Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism ed. by Alan Slomowitz and Allison Feit (review)

This pioneering book comes at an important historical moment. To some publics, both psychoanalysis and Orthodox Judaism constitute marginal, and marginalized, belief systems, and their adherents are small minorities with little importance or impact. However, psychoanalytic therapies are winning increased recognition as more effective than other treatment models,⁶ and both the percentage and growth rate of U.S. Jews identifying with Orthodoxy are increasing steadily.⁷ Thus, the communities, intellectual traditions, and bodies of practice this book brings into dialogue are wellsprings of influential contemporary developments.

Feminist scholarship, with which we identify, asks that we acknowledge the grounding of our thinking in our personal contexts. One of us (RR) grew up in a Yiddishist family as a secular Jew; he found his way toward religion and observance, as a Reconstructionist, when he and his male partner decided to marry. A psychologist-psychoanalyst, he has done research on how Freud's conflictual relationship with his Jewish identity influenced his theory of the psychoanalytic method. The other of us (JK) grew up in a traditional Orthodox Litvish/yeshivish community as a frum cisgender male. When he became aware of his sexuality, he felt there was no possibility to live as both Jewish and gay. Currently, through his reading and through organizations for queer Jewish people, he is coming to appreciate his intersectional identities and possibilities. He is simultaneously a student in a psychodynamically oriented doctoral program in clinical psychology.

The diverse perspectives and voices that enter the conversation in Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism echo these reviewers' own journeys. Contributing authors are men and women, spanning generations, most from Orthodox backgrounds (whether or not currently observant) and some not; there are learned and respected Orthodox rabbis (of diverse views), psychoanalysts (mostly from the interpersonal tradition), psychoanalytically oriented clinicians, and research biological and social scientists. Lesbian, gay male, and transgender perspectives are represented, as are thoughtful contributions from family members of LGBTQ Orthodox Jews. The styles of writing, too, range—from poetic personal accounts, to clinical and basic scientific contributions, psychoanalytic theory, and Jewish textual and halachic exegesis. In its compendium of included material, the book is reminiscent of the tone and breadth of a satisfying volume of Talmud.

Valuable new ideas often emerge when lines of deep thinking from different contexts meet up. Two examples stand out among the psychoanalytic contributions to this volume.

Interpersonal psychoanalysts have developed the notion that the self is not unitary, but composed of shifting self-states; some, because they are intolerable, dissociated. Conceptualizing these unintegrated "not me" states, it is argued in this book, offers a way of understanding how some LGBTQ Jews dissociate their LGBTQ, or Jewish, identities.

Winncott's notion of the true and false selves⁸ is used in the volume to help understand how LGBTQ Jews navigate the overlapping domains of community, family, social, and self experience in Orthodox environments. Novich, a contributing author, draws out how LGBTQ Jews, valuing the relationships and sense of community they develop in the Orthodox experience, may develop false selves not just in infancy, as Winnicott proposed, but throughout development, as a way to protect the emerging queer true self from both intrapsychic and community pressures.

The contributions from rabbinic and lay Orthodox perspectives acknowledge the specificity of daunting halachic and sociocultural challenges LGBTQ Orthodox Jews face, from gender-segregated roles in worship and ritual to expectations of heterosexual marriage and child-rearing. These writers serve both Orthodox and non-Orthodox readers by tracing and explicating textual sources that guide dominant halachic practices and normative Orthodox community customs, including source texts traditionally interpreted as prohibiting lesbian and gay male sexual acts and transgender and non-binary gender identities and expressions. There is no flinching from hard questions, though no contributing writer supports conversion therapy.

Yet what stands out in Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism is consensus, among writers differing on much else, on [End...