Seminal Omissions: Giving Tumtum v’Androginos Their Due

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Published In

Oqimta: Studies In Talmudic And Rabbinic Literature

Abstract

This article sets forth a novel reading of the rabbinic category of tumtum v’androginos. It offers an alternative to the dominant interpretive framework by positing and historicizing a process through which a single category, tumtum v’androginos, becomes "tumtum" and "androginos." Central to this historicization is a (re)contextualization of what is increasingly cited as the defining, "seminal," text about tumtum and androginos in rabbinic sources: Tosefta Bikkurim 2:3-7. Placing this tradition in its larger rabbinic textual context and situating it among other rabbinic mentions of tumtum v’androginos invites us to revisit and reconsider the meanings and functions of tumtum v’androginos as a rabbinic categorization as it develops over time. Ultimately, contextualizing t. Bik. 2:3-7 also offers alternative ways of seeing the place of nonbinary gendered bodies in rabbinic sources and provides a fuller understanding of rabbinic construction s of gender within halakhic sources.

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