I meant, does the rabbi oversee the dating process? I would hope that the rabbi would respect confidential information. The appropriate time for him to reveal it would be when the couple come to him and say “we are going to get married, will you perform the ceremony?” It would be premature and a breach of confidentiality to e-mail all the women in his congregation saying “so-and-so is transgendered.”
Well, if he wouldn’t bless the union to start with, then it wouldn’t be premature to tell at the point of dating since that is the point of dating in the community. And I’m not sure he’d bless the union.
I’m pretty open minded, but I hope that if my Asian son becomes a gay Wiccan performance artist and falls in love with a black man, they choose to not live in a small town in the South.
I thought the point of dating, in that community like any other, was to decide whether or not you were going to marry the other person. So while they are getting to know each other, the rabbi doesn’t need to reveal anything. It’s when they are arranging the marriage that it would be incumbent upon him to make sure both parties are honest with each other, if the rabbi suspects that there is some relevant knowledge being withheld.
Doesn’t that seem like there’s a lot of wasted time even bothering with the “getting to know each other” stage if there is an obvious deal breaker?
How does the rabbi know what is an obvious deal breaker for any individual person?
If it is within an Orthodox Jewish community I’m sure it would be a pretty safe assumption.
In Judaism, gossiping is a no-no (called lashon hara). If we have negative information about someone, we’re only supposed to reveal it to someone who could be hurt by not knowing that information.
IANARabbi, but IMO it would be OK for her to tell someone who was dating this man that he’s transgender. Telling anybody else would be lashon hara.
I’m wondering if this woman would be dating a man who wasn’t also orthodox? And if the man was also orthodox, does he go to a different temple? Did he seek counseling from his own rabbi during transition? The story just seems a bit odd to me.
The writer figures that he joined his current community after beginning to live as a man, so I suppose it’s possible that his rabbi has never known him as anything else.
As with most letters to advice columnists, there are a dozen questions I’d love to ask these people.
The article says the letter-writer “believe[s] he converted shortly after he became a man”.
It seems odd to me that a transgender person would convert to Orthodox Judaism. Other branches of Judaism tend to be more inclusive of gay and transgender people than Orthodoxy (this is a big part of the reason why I am not Orthodox). I’d be surprised if a transgender person were allowed to convert to Orthodox Judaism. I really doubt it could happen without the rabbi responsible for his conversion knowing, since a male convert has to be circumcised (or symbolically circumcised, if he’s already circumcised), and converts of either sex have to immerse naked in a mikvah with a witness (generally the witness is of the same sex as the convert).
The story doesn’t smell right to me. The woman says that she believes the guy she dated converted shortly after transitioning. An Orthodox (and IIRC, Conservative) conversion for a man involves either circumcision or, if the man is already circumcised, hatafat dam brit, a symbolic drawing of a drop of blood from the tip of the penis. My understanding is that FTM operations are not nearly as successful in creating penises as MTF ones are at creating vaginas, and I would assume that a mohel (ritual circumciser) would be able to see that something unusual was going on. There’s no way that an Orthodox rabbinical court would allow someone transgender to convert. Either her research is wrong, and he’s cis-gender, or he didn’t convert at all, at least not Orthodox-ly.
On preview, I see that Anne Neville has already discussed this; I’ve been writing this off and on while doing other things, and it’s taken some time.
Orthodox dating covers a wide spectrum of approaches, although all are aimed at getting married ASAP and having kids with your spouse. Hasidic couples meet someone chosen by their parents once or twice and get engaged; they tend to meet only one or a few candidates before marrying in their late teens. Non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox parents tend to do a lot of background screening (calling both references and anyone who might be a mutual acquaintance) to find out about the background of the possible date for their child, who might go out on 5-20 dates or so before getting engaged, then getting married as quickly as possible (engagements generally last about 2-4 months at most; Hasidic couples have longer engagements, but don’t see each other between the engagement and the wedding). More modern Orthodox couples tend to go on many blind dates in a somewhat less formally arranged fashion, or meet people on their own, and go out for several months or longer (over two months is dating seriously, more than six months is a long time and people assume you’re going to get married, and more than a year makes people wonder what the hell is taking you so long, unless, perhaps, both are still undergrads.) Modern Orthodox engagements tend to be about 3-6 months long. (As an example, I met Mr. GilaB through my cousin’s wife, who grew up with him, dated him for seven months, and was engaged for 3.5 months, getting married when I was 25 and he was 28; the majority of my good friends were married between 22 and 26.) While nobody is supposed to touch or ever be alone in private at all before marriage, it’s kinda-sorta winked at (while never publicly discussed) that some (not all) more modern couples will have some physical contact (not sex) before.
I have tremendous sympathy for someone who feels that their body and their brain don’t match, and who is forced to deal with all of the fallout from that. Also, my general feelings about sex is that I’m OK with anything that involves consenting adults, doesn’t involve lying to anyone, and doesn’t take place in front of me.
That said, somebody who’s transgender who dates within the Orthodox community without being open about it is both delusional and a jerk. It’s a small community, word gets around, and there’s no way to hide something like that forever. Being transgender is not something that will ever, ever be accepted within the Orthodox community. It would be like wanting to be considered Orthodox while openly driving to work on the Sabbath and stopping off for church and then a bacon cheeseburger on the way home, all of which are activities that are inherently non-Orthodox things to do. On top of that, passing oneself off as Orthodox to prospective marriage partners who are Orthodox themselves is a big lie, the sort of lie that terribly hurts other people.
I think just the opposite is true. Not revealing transgender status to a date is far more likely to trigger a violent reaction than a generic TG hate crime. Otherwise TG’s in the public eye such as Thomas Beatie and Cher’s child would be major targets.
Conservative conversion for men does require either circumcision or hatafat dam brit. He wouldn’t be able to convert to Conservative or Orthodox Judaism without somebody finding out at some point that he was transgender.
If he did convert to a non-Orthodox stream of Judaism, most Orthodox Jews wouldn’t accept his conversion as valid.
I obviously disagree with the Orthodox that non-Orthodox conversions are invalid, but if I were dating an Orthodox man, I’d feel obligated to tell him that I hadn’t converted Orthodox.
You’re confusing things. There’s a difference between telling the truth to your loved ones, which TGs should absolutely do, and telling the truth to the world, which TGs should absolutely not do. The latter is where the potential for violence comes from, not withholding the truth from loved ones. TGs connected to celebrities are actually protected by their associations; plenty of people will notice if something happens to them. A known TG who’s a regular person doesn’t have that protection.
Got to disagree here, trans-gendered is the sort of the thing that is an absolute deal-breaker in an Orthodox marriage (at least if they want to stay Orthodox). Waiting until reaching the “we are going to be married” stage, is standing by while someone else is actively being defrauded of their time and emotions. Yes, trans-gendered people do risk a lot, if they are outed. However, if they do not want to take that risk, they should consider dating partners for whom being trans-gendered is not such a serious issue.
If you’re suggesting a TG shouldn’t be truthful on a date, any date, I disagree. This is the most likely scenario of a confrontation.
I don’t see celebrity affiliation as any form of protection if deception is used.
What are you even talking about?
Shall we just form a publicly searchable Transgender Index and make everyone who begins transition sign up for it so anyone can search them out? Because that will somehow prevent people from searching them out?
Knowing that, then I would suggest the proper response would be to see if this is serial behaviour by the transgendered person before outing him to the whole community. If it’s happening a bunch of times, then everyone needs to know. If it’s just the one time, then I would talk to the transgendered person and let him or her know that it’s not OK.
On board with no one else has to know, but TG’s absolutely have to be upfront with potential dating or sex partners, and tell them very early on. I do believe it would be deceptive not to.