Coalition for Jewish Values, representing more than 2,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis in American public policy, released an open letter from 150 rabbis and teachers, reaffirming Judaism’s “clear and unambiguous stance on human genders.” This comes in the wake of a letter to members of Congress by more than 100 left-wing Jewish organizations opposing what they described as an “anti-transgender sports ban.”
“Progressives, whether or not they are Jews, do a disservice when they present their personal opinions as Jewish values,” said Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, chairman of the CJV Rabbinic Circle. “It is certainly inappropriate for them to distort passages in our sacred texts to claim that they support a modern, woke ideology about gender that simply does not exist in Judaism.”
The letter to Congress, led by the Union for Reform Judaism, asserted that “Jewish legal texts mention at least six different genders,” which the rabbis affiliated with CJV described as a distortion of those texts with “no relationship to normative Judaism and three millennia of Jewish law.” The missive argued that “there is no evidence that transgender athletes have an advantage,” despite the American College of Sports Medicine issuing a consensus statement that “biological sex is a primary determinant of athletic performance.”
Thus the rabbis depicted the Reform ideology as placing “progressivism over Judaism, and even over reality.”
Finally, the Reform-led letter said that it does “harm” to deny biological men positions on sports teams “consistent with their gender identity.” The rabbis pointed out that not only is it both unfair and unsafe to allow men into women’s sports, but such practices also deny opportunities to players who observe Jewish law and custom related to social contact between the genders.
“Supplanting authentic Jewish values with misguided ideologies has real consequences,” said CJV Midwestern regional vice president Rabbi Ze’ev Smason. “So, for that matter, does the claim that these ideologies are themselves Jewish values. I am pleased that we led in the production of this important letter that stands up for honesty and fairness, and sets the record straight.”
