Metatron’s Transitions: A Transgender Posthumanist Reading of Sefer Hekhalot

• In Event: Queering the Futures of the Past: Reading Ancient Jewish Eschatology and Apocalypticism with Queer Theory

Abstract

Drawing upon posthumanist, queer, and transgender studies, in this paper I develop a transgender touch across time between the social and embodied transitions that Metatron undergoes in SEFER HEKHALOT (3 Enoch) and modern transgender embodiments. Much like a modern transgender person socially transitioning by coming out of the closet, changing their name and pronouns, and how they dress, Metatron comes out to R. Ishmael as someone who used to live as a man, but has transitioned to an angel, has changed his name, and changed how he dresses. Like a trans person who medically transitions with surgical augmentations and hormone replacement therapy that transforms us on a cellular level, Metatron undergoes embodied transformations through augmentations (wings and eyes) and is completely transformed inside and out from skin to bone into fire. There are, however, unfortunate ways in which the Metatron story as told in SEFER HEKHALOT also resonates with negative aspects of trans experiences, since he remains marked in heaven as not like the other angels by being called “youth.” He is a token trans without other figures who have also transitioned from human to angel around him. The other angels act as gatekeepers who tried to prevent his transition. His transformed embodiment, however, is intra-active, his becoming enables other bodies (i.e., R. Ishmael) to approach the Merkavah without being attacked, reveal otherwise hidden knowledge, and provide a glimmer of hope for future transformations.

Author

• Jaeda Calaway, Illinois College