In 1322, a celebrated Provençal rabbi and translator named Kalonymus ben Kalonymus tucked a startling confession into the middle of a satirical ethics treatise: a passage imagining, in vivid and sorrowful detail, the life he might have lived had he been born a woman. Known in his own time as "Maestro Calo" for his prolific translations of Galen, Euclid, Ptolemy, and Averroes into Hebrew, Kalonymus is remembered today for something else entirely — a "Prayer for Transformation" that trans Jewish readers now recognize as one of the earliest known literary articulations of gender dysphoria, seven centuries before the term existed. This episode traces his life from Arles to Rome and back, unpacks the theology of a blessing that turns into grief, and asks what it means that this experience was already being spoken from inside the tradition, centuries ago.

References:

Gottheil, Richard, and Isaac Broydé. "Kalonymus ben Kalonymus ben Meïr." Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906, www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9173-kalonymus-ben-kalonymus-ben-meir.

Kalonymus ben Kalonymus ben Meir. "Prayer for Transformation, from the Poem 'Even Boḥan.'" Translated by Steven Greenberg, transcribed and translated by Aharon N. Varady, Nir Krakauer, and Isaac Gantwerk Mayer, The Open Siddur Project, 31 Aug. 2020, opensiddur.org/prayers/civic-calendar/international-civil-calendar/transgender-day-of-visibility/prayer-of-kalonymus-from-sefer-even-bohan-1322/.

"Commemorating Transgender Day of Remembrance." Eshel Online, 20 Nov. 2015, www.eshelonline.org/commemorating-transgender-day-of-remembrance/.

"Celebrating Jewish Trans Poetry Day!" Ben Yehuda Press, 2022, www.benyehudapress.com/celebrating-jewish-trans-poetry-day/.

"Transgender Jews Might Not Be News: Pride Torah V." Sefaria, www.sefaria.org/sheets/409478.

"Kalonymus ben Kalonymus." Transgender History Month, www.transgenderhistorymonth.com/tht/kalonymus.

Image: Jewish Encyclopedia. First page from the first edition of Kalonymus's "Eben Boḥan," Naples, 1489. Sulzberger Collection, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York.