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For all those who have ever struggled with how to discipline children’s bad behavior, this week’s parashah, Ki-Teitze, offers an easy answer: stone them to death! (Deut. 21:18-21)

Thankfully, Jews have recognized for over a thousand years that this is an unacceptable solution to a common problem. In fact, we learn in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 71a) that this apparent commandment of the Torah was never once carried out. Our Sages refused to interpret this verse literally, as it conflicted with their understanding of the holiness of each and every human life.

With this scenario in mind, let us look at another verse in our parashah: “A man’s clothes should not be on a woman, and a man should not wear the apparel of a woman; for anyone who does these things, it is an abomination before God.” (Deut. 22:5) Just as classical Jewish scholars reinterpreted the commandment that says rebellious children should be stoned to death, they also read this portion’s apparent ban on “cross-dressing” to yield a much narrower prohibition.

The great medieval commentator Rashi explains that this verse is not simply a prohibition on wearing the clothes of the “opposite gender.” Rashi writes that such dress is prohibited only when it will lead to adultery. Maimonides, a 12th century codifier of Jewish law, claims that this verse is actually intended to prohibit cross-dressing that is for purposes of idol worship (Sefer haMitzvot, negative mitzvo 39-40). In other words, according to the classical scholars of our tradition, wearing clothes of “the wrong gender” is proscribed only when it is for the express purpose of causing harm to our relationship with our loved ones or with God. The prohibition that we learn from this verse is very specific: we must not misrepresent our true gender in order to cause harm. Otherwise, wearing clothing of another gender is not prohibited. The Talmud puts it most succinctly: v’ein kan toevah—”there is no abomination here.” (Babylonian Talmud, Nazir 59a-b)

So what does this verse mean for us today? In order to understand it in our own context, we need to examine two questions: First, what does it mean to wear clothing of a gender we are not? And second, what does it mean to cause harm?

Some people feel like their true gender is not (or is not only) the gender that was assigned to them at birth. The Torah is asking us not to misrepresent our gender, which we can understand as using external garments to conceal our inner selves. Unfortunately, many transgender, transvestite, and gender-queer people today feel forced to hide in exactly this way. In our society the penalty for expressing the fullness of a gender variant identity is often severe and can include verbal, sexual and physical abuse, employment discrimination, an inability to access education and health care and, sometimes, as in the cases of Gwen Araujo, Brandon Teena and countless others, murder.

Gender rigidity does not just impact transgender, transvestite and gender-queer people. It also harms the eight year-old boy who was suspended from school for wearing his ballet tutu to class in upstate New York, the flight attendant in Atlanta who is currently suing her employer for firing her because of her refusal to wear make-up, and the butch lesbian who was shouted at and harassed in a “women’s” restroom in a synagogue in Los Angeles. Much of this mistreatment comes from those who insist that wearing the clothes of the “other gender” is wrong “because it says so in the Bible.”

Classical Jewish scholars do not accept such a justification for narrow-mindedness. Neither should we. Rather, we can flip mainstream understandings of our verse on their head and understand it as a positive mitzvah: a sacred obligation to present the fullness of our gender as authentically as possible. Unfortunately, not everyone is able to fulfill this mitzvah without endangering their life or livelihood, and the protection of human life always comes first in Judaism. But the Torah wants us be able to be true to ourselves.

Next, we come to the second part of our prohibition: that we must not cover up our gender in order to cause harm. Transgender and gender-queer people who hide under the clothing of the gender they were assigned—rather than expressing themselves as they really are—suffer terrible harm. Rates of depression, suicide, and destructive self-medication among transgender and gender-queer people are astronomical.

Each and every soul is created in the multifaceted image of the Creator. When we try to conceal that uniqueness, we cause ourselves pain. And when we ask others to obscure themselves, we cause harm to them. The great majority of our parashah is concerned with the minute details of preventing harm. The lines before our verse teach that if we see that someone’s donkey has fallen down, we are required to help that person lift the animal up. The verse immediately following instructs us never to hurt a mother bird as we are collecting her eggs. And the very next verse commands us to build a guardrail, or parapet, around the roof of our houses, to prevent anyone from falling off. The verse about what to wear is nestled amongst mitzvot that guide us towards exquisite levels of empathy and gentleness towards all of creation.

As our Sages realized, a sacred tradition that command us not to cause pain to a single mother bird could not be asking us to stone to death small children—or to conceal our true gender, our authentic soul. Jewish tradition asks us to safeguard each unique being, created in the image of God, by preventing harm. When we cover up our true souls and muffle our divine reflection under clothes that feel “wrong”, we are harming God’s creation. This is what is prohibited by our Torah.

For more information: transtorah@gmail.com

Rabbi Elliot Rose Kukla (left) has been an activist, writer, organizer and educator for more than a decade. He has taught widely about sexual and gender diversity in Judaism in the US, Canada and Israel. His articles on the intersections between Judaism and justice appear in numerous magazines as well as in anthologies. For the last 2 years, Elliot served as the rabbi of the Danforth Jewish Circle, Toronto’s only queer-welcoming and social-justice oriented synagogue. He recently moved to San Francisco where he will be a resident in Clinical Pastoral Education at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center. Elliot was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2006.

Reuben Zellman (right) is a third-year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and received his BA in linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley. He worked in disability services before doing his post-baccalaureate work in music theory and classical voice at San Francisco State University. Reuben has been active in the transgender community since 1999, and has taught about gender, sexuality and Judaism at many congregations, conferences and universities around the U.S. He currently serves as the rabbinical intern at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco.

Elliot and Reuben are currently co-creating a Transgender resource Library for Jewish Mosaic which will be open to the public soon. They are also helping to launch a website (www.transtorah.org) in summer 2007 which will offer educational, pastoral and liturgical resources for Jewish communities to help them transform into welcoming sanctuaries for people of all genders.

I am a United Methodist seminarian and am a TS woman. This is one of the clearest, most honest teachings of this passage I have ever read. Thank you!!!

Just as awe-inspiring the second time around... This is absolutely worth re-reading every year!

I just finished reading the article. I'm sitting here in front of the computer and the tears are falling. As a 60 yr. old orthodox transwoman i can only say that you've said what i've tried to say through my poetry. The first time I really came out was on Purim at a Purim party at Shul. Purim was for me the time to take off the mask..take off the exterior so my inner beauty could come out. Now I'm a butterfly.

This is excellent!! Thank you both. Noach very highly recommended this to me, and after reading it I understand why. Mazel tov.

Wow. Your interpretation & lesson is just brilliant. Thank you.

And now, I have peace of mind. THank You.

I can't tell you how much pleasure it gives me to hear your voices. I salute your courage and integrity.

KOL HA-KAVOD!

Wonderful dvar Torah! I have been educating myself on "what it means to be transgendered," by reading books and articles on the subject. The book that has helped me the most is Jennifer Finney Boylan's memoir, She's Not There. Thank you for being a part of my education on this subject and giving light to a part of the Torah that I have struggled to understand what HaShem could possibly mean by placing the punishment of death on an individual who wears the close of the opposite gender. Thank you for shedding a new light on this passage and for sharing.

What a wonderful dvar Torah! You end by explaining a deeper meaning to the negative mitsvah of not wearing the clothes of a gender that are not who you truly are. But there is also an implied positive mitsvah, to perform the tikkun of bringing our inner feelings and our outward appearance into harmony. Thank you, I've never understood those verses so well before.

Sweeeeeet!!! kol ha kavod!

I love how this Torah taught so elegantly by Rabbi Kukla and Reuben is so simple and so radical at the same time. After reading this dvar, I can't imagine how anyone could understand these verses in any other way!