The Torah of the Future is Queer
By: Rabbi Nikki Deblosi, She Her
Tags: Spirituality, Queer, Inclusion, Transgender, Judaism

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

“The future is female.” “The future is Black.” “The future is nonbinary.” “The future is queer.”

These assertions challenge the status quo by insisting that the under-valued and devalued in our society will survive and thrive. These slogans do not preach revenge or represent so-called reverse discrimination. To insist that the future will lift up female, Black, queer, nonbinary lives embodies a utopian vision that critiques the present moment. We imagine a future that is otherwise.

In many ways, imagining a utopian future where power balances among the former haves and have-nots is a deeply Jewish project, one God asserts over and over in the Torah. The Jubilee year, for example, erases debt in a 49-year cycle. The line of King David, from which tradition predicts a Messiah will arise, originates with Ruth, a member of the much-hated Moabite tribe who joins the Jewish people. Over and over again in the narrative tales in Bereshit, the book of Genesis, we read of younger sons supplanting elder sons, carrying the birthright of leadership in unexpected ways. Barrenness and disadvantage birth blessing and bounty. In this week’s portion, we read of Rebecca’s great distress as she endures difficulty in conceiving and a challenging pregnancy; yet, simultaneously, God reasserts the promise: “I will make your heirs as numerous as the stars of heaven, and assign to your heirs all these lands, so that all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your heirs” (Bereshit 26:4).

This topsy-turvy reversal inspires me, but it doesn’t go far enough. When I read this week’s Torah portion, Toldot (literally, “generations”), about the generations Isaac and Rebecca will parent, I am left with sadness. Jacob, the second-born, the trickster, the younger child, the bookish one who resists his twin Esau’s potentially toxic and violent masculinity, cosplays his way to an inheritance and a blessing. And Esau, the impetuous and impatient hunter, follows his hunger. He cares more about alleviating his temporary growly stomach than shepherding a sustainable future.

At the end of the story, though, he begins to understand how bereft he really is, without the words of blessing and the promise of a future that Jewish tradition can offer. He begs, בָּרֲכֵ֥נִי גַם־אָ֖נִי אָבִֽי, Barachni gam ani, avi, “Bless me, too, father” (Bereshit 27:38).

Isaac, stuck in a system that prevents him from equally blessing both of his children, improvises words of blessing for Esau, whose tears and cries seem to have reached this father’s heart. Isaac blesses his firstborn with a realistic blessing: one that promises both struggle and triumph.

Queer folx know both the agony of Esau’s wail, left out of our family’s blessings, and the triumph of Jacob’s creativity, imagining new ways of relating, queer structures of kinship and belonging. For generations in the queer community, we have argued for a utopia that values chosen family, that eradicates binary gender, that offers a multiplicity of sexualities and expressions.

We demand that the future be queer by ensuring that all of us are blessed by those who come before us with a vision of a future that meaningfully includes us.

Esau did not hesitate to trade his birthright to his younger brother Jacob for a bowl of stew, perhaps because he could not envision a future that valued him. At least, if he were queer, that might be a plausible explanation.

This week is Trans Awareness Week, and it’s a big reminder to me that, too often, even the most liberal among us practice reactive inclusion. In other words, we welcome those people who have already declared themselves trans or nonbinary or queer. We do not take the extra step to envision a blessed future, a not-yet-now that includes trans folx. We reluctantly concede that the present might have some trans people in it, but the future is cis, straight, white…

My beloved teacher Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, of blessed memory, wrote in the early 90s:

[A]dvice on how to help your kids turn out gay, not to mention your students, your parishioners, your therapy clients, or your military subordinates, is less ubiquitous than you might think. On the other hand, the scope of institutions whose programmatic undertaking is to prevent the development of gay people is unimaginably large. (“How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay.” Fear of a Queer Planet.Ed. Michael Warner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993: 69–81)

Bless us, too, we demand. Reverse a binary system of gender, sex, race, and power. Refuse the hierarchy and cultivate instead the liberation of imagining a future that includes people who are not “just like me,” but who are different, and blessed.

Be like Honi the Circle-Maker, that mystical figure from the Talmud who drew sacred circles on the ground, stood inside their bounds, and prayed for blessing, and rain, and abundance. Be like Honi, who learned the value of insisting the future contain the disadvantaged who would become valued, the hungry who would become fed.

It was said that Honi once saw a man planting carob-trees. “How long will it take for those trees to bear fruit?” “Seventy years,” the man answered. In the language of the Talmud, that’s several generations. Neither the planter nor his children would eat the carob tree’s fruit. And yet he plants.

Planting for a utopian future means we must begin from the assumption, in our Jewish communities and institutions and beyond, that trans and nonbinary, along with other formerly ignored, erased, or marginalized people, are present. And, like Sedgwick urges us to, we must refuse the narrative that we merely tolerate the trans folx who have already come out, reluctantly saying, Well, I guess now that you’re here you can stay. When we teach young people, we need to assume that many of them are trans or nonbinary, and that it is our duty as leaders, parents, educators, or clergy to present a blessed potential future for all.

This Trans Awareness Week, educate yourself about transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people. Help create a future that offers blessing, too. The future will only be queer, and trans, and Black, and nonbinary, if those with privilege work to make it so.