Trans Bodies, “Mutilation,” and Jewish Tradition
The transformations of medical transition are at once entirely unique and also not exclusive to trans individuals. All people pursue gender-affirming experiences, up to and including surgery; to intervene and adapt, shift, and change our bodies is a particularly dynamic and creative part of the human project. Jewish tradition prohibits what it defines as “self-mutilation,” but this prohibition is understood by later interpreters not as a rejection of body modification itself, but to deter individuals from actively attempting to express malice towards oneself “in strife” or “degradation,” as Maimonides teaches (Hilkhot Chovel U’Mazik 5:1).
For purposes of adornment, beauty, or relief from suffering, changing one’s body is almost unequivocally permitted. In fact, the twentieth century Orthodox legal giant Rav Moshe Feinstein ruled that one could utilize elective cosmetic surgery that involved significant medical intervention and anesthesia in order “to beautify oneself.” The actions themselves are “mutilating” actions, but when done for the sake of beauty, “goodness,” or adornment, they are no longer viewed as such.
We do not fear cutting, scarring, and bruising, but recognize it as a part of the sacred project of co-creating our bodies with the Divine. Consider circumcision—though contentious in its own right—one of the Torah’s first mitzvot, which involves an early medical intervention enacted upon the body, removing a part of it, after which the body is permanently altered. Transforming one’s body through medical intervention is one of the first Jewish experiences many of our people have. By removing this body part that is deemed extraneous, according to the thirteenth century legal guide the Sefer HaChinuch, the body is “completed” and “made whole.”
The acceptance of—and commandment to pursue—healing through medicine itself is, in some part at least, a rejection of the idea that our bodies are most holy when unchanged. Jewish tradition accepts and uplifts a standard in which bodies are indeed modified, legitimated through a claimed higher purpose of healing. Maimonides, himself a physician, sees this healing, too, as an act of collaboration between human and Divine power, writing: “Just as when I eat, I thank God that He created something to remove my hunger and to keep me alive and well, thus we should also thank Him for creating a cure that cures my illness when I need it” (Perush Ha-Mishnah Pesachim 4:1).
Jewish tradition ultimately rejects the superiority of a “natural,” unchanged body; our bodily transformations are acts of completion that make us more whole. As legislative assaults on trans bodies take place in our own day, we should remain steadfast and clear: whether the changes we make to our bodies are out of obligation, for healing, or for beauty, our modifications are adornments that greatly honor the Artist in whose image we are created.
