Is It About Time, Bodies, or Both?
‘Trans Talmud’ by Max K. Strassfeld
I just read Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature by Max K. Strassfeld, published in 2022 by the University of California Press. I do my own thinking about eunuchs in history, and I’d really like to share several important takeaways from Strassfeld’s book.
We Can’t Classify People Neatly, And Probably We Shouldn’t Try
Strassfeld examines the rabbis’ categories of “the born (male and female) eunuch, the man who becomes a eunuch, the dually sexed person, and the person without a clear sex.” Like all taxonomies, “rabbinic taxonomies of eunuchs and androgynes are formed within their own context of power and knowledge.” Which is to say, the way human beings label each other is never objective. We always have assumptions and motivations.
And yet there’s value in consciously applying trans assumptions and concepts, at least to begin thinking through a text. (What’s the alternative? A cis assumption?) The Talmud may not be “essentially subversive or trans,” but it is “more trans” than many people expect, and “when we focus on eunuchs and androgynes, we gain a fuller picture of the way gender works in rabbinic literature.”
