Dear Listeners,
Today on Whiplash, I have the privilege of speaking with J.E. Reich, (@jereichwrites on instagram)—a Jewish, queer, and nonbinary journalist, editor, and writer. This exchange felt especially important to me because it pushed me, once again, to look beyond the boundaries of my own Catholic formation and into a tradition that has been wrestling for a long time with questions of gender, embodiment, and communal belonging. If Catholic discourse sometimes feels reactive or underdeveloped in these areas, Jewish thought offers a layered perspective that is historically attentive to the complexity of human experience.
J.E. brings lived experience shaped by both identity and history. I strongly encourage you to read their Vanity Fair piece, “Inside the Tree of Life Congregation, the Prayer for the Dead Brings Hope.” In it, they reflect on returning to their childhood synagogue in Pittsburgh before it became the site of one of the deadliest antisemitic attacks in U.S. history. It’s a beautiful piece that recalls the recitation of the mourner’s Kaddish, the embodied memory of community spaces, and the unbearable experience of loss. It’s a piece that insists that theology, identity, and violence are always lived in real bodies, in real communities, and in real places.
Part of why this conversation moved me so much is that it revealed just how much I didn’t know. J.E. shared with me resources on Jewish approaches to gender, including the article “The Seven Genders in the Talmud” by Myles H. Aronowitz, which traces how rabbinic literature identifies multiple gender categories—attempts to account for the diversity of human bodies within Jewish law. While these categories weren’t articulated in modern terms of identity, they reflect a longstanding recognition that the binary is not exhaustive. Alongside this, there is classical midrashim (as compiled in texts like Genesis Rabbah) that imagines the first human as an androgynous being, both male and female before being separated—an image that opens up a radically different theological imagination than the rigid frameworks many of us were taught.
We also touched on interpretive approaches to texts often weaponized against trans people, with another essay JE shared with me titled “What Does the Torah Really Say about Cross-Dressing?” by Joy Ladin. In Ladin’s reading, and in earlier rabbinic commentary like that of Rashi, the prohibition in Deuteronomy is less about gender expression itself and more about deception and harm—specifically, misrepresenting oneself in order to violate trust. That interpretive tradition makes space for a radically different ethical conclusion: that expressing one’s gender authentically is not a violation, but a form of truth-telling.
This episode is, at its heart, about what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to learn—especially from traditions that are not our own. It’s about humility, curiosity, and the recognition that God is not confined to the limits of our inherited frameworks. I hope you’ll listen with that same openness.
With gratitude,
Max
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