I am disappointed that you chose to publish the article “Gender Identity and the Reshaping of Genesis Pedagogy,” in your January 18, 2024, issue. It is bad enough that gender ideology has saturated the mainstream secular sphere, causing irreparable emotional, psychological and physical harm to thousands, and now it appears it is seeping into our Jewish world, as well.
Questioning gender has never been a Torah value and accommodating such beliefs of confused individuals is against Torah instruction (do not place a stumbling block before the blind). Such articles serve to start to normalize these ideas to our community and risk negatively influencing the vulnerable and impressionable. Further disturbing is that a Torah teacher at a yeshiva high school was thinking about teaching Joy Ladin’s “The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah From a Transgender Perspective” to her students. How does that belong in a beit midrash? It is a sad reality when we have to start guarding our eyes against our own newspapers.
