Free to Choose: Parashat Ki Tetze

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Parashat Ki Tetze
Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19

Among the many laws contained in this Torah portion are quite a few that challenge our sense of morality and justice. Over the years I have discussed some of these. This time I want to consider the law that prohibits women from wearing men’s clothes and men from wearing women’s clothes. (Deut. 22:5). The law is stated without offering a rationale, but it has been understood so as to render it a source of gender separation and gender discrimination for many generations and in many communities, even to this day. Some have deduced from this verse that women cannot wear pants. Even more sadly, some use this verse as the basis for forbidding women to wear a tallit or put on tefillin. (Overwhelmingly, the prohibition is applied against women’s freedom of choice.) In all these instances the changing social and cultural realities of what may constitute “women’s” clothes or “men’s” clothes are ignored.
Sometimes I have offered a different explanation of this law, arguing that the prohibition is against deception. It is forbidden for a woman to trick someone into thinking they are a man by putting on men’s clothes and a man is forbidden from deceiving anyone into thinking they are a woman through adopting a woman’s disguise. The concern of the law, in this reading, is truthfulness.

Taking that value and expanding it, I wish to propose another reading this time, as I respond to the struggles many people are undergoing today so as to protect their own right to define themselves and be truthful to themselves. We are becoming increasingly aware that some people are viewed as males and yet they, themselves, come to a powerful sense of really being females. And the reverse is also true – some people have been defined by their surrounding communities and families as female, but they have come to feel that they are really male. (And the whole issue of whether it is adequate to restrict our definitions to a binary choice is very important, as well.)

This phenomenon has become a point of contention between liberals and conservatives. The liberal position is willing to let each person tell others who they really are. Such freedom does not necessarily eliminate each person’s struggle. It is a challenge for everyone to define themselves honestly and responsibly. But the liberal position gives each of us the space to engage in that struggle. The conservative tendency is to insist that the external characteristics of a person define them, no matter how the person may feel inside. This insistence produces tremendous pain and suffering by imposing oppressive definitions upon those who feel such definitions to be false to their true selves.

Perhaps we can read our verse in this light. The old way to read it would reinforce the conservative position and forbid anyone from experimenting with, let alone adopting, the wearing of clothes that do not match their obvious gender identity. But what if we take the liberal position? Then the verse would be saying that neither a woman – as self-defined, for who else really knows us? – nor a man – as self-defined, for who else really knows us? – should not be made to wear the clothing that violates their own definition of themselves. Such a reading would not be a source of restriction and regulation but of liberation and empowerment.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein

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Image: “Some Feet Scream For Closed Toe Shoes” by Tobyotter is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Thank you to Sarita Eisenberg for suggesting the title and selecting an image for this Torah Sparks – Rabbi Greenstein

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