A new project at the University of Colorado Boulder is attempting to rewrite Hebrew text in non-gender conforming language for nonbinary students.
The teaching initiative at the UC Boulder, titled the Nonbinary Hewbrew Project, will attempt to offer a non-gender conforming method of teaching ancient Hebrew text, so that students who may not identify as either male or female have a chance to express themselves using the Hebrew language.
“If you don’t have a word to conceptualize your experience, then you can’t connect to others and you feel really isolated about it,” said Lior Gross, a current UC Boulder student who is involved with the Nonbinary Hebrew Project. “When you don’t have the words to talk about an experience, it also changes the discourse in terms of who holds power and what conversations you get to have.”
The project began after Gross asked current UC Boulder instructor Eyal Rivlin about the possibility of enrolling in a Hebrew class as a nonbinary gender student. Rivlin was willing to accommodate Gross, but realized that the current structure of Hebrew language would need to be altered in order to allow a non-gender conforming student to express themselves.
“I actually think it was probably either really hard or maybe even impossible within Hebrew to identify as nonbinary,” said Rivlin, who is currently overseeing the project. He also noted that his new method of teaching Hebrew will be a useful tool for improving diversity education at UC Boulder.
“My approach is to put this on the map and say, ‘Here’s another way that we can break out of the binary system,’” he said. “I feel like it’s useful both for Hebrew but also for educating students about diversity.”
John Patrick is a contributor to Red Alert Politics.
