‘Having a non-binary child is releasing’
Rabbi Laura Janner-klausner hopes her family’s story can bring calm to the divisive gender debate, she tells Rosa Silverman
Rabbi Laura Jannerklausner’s eldest child was always a little different. “Super brainy and super geeky,” she says. “Tal is a geek in neon lights – in a good way.” If Tal was ever treated differently, growing up, it was for this reason
– it wasn’t until the age of 20 that another difference was illuminated.
Sitting in the café at the bottom of the Sternberg Centre for Judaism in North London, Rabbi Laura, who serves as the senior rabbi to Reform Judaism, tells me that the catalyst was her niece’s wedding, seven years ago, when Tal refused to wear a dress.
“I said: ‘You know what, it’s not for me, it’s for the family. Wear a dress!’ We don’t very much argue and I was saying: ‘I don’t really get it. Just stick on a dress. Who cares?’
“We were sitting in the garden – I remember it very clearly – and Tal said: ‘There’s something I need to tell you. I think I’m gender fluid.’”
Tal, who uses the pronouns “they”, rather than “she”, had read a self-published article a friend had written about being gender fluid themselves. “Tal said: ‘That’s me. That articulates what I’ve been feeling.’ ”
Had there been any signs prior to this conversation? “It was clear they were going through something,” says Rabbi Laura – but since that epiphany “an increasing holistic calm” has replaced Tal’s “experience of living in physical dissonance with the world and what you’re meant to be”.
Yesterday morning, Rabbi Laura spoke eloquently in the Thought for the Day slot on Radio 4’s Today programme about the eldest of her three children, explaining that Tal – born Tali – identifies as neither a woman nor a man, but as “a person whose gender is non-binary”.
The 55-year-old also mentioned that she had responded this week to the public consultation on the Gender Recognition Act, which is considering how to make the process of gender recognition less bureaucratic and invasive.
Some of the public discussion around the Act has become “so fierce that some people are too scared to debate it, for fear of a fiery backlash”, she warned, while curiosity had become risky. Or, as she puts it to me a few hours later, “instead of being curious, we’re now furious”.
Yet curiosity, she believes, is a crucial step towards understanding. It was at the heart of her own initial reaction to Tal’s disclosure, which she paraphrases now as: “I don’t understand. Tell me more.”
Tal had previously come out as bisexual, and the concept of non-binary gender was unfamiliar to Rabbi Laura at that stage.
“But it made sense,” she says, “because our household, in many ways, was not gender binary at all. My dad [the late Lord Janner] looked after us and was very much ‘mum’, because Mum was ill, and Dad was very caring and the primary parental figure.”
Neither is her own home divided along gender lines: “David [her partner] does the laundry, I’m the rabbi. I don’t feel like the archetypal woman.”
A certain mental re-adjustment had to be made on her part after that conversation with Tal – “a lot of giving up on the fantasy of ‘nice Jewish girl getting married underneath a canopy to a nice Jewish boy’. That’s not happening!”
But having a gender non-binary child is “releasing” in some ways, she admits, “because there are lots of parts of me that are male…
“There are lots of spaces where I’m the only woman because the religious leadership world is so male, and so if you think ‘gender isn’t the key issue here’ then it releases you.
“I was brought up with a brother and sister and the message in the household was: ‘We expect the same from you; go get ’em.’ Never was I brought up with: ‘You can’t do that, you’re a girl.’”
The rest of the family were equally understanding when Tal “came out” as gender non-binary.
But as straightforward as it all sounds for the Janner-klausner clan, Rabbi Laura is very conscious of how fraught the subject has become elsewhere.
Groups of radical feminists have been locked in bitter and sometimes violent battle with some members of the transgender community, with the debate around trans issues becoming increasingly polarised.
Against this backdrop, the rabbi is a refreshingly rare example of someone with a very personal stake in the issues willing to weigh up both sides and argue in favour of mature discussion.
“I think in general society, we’re much less robust about being in debate with each other,” she reflects. “‘Safety’ has become the new holiness. We are losing the capacity to have a view, for it to be questioned, to be right or wrong. People are assumed to be good or evil. ‘I need my safe space, my emotions are always right.’ Well no, your emotions are not always right.”
She herself has been a feminist “since before I could spell”. So where does she stand on the (often angry) debate around female-only spaces becoming gender neutral to accommodate trans people?
“It’s such an interesting question,” she muses, with characteristic thoughtfulness. “Because let’s say
I go to a woman-only space and someone has a penis…” she pauses to consider the scenario.
“Someone could come on to you if they’re a woman. So I think it’s much more about the bog-standard society norms – how close is someone to you? What kind of looks are they giving you? How are they touching you? And that can happen irrespective of body.
“If I was swimming in a womenonly swimming session and there was someone with a male body I would, no question, do a double take. But then, what also matters is how they are with you, just like anyone else. And I’ve had women come on to me in single-gender spaces just the same.”
Tal now lives in Jerusalem, where they teach Palestinians. Despite the distance, the family is obviously still close and loving – I hazard that they’ve been amazing in their support, but Rabbi Laura vehemently disagrees.
“You can measure amazing by how hard something is. People say sometimes: ‘You’re so brave.’ You’re not brave if you don’t find something hard. There are loads of other things I’ve had to overcome: my own mental illness, my father being falsely accused of child abuse – [it’s] amazing I’m still here, I still love people.
“This stuff [with Tal] is not amazing. Once you get used to it and give up on your Jewish fantasy, it’s fine. They’re fulfilling a different Jewish fantasy – they teach Hebrew, they teach Palestinians in Israel, they’re ideological, they’re religious.”
And Tal’s friends? How have they reacted? “The same. It’s not even accepting or understanding. It’s ‘Oh, that makes sense.’ We’re all queer in different ways.”
I had to give up the fantasy of ‘nice Jewish girl marries nice Jewish boy’