A Linguistic Gender Reflection

Despite being and celebrating being a Reform Jew, I still have some very Orthodox sensibilities. Jews that eat pork freak me out a little. Granted, I work on most Shabbatot, but I dream of being shomer. I'm not only more comfortable around a male rabbi—I'm probably judging him if he doesn't have a beard. Which is why I've decided to ponder and attempt maybe being a rabbi. Statistically 2/3 rabbis are women or are going to be women....in the Reform movement. I'd hazard a guess that the Conservadores are close to us and am disrespectfully indifferent to the demographics of the atheists (Reconstructionists) although I'm pretty sure that I'd be one if I didn't believe in G-d.

The point I might make eventually is that I'm contributing to what I might consider to be a problem. I'm hoping that this influx of chicks in the rabbinate is just a because we of the X2 chromosomes couldn't for a long time. Sweet Moishe, please let us someday have maybe a 50/50 ratio. Anyway, I can't grow a beard. More importantly, I think I can reconcile in a very jewy way, my hang-up.

HEBREW is the glue that holds the Jewish People together, not mitzvot....unless you count the mitzvot (which may or may not exist) to learn Hebrew and use Hebrew. This resurrected language is SUPER gendered. Nouns, pronouns, verbs, almost everything is going to reflect either a boy or a girl. We're not going to dink around the differences between natural and grammatical gender; suffice it to say there's a gendered dichotomy and we're going to engage it.

If I were a conservadox type o' Jew, I might say that men and women are both, very cool but just different. They both do their own, essential and important things. And indeed, their verb endings are different. Women in the kitchen, rearing children and men learning torah. Eh....ah....no. Separate is not equal (it's like a stepping stone to segregated busses; ¿for realz ultra orthodox?). Different is good but not separate. And that's reflected in the language.

Verbs are verbs. Hu medaber and hi medaberet the m-d-b words both translate as “speaks.” They are doing the SAME THING just doing it differently. So the glue that holds Am Yisrael together is going to be comprised of men and women and JEWS in leadership roles and family roles and single roles and social roles and dinner rolls and all the rolls available to us with which we may contribute to and enrich our socio-cultural-religio-thing.