This week voters in Houston rejected equal rights protections for transgender residents. But in Orlando Thursday, the Reform movement of U.S. Judaism adopted a sweeping new policy to embrace transgender people - including gender-neutral restrooms at synagogues.
Mark Kram, a Miami rabbi who was ordained in the Reform movement - the nation's largest Jewish denomination - says Thursday’s vote reflects more than two millennia of Jewish teaching.
“The Mishnah, which is part of the Talmud, the Jewish law code, recognizes each individual has the right to define for themselves what they are," says Kram, rabbi at the Reconstructionist Beth Or temple in South Miami-Dade. "We are reaffirming that all individuals are made in the image of God. And that individuality allows for that understanding of differences, as well as now, transgender differences.”
Reform Judaism already allows transgender rabbis.
