To the Editor:

Re “Is God Transgender?,” by Mark Sameth (Op-Ed, Aug. 13):

Like Mr. Sameth, I am a rabbi. I am also an experienced Torah reader with some feel for the workings of biblical Hebrew, and I’m afraid that I disagree with Rabbi Sameth’s interpretation of the evidence.

In Genesis 3:12, Eve is not referred to as “he.” With a small handful of exceptions, in the Torah (not later books) the Hebrew words for “he” and “she” are written identically. Context determines whether to read the word as “he” or as “she,” and this case is one of hundreds in the Torah where context makes the matter perfectly clear.

Similarly, the final letter that indicates possession in the case of Noah’s tent might mean that Noah was a “she,” but it’s far more likely that we have here a regional variant (again, one of many) for spelling that suffix.

Finally, the word for “young girl” (as in the case of Rebecca, Genesis 24:16) is almost always written without the feminine suffix, so that it’s indistinguishable from the word for “young boy.”