Last year, then-University of Colorado-Boulder student Lior Gross was excited to continue their Hebrew studies. But there was one big problem for Gross, who uses they/them pronouns, and instructor Eyal Rivlin: No gender-neutral grammatical structure existed in Hebrew that Gross and others could use to identify themselves. So they made one.

“I think that I couldn't be fully spiritual until I held who I was as a non-binary person,” Gross said. “[We’re] getting to shape the language in this way so there's space not just for me but for so many of the amazing trans teachers I've had, and so more of the community can access the language.”

In that spirit, the pair launched the Nonbinary Hebrew Project. The website serves as a comprehensive guide to gender-neutral Hebraic pronouns, and also outlines biblical precedent for transgender and non-binary identities. While realizing that it will take time for gender-expansive grammar to take root in the wider Hebrew-speaking world, Gross and Rivlin hope that their effort will bolster a larger movement toward LGBTQ+ inclusivity within Judaism, one that seeks to make a variety of Judaic practices more welcoming for queer people in the face of increasing anti-semitism and trans and non-binary erasure.

Gross and Rivlin’s project was more difficult than coming up with a pronoun like the English “they.” In Hebrew, adjectives and verbs have different endings to align with the subject’s gender. Pronouns are even more gendered, as the second and third persons (“you” and “you all”) differ for men and women.

Gross, who plans on becoming a rabbi, and Rivlin, who comes from an Israeli family of writers, created a system that combines masculine and feminine grammatical elements. Rivlin said that using the structure in his teaching “created both an environment of inclusion and awareness of diversity in the classroom, a sense of feeling like [students] were part of this cutting-edge discovery.”

“You no longer have to choose between loyalty to your ancestors and making something that has enough room for the people who come after you."

Traditionally, Hebrew speakers who use gender-neutral pronouns have switched between male and female phrasing, even in the same sentence. Tal Janner-Klausner, the Jerusalem coordinator for the language-learning school This is Not an Uplan, noted that in Israel’s gay community, men have long used female pronouns to refer to themselves and others.

“I teach that when we refer to someone using masculine or feminine grammar, it doesn't necessarily mean they are a man or woman, but that this is the limit of the language as it currently is,” said Janner-Klausner, who identifies as nonbinary, genderqueer, and trans. “I encourage my students to experiment with it and teach language as a living flexible thing that belongs to all who speak it, not something that textbooks dictate for us.”

As they point out, gender-neutral language is more common in Western diasporic Jewish communities than in the more socially-conservative Israel. “It's very difficult for an Israeli who's been speaking the same way their whole life to imagine changing the grammar in a fundamental way,” they said.

However, both Janner-Klausner and Rivlin note that LGBTQ+ issues have increasingly entered Israel’s public discourse over the past few decades. And while the Academy of the Hebrew Language, the official institution that approves changes in the language, has dismissed the Nonbinary Hebrew Project — a senior researcher told the Times of Israel that “it’s not worth considering” — Rivlin welcomes criticism. “Because Hebrew is this ancient language, there will probably be a lot of resistance, and that's fine,” he said.

The Nonbinary Hebrew Project is just one of many efforts to challenge this resistance, and many rabbis, both queer and not, are making space for LGBTQ+ Jews in their official practices and teachings. Queer rabbis played a crucial role in advocating for institutional acceptance of same-sex marriage and rights for LGBTQ+ congregants in the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative denominations. (Orthodox Judaism is the only branch that doesn’t widely accept homosexuality.) And many rabbis highlight the holiness of defying categorization in Judaism, particularly praying at twilight, between day and night. Some have also explored Biblical evidence for gender nonconformity, like the use of female grammar in several verses about Adam, Noah, and Joseph.