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From: R. Feldman
Subject: Gender
Date: 28 Av 5783
Subject: Deferral
The committee has discussed gender extensively. The chair recommends deferral to a future version of the specification.
This deferral is not a judgment that gender does not matter. Gender matters profoundly — to halakha, to community, to individual Jews navigating their identities.
The deferral reflects the committee's recognition that:
1. We cannot encode gender without taking positions on contested questions 2. Any encoding will be inadequate to the complexity 3. Different communities need different frameworks 4. The harm of doing this poorly exceeds the cost of waiting
The specification will not include gender codes in this version. The committee acknowledges this as a limitation, not a resolution.
If a future version addresses gender, it should do so with fuller consultation and clearer understanding than we have achieved.
—Yaakov Feldman, Chair
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