Laura Arnold Leibman
Joel Furches of the
Jarrettsville Christianity Examiner has been worrying lately online about gender and the resurrection
of the dead. Furches seems concerned that recent secular
legislation that allows people more freedom to choose their gender is out of
sync not only with a Christian life in this world, but also in the next (
Gender Identity and Resurrection from the Dead). “A person’s body is a permanent part of their
identity, and what they do in their body, they do also in their spirit,”
explains Furches. Christianity, he feels, is unique in that it argues for a
“mind/body unity” and links “a person’s gender as an essential quality of their
very nature.” That is, the soul has an
essential, stable, and immaterial gender that is not a matter of personal
choice or subject to debate.
While I am not particularly qualified to comment on the validity of
Furches’s understanding of contemporary American Evangelical Christian theology, I would
note that Christians are not the only Americans to argue at least implicitly for
a soul gender. In this post I’d like to
explore some versions of the concept of soul gender in American Judaism, but
simultaneously suggest how Jewish versions of the afterlife
complicate the story of “mind/body unity." In this first part, I will look at a few early examples of the gendering
of the soul and resurrection. In the
second part that I will post next month, I will address how the Jewish concept
of transmigration makes Jewish soul gender differ from the Christian version put forth by Furches. Like Furches's comments, my examples come from Jewish texts and artifacts created primarily by practitioners rather than theologians; hence, they represent lived rather than official notions of Jewish theology.
Since as early as the eighteenth century,
American Jews have been gendering their representations of resurrection. One of the most common symbols associated with
the resurrection on early Atlantic World Jewish gravestones was the shofar,
which often pointed to the deceased’s role as a shofar blower in synagogue and
in addition referenced the messianic ingathering of the tribes and the resurrection (Isaiah
27:13;
18:3). Indeed, the symbol of the
shofar crucially connected the performance of mitzvoth by the deceased (the
blowing of the shofar) with the bringing of the messiah and approach of the
resurrection. Sometimes this symbol appeared with a
man blowing the shofar and other times with only the shofar itself and not a human figure (below). In
all instances I have seen, however, the symbol is only associated with men and
appears solely on men’s gravestones, since only men could blow shofars in
early Atlantic world synagogues.
 |
Shofar on a stone in the Ashkenazi Muiderberg Cemetery (The Netherlands).
Muiderberg like Amsterdam was a feeder community for the American colonies. |
Although they did not use the shofar symbol, early Jewish
American women’s gravestones also contained gendered and embodied visions of
the resurrection. One of the most
interesting examples of this is from the gravestone of
Bella Barrow (1720-77,
Barbados; left), which depicts a female figure rising out of a coffin in response to
the trumpet call of a hovering angel. That is, the response of the figure is (accurately) gendered as that of
a listener to the call of the shofar/trumpet, rather than the maker of the call.
Although relatively unique in its formulation, Barrow’s stone combines and
echoes two other more common motifs on Jewish women’s gravestones: (1) the dead,
reclining body of
women who died in childbirth (
Curaçao,
Amsterdam, Suriname)
and (2)
angels blowing on trumpets signaling the resurrection, to which the
deceased will presumably respond (Suriname, Curaçao). Women did not transcend their gender at
death; rather, their embodied experiences from life were figured into the way women are
represented at death and resurrection.
While such stones were most likely commissioned for dead women by
male relatives, textual evidence suggest that Jewish women in the colonies
actively pondered the relationship between their current bodies and their
perfected bodies following the resurrection.
For example, Hannah Rodriguez Rivera joined in on a conversation with
Rabbi Karigal, Ezra Stiles, and her husband regarding whether after the
resurrection she would be married to her current husband (Jacob Rodriguez
Rivera) or to her deceased first husband (Abraham Sasportas) (Ezra Stiles,
Literary Diary, I.399-400. July 19, 1773). Apparently the answer was relatively
straightforward--her first husband, Sasportas; yet, Karigal demurred, presumably for the sake of
shalom bayit (household peace). Notably the question asked by the Rodriguez Riveras
regarding which of multiple partners would be Hannah’s eternal soul mate was
only relevant for
women who had been
married twice, since Jewish law technically allows for the possibility of men
having more than one wife, but heavily sanctions women who
have more than one husband at a time. That is, the
need for the question points to the stability of gender identities after the resurrection
and the sense that Hannah’s enduring, unified status as female would impact her
existence even after her earthly body had been perfected and resurrected.
Both of these questions (soul gender, embodied resurrection)
are complicated within Jewish belief, however, by the doctrine of
transmigration of the soul. As Steven
Nadler and others have noted, transmigration of the soul (
gilgulei haneshamot) was a hot topic in
Western Sephardic communities during the seventeenth and eighteenth century
(See
Spinizoa’s Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind and Alexander Altmann's "
Eternality of Punishment"). As one
eighteenth-century Sephardic rabbi explained, “A single soul can be
reincarnated a number of times in different bodies, and in this manner, it can
rectify the damage done in previous incarnations. Similarly it can also achieve perfection that
was not attained in its previous incarnations” (Luzzatto,
Way of God, II.3.10, p. 125). For Jews in the Atlantic World,
gilgulei haneshamot
had the powerful potential to eventually redeemed kin left behind in Iberia who
did not have (or did not take advantage of) the opportunity to return to
Judaism in their current lifetime. Through reincarnation, the souls of
conversos
had further opportunity to perform mitzvoth they did not or could not perform
the first time around, and provided a means to atone for practicing Catholicism
and hence enter the world-to-come.
Transmigration also has implications for soul gender,
however. In traditional Judaism, which
mitzvoth a soul can perform during any one lifetime are limited by the body the
soul is born into, since some mitzvoth are relegated solely to men or primarily to
women. Notably post-Enlightenment forms
of Judaism such as Reform and Conservative Judaism that don’t emphasize
reincarnation solve this problem merely by allowing people of any gender to perform all
the commandments. Yet for Jews who do divide
at least some mitzvoth along gender lines, reincarnation potentially provides a
soul that has lived in one type of body a way to “finish” the mitzvoth it could
not perform in its previous existence. While the problem of gender and
transmigration was not a hot topic in the colonial era, it has become more
crucial in twenty-first century America. Next month I will specifically address this issue of gender and
transmigration by reviewing a few recent examples of Jewish American
writings on souls that have inhabited more than gender of bodies.
All photographs by Laura Arnold Leibman, 2008-13.
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