. . . . The rabbis of the Gemara proceed to a lengthy discussion of the circumstances in which a person can truly claim to have fulfilled the commandment of hearing the shofar. A taste of this discussion: “If one blew into a pit or a cistern or a barrel, if the sound of the shofar came out pure, he has performed his duty, but if an echo came out with it, he has not performed his duty.” Then comes the debate about who can and cannot blow the shofar: “A deaf-mute, a lunatic, and a minor cannot perform a religious duty on behalf of the congregation.” There follows a most peculiar statement: “A hermaphrodite can perform a religious duty for a fellow hermaphrodite, but not for any one else.”

Some folks are shocked to find the rabbis even mentioning hermaphrodites, what the Gemara calls androgynus, but the truth is that this being of unusual gender shows up all over Talmudic discourse. Perhaps in the days before the “medical miracle,” when a procedure on the birthing table, a kind of grotesque circumcision, purports to solve this riddle of nature forever, the alternately-sexed were simply more present in everyday life. But what the rabbis lack in surgical technique, they make up for in the rigidity of their intellectual categorization. In every discussion, it is determined whether the androgynus will be treated as a man or a woman, depending on circumstance. Only one sage, the forward-thinking Rabbi Jose (pronounced Yo-si,) offers the suggestion that a hermaphrodite “is a creature unto itself.” According to scholars, the androgynus may blow the shofar for other hermaphrodites because that which is male in one blows for that which is male in the other -- it goes without saying that women do not blow.

The rabbis were not terrified by the specter of this strange crossbreed. On the contrary, they file it away quite calmly, dissecting it along the dotted lines of gender normalcy, to deposit its pieces into the appropriate pigeonholes. . . .

As they say, "Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it."

*** God that does wondrously,
God that does wondrously,
pardon at Your people's cry,
as the closing hour approaches

Few are Israel's sons, and weak,
You in penitence they seek,
O regard their anguished cry,
as the closing hour approaches

Remember our ancestors' righteousness,
Save us now in our distress,
Make us glad with freedom's cry,
as the closing hour approaches.

Come Elijah, Michael, Gabriel,
The hoped-for tidings tell,
Let redemption be your cry,
As the closing hour draws nigh.

Etc.