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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>From: Micha Berger <A href="mailto:micha@aishdas.org">micha@aishdas.org</A><BR><BR>: It isn't a matter
of "agreeing" or "disagreeing." I am not giving a <BR>:
halachic opinion with which he may agree or disagree. He gave
a psak based <BR>: on "facts" that turned out not to be factual. It
turns out that transgender <BR>: mutilation surgery does not in fact
prevent suicide. The risk of suicide <BR>: in fact rises slightly
after surgery.[--TK]<BR><BR>But without supporting studies showing that the
metzi'us a rav would be<BR>ruling on doesn't match that of his pesaq, it's
franlky just his assessment<BR>of the facts vs yours. REWaldenberg was the rav
of Shaarei Tzedeq Medical<BR>Center. Both his fame as a poseiq and his access to
medical knowledge make<BR>me far more inclined to believe his
version.<BR><BR>Tir'u baTov!<BR>-Micha</FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV>>>>>></DIV>
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<DIV>From a little bit of noodling around the internet it seems that the TE's
psak involved a case where the person's external organs were ambiguous -- a
chromosomal male with external [mostly] female organs, where the question of
surgery was whether to make this unfortunate person externally completely
female by removing an abnormal testicle. This psak was in 1971.
At the time, he wrote (and it was true then) that such surgery was "of course"
extremely rare and would only be done in exceptional circumstances.
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<DIV><A href="http://www.starways.net/beth/tzitz.html">http://www.starways.net/beth/tzitz.html</A></DIV>
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<DIV>Medicine has changed a lot, the culture has changed, a lot of things have
changed. He may have written halachic opinions more recently than that,
I'd be interested to see more on that, but it seems 1971 was his last word on
the subject.</DIV>
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<DIV>One thing is certain, gender reassignment surgery has become big, big
business and is performed far more often and more regularly than it ever used to
be -- far more often than you may imagine. Today it is the first rather
than the last course of "treatment" suggested to the vast majority of men who
come to a doctor saying "I think I'm really a woman." </DIV>
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<DIV>And based on what I've read it is being done to young children, or at least
the suggestion has been made that it should! That is, some suggest that a
boy who thinks he's a girl should be given drugs to delay puberty so that
he won't get all that hair and muscles that will later make it difficult to
surgically make him look like a woman. I am not sure whether this is
actually being done or has only been suggested by some in the field.</DIV>
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<DIV>My reading also suggests that far more has been read into the TE's writing
than he intended, in terms of making it OK to have mutilating surgery done, and
in terms of treating the newly created "woman" as fully female. Again, I'd
like to hear more from people who have actually read all of what the TE wrote on
the subject.</DIV>
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<DIV>Being the rav of Sharei Tzedek would not, BTW, give a person any greater
access to longitudinal studies of the outcome of gender mutilation surgery than
would being the possessor of a computer in any city on earth. And R'
Waldenberg passed away in 1906 at the age of 90. I really don't think what
he wrote nearly forty years before has much medical relevance today.</DIV>
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<DIV>I believe that if he had known that his words written in 1971 would lead,
half a century later, to the cavalier emasculation of dozens or hundreds of
Jewish men, he would have been appalled and might well have written some
additional words of warning against this -- but in his wildest imagination he
could not have foreseen the crazy things that now go on in our world. He
thought he was talking about very rare cases with very real physical reasons to
undergo surgery. (In fact he also poskened that surgery undertaken for no
medical reason is assur! He held that cosmetic surgery is assur. In
99% of cases, transgender surgery is just that -- cosmetic surgery for no real
medical reason.)</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><B>--Toby Katz<BR>==========<BR><BR></FONT><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"></B>--------------------</FONT></DIV></DIV>
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