Re: Transexuals and Orthodoxy


J J Levin wrote:
<yacovachi@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1167396513.355803.216760@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Micha Berger wrote:

Besides, you just identified the person with their body, not their
soul.

And you just bought into the Platonic split between body and soul.
Hence slavation via "faith" and not "works." The Jewish idea is that
one goes with the other.

Who says the "soul" of this man is "feminine"? Only he does.


And who would known better than him? Certainly not you or me.

Who says this man cannot damage his reproductive organs? The Law.

A 3,000 year-old law based on tribal customs, which cannot be changed until
some indeterminate time in the far future is about as arbitrary as you can
get. All societies have had such "immutable" laws, until men changed them,
usually for the better. In the Western world, doing away with slavery and
the Inquisition, and granting equal rights to Jews and women immediately
come to mind. Your philosophical meanderings about Plato and splitting body
and soul do not do much to alleviate the real anguish of these people who
need help. Science can.

And your starting assumptions here are about as far from those of
Orthodox Judaism as you can get. Hence irrelevant to the question of
an individual changing his/her sex under Orthodox Judaism.

And note that, at least according to Jacko, the "philosophical
meanderings" have nothing to do with The Law, and so your response (to
him? to Micha?) is somewhat off the mark.

:-)7
-Shlomo-

.