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From: R. Halevi
Subject: Gender
Date: 1 Av 5783
Subject: Talmudic categories
Let me be more specific about what the tradition discusses.
In Bikkurim 4:1-5, the Mishnah devotes an entire chapter to the androgynos. It enumerates ways the androgynos is like men (in specific matters of obligation), like women (in other matters), like both (yet others), and like neither (still others). The Tosefta expands on this. The Bavli and Yerushalmi develop it further.
The tumtum appears throughout tractates discussing safek, halakhic doubt. When we do not know, we must account for all possibilities. The ay'lonit, who does not develop female secondary characteristics, and the saris, who does not develop male characteristics, appear in Yevamot and Ketubot in discussions of marriage validity and obligation.
These are not marginal discussions. They are not curiosities in the footnotes. They occupy significant halakhic space because the tradition took seriously that not everyone fits neatly into male and female.
The Rambam codifies these categories in the Mishneh Torah. The Shulchan Aruch addresses them. Our ancestors developed legal frameworks for this recognition two thousand years ago.
If we encode gender, we inherit this complexity. We cannot pretend the tradition offers a simple binary when it does not.
—Dov Halevi
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