new paradigms that expand the scope of understanding of the field. The first article by Gil Engelstein and Iris Rachamimov, entitled "Crossing Borders and Demolishing Boundaries: the Connected History of the Israeli Transgender Community 1953-1986," is a historically documented original study that covers three decades of transgender activity in Israel, from Rina Nathan's public campaign in the 1950s to permit gender confirmation surgery in Israel to the decision in 1986 to allow surgery in one public hospital. This was after a lengthy vetting process that delayed or disqualified the great majority of applications. Struggle to obtain acknowledgement for transgender peoples' quest has created a network on which later generations of transgender women and men depend. No doubt this is a pioneering article that paves the way for more to follow and expand our knowledge about this understudied topic. Another article that focuses on the issue of transgender people is Ronit Irshai's contribution entitled "The Construction of Gender in halakhic Responsa by the Reform Movement: Transgender People as a Case Study". This article takes another view of discourse on the topic of transgender, expanding the field of trans-Jewish-feminist studies with respect to Jewish law. Irshai's article analyses the way in which the Reform movement has gradually changed and come to legitimize and accept transgender Jews. Irshai demonstrates how the Reform movement has left the entire heterosexual matrix behind and how the Reform Responsa Committee has moved all the way to a complete dissolution of the differences between gender, queer and trans, eventually embracing transgender Jews. Gregg Drinkwater's article focuses on the struggle for acknowledgement by the Jewish community of gay and lesbian Jews both within Jewish ritual and liturgy and the religious community. His article, "Creating an Embodied Queer Judaism: Liturgy, Ritual, and
