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Continuing the discussion of what conditions establish an animal as a ba’al mum – an animal with a blemish that cannot be sacrificed – the Mishna on today’s daf teaches that there are some firstborn animals that will not be brought as sacrifices, but cannot be slaughtered as ordinary blemished animals, either. These animals have blemishes, but they are not sufficient to free them entirely of the sanctity of being firstborn animals. Included in the Mishna’s list are animals found to be either a tumtum or an anderoginos. Each of these conditions refers to a situation where the animal’s sexual identification is questionable. An anderoginos appears to have both male and female sexual organs, while a tumtum does not appear to have any external sexual organs that would identify it as either male or female.
We explore how Jewish law assumes of gender duality, and fundamental mishnaic texts indicate that this halakhic duality is not conceived symmetrically (as seen through the gendered exemptions of some commandments).
Rabbinic halakhic discourse institutes a functional gender duality, anchored in the need of reproduction of the Jewish collective body. As such, it aims to enforce and normalize a congruence between sexed bodies and gendered identities.
Furthermore, the semiotics of body surfaces produces other different and seemingly more ambiguous gender possibilities, and rabbinic discourse has widely discussed the halakhic implications of these ambiguities.