A quick followup to Friday’s post
We’ll get to the video you see posted above in just a moment. But if you read Friday’s post about army reservists who used IDF vehicles to protest ending the military campaign of which they were a part (we included a video one of them prepared, as well), then you might be interested in this followup, which is breaking at this very moment:
Likelihood is, it will all just die down and go away. But then again, this has been a period of Israeli history in which very little goes as expected. So we shall see.
And now for today’s video about Ma’ayan Gross:
The video we’re sharing today, which first appeared on Israeli TV and then made its way around social media, is one of the last subjects you might expect Israeli media to cover during this war. It’s the story of a young man named Natan Gross, who was in a hard core combat unit, who is now a young woman named Ma’ayan Gross—and who is still in a hard core combat unit.
The piece speaks for itself, but I’ll just point out a few things worth noting as you watch.
00:40 … as important as her transformation obviously is to her, it does not appear to be what defines her life. What defines her is the collective. In fact, as the interviewer points out, she purposely did not register her gender change with the IDF, so she would remain eligible to fight with her former unit.
7:11 and on … Ma’ayan grew up in a religious family. She says so in the video and here, when we meet her parents, it’s obvious. If you listen carefully, you’ll here that her parents still have a slight American accent. Is that American background key to their exceptional openness to their daughter’s transformation?
8:30 …. the segment about her putting on tefillin is fascinating. She sees herself as religious, and a woman, but still obligated to put on tefillin. One wonders … is she not asking the halakhic system to recognize her change? I don’t know, but the brief segments raises a host of really interesting questions.
9:12 … she says that she’s trying NOT to take care of herself or stay safe in Gaza. "My personal safety is not the issue here; there are children who need to be returned to their families." Even in this story of very personal issues of identity and transformation, her main issue is one of communal belonging. To me, at least, that feels very different from the gender conversations to which I’m privy in the States.
10:00 … let’s get back to the values of yesteryear. This is not a piece about rebelling against the mainstream. It’s a piece about her figuring out who she needs to be, all while being wholly committed to the world in which she was raised.
The video concludes with Ma’ayan saying, “The State of Israel has gone through a difficult year; may we know how to overcome it. Let’s get back to truly being the startup nation that we were. Let’s get back a bit to the values of yesteryear. … What matters is unity.”
With that, it is hard to argue.
