http://www.najc.org/pdf/newsletters/dec2015.pdf (Pages 4-5)
Dear Regina,
Thanks for pointing this out to me. I’ll do my best to be more attentive to the heading in future.
Thanks for all you do for the community,
L’shalom,
Dan
Daniel Leger RN, CPSP
5679 Beacon Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15217
From: Rabbi Regina Sandler-Phillips [mailto:rabbi...@waysofpeace.org]
Sent: Friday, December 25, 2015 10:04 AM
To: Jewish Funerals <jewish-...@googlegroups.com>; Daniel Leger <del...@verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [jewish-funerals] Cremation and Midwifery
Dear Dan--
Thank you for your thoughts on transgender Jews--but I don't think you're responding to what I posted here on "Cremation and Midwifery."
If we keep the threads on this list separate, I think we'll be able to understand each other better.
With thanks and many blessings,
Regina
Rabbi Regina Sandler-Phillips, MSW, MPH
Director, WAYS OF PEACE Community Resources
"In cities of diversity...we organize ourselves and our money...
to sustain the poor...and visit the sick...and bury the dead...and comfort the bereaved...
for these are ways of peace." (Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Gittin)
On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 7:47 PM, Daniel Leger <del...@verizon.net> wrote:
Dear Friends,
I am very grateful that this conversation is taking place. I am 67 years old and I now practice as a certified chaplain as well as continuing to practice as a registered nurse after 40 plus years of nursing practice, ten of which as a hospice nurse. And I am a man. That was a near anomaly when I was in nursing school.
I have been around long enough to have witnessed the first ordinations of rabbis who were not men. Now many of us in pluralistic Jewish communities take for granted that Jewish women and persons who are not easily categorized in terms of gender are absolutely accepted not only as active participants in the Jewish community, but also as rabbis. What a remarkable journey this has been. My shehechiyanu grows in depth and breadth.
I am moved by Chaplain Katz’s care and discernment with regard to those individuals she serves. I am impressed with her ability to look to the traditions and texts available from that tradition to honor the people entrusted to her, and I am grateful that the person she tells us about was gently caressed back into the Jewish community and provided with the beautiful traditions we have to support the transition from one world to the next.
And yet I am somewhat discomfited at the solution about which Chaplain Katz informs us. I am very fortunate to be counted as a member of a pluralistic, truly community based chevra kadisha. In a community in which a pluralistic Jews (non- congregational and comprised of members of all denominations and non-denominational members) enact their work, I believe that there are possibilities in addition to the very thoughtful solution which Katz lovingly made possible.
There are a number of us (I for one) who would have absolutely no problem with performing taharah for a person who identifies as primarily male or female. That means that if that person says they are male, the men perform the taharah; and if they say they are female, the women perform the taharah; irrespective of the physical make-up of the person’s genitalia. The journey made by a person who felt so strongly that s/he was one gender or another to consider her/himself as such despite physicality is a painfully difficult one which deserves respect and honor.
To my mind, admittedly a non-rabbinic-non-halachic one, relegating women to the position of those who will do difficult things by default needs to be made a thing of the past. It not only is an insult to transgendered persons today, but also is an insult to women, and relegating men to the mercy of men for certain things and women for certain things needs to be rethought just as it has been rethought in many areas of professional life.
I am reminded of the woman I was called upon to pronounce dead a few years ago. As I entered the home I was escorted to the room in which she lay dead. As I proceeded with the necessary details it became clear to me that the deceased was very much anatomically a male. It would have been a painful injustice to the family present to have disputed any attributions by those who loved her in the context of whom she had made herself present for those most important to her. I believe that in our present time (and I am open to the possibility of further change in the future as change is taking place very rapidly) we must respond to those who call upon us with the most expediently kind best we have available within the values of our wonderful tradition. Not always easy, but ever growing, as are we.
Dan Leger, Pittsburgh
Dear Regina,
Thanks for straightening out the conversational threads I seem to have tangled. And thanks for the opportunity to clarify my clumsy prose.
I also am deeply moved by Susan Katz’s sensitive and attentive chaplaincy and one would be fortunate indeed to receive her spiritual care.
The patient to whom I referred was biologically male but identified as female. She was also recognized by those in her family as a woman. I therefore respectfully recognized her as a woman. That’s what I was trying to say.
As a nurse I care for persons respectfully regardless of gender although I needed to attend to certain physical needs related to anatomical characteristics. My work as a nurse and my work as a chaplain have complemented each other in providing both physical and spiritual care. As a member of a pluralistic chevra kadisha these two complementary components of my nurturing work lead me to hope that one day it will be relatively unimportant for men to perform taharah only for men and women for women. I know that this tradition arises from concerns for modesty and potential abuse of male power. I look forward to the day when we will have moved beyond the need to worry about such considerations. I surely hope that a meitah would not be denied taharah if the only people available to perform it were male. I know it has been suggested that in the absence of a chevra kadisha, non-Jewish funeral home staff might say the words and enact the ritual. I think that would be much more problematic than having a group of respectful Jewish men perform taharah for a woman.
Dan Leger, Pittsburgh
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