We learnt in a Midrash, Rabbi Asi and Rabbi Ami would come to a city and say ‘bring us the guardians of the city!’ The townspeople would bring them the guardsmen and the head of the watch. The Rabbis exclaimed, ‘are these the guardians of the city? These are the destroyers of the city!’[1] The commentators disagree whether these are guards of private fields or the city gates. But, as the story suggests, either way they do not protect us. They protect the interests of capital and empire. As the commentators write: ‘the vanities of the world.’[2]
In our time, technologies of policing — and policing as technology — serve the same end. Digital surveillance, predictive policing and, simply, prisons: these amount to a technology of policing which aims to monitor and punish bodies deemed to threaten the interests of capital and empire. To protect the vulnerable, we must build a moral technology which privileges human dignity over the division of criminality and innocence. The most basic task of this technology is to create the ability to remain in community beyond conflict without resorting to exile and death.
The need for such a technology is especially pressing for transsexual women. As Porpentine has written, for trans women, social relations are made concrete and often form the basis of our ability to obtain secure housing, employment and community.[3] Excluded from many mainstream social spheres, we take shelter in radical, activist and sub-cultural spaces. And it is in these very spaces that the punitive monitoring of behaviour causes homelessness and social death for transsexual women. It is not that these spaces are particularly pernicious, it is just that transsexual women already have nowhere else to go. When we mimic punitive technology, we annihilate our community.
We can learn this from the story of Rabbi Eliezer.[4] Rabbi Eliezer broke the norms of his community by seeking to prove his opinion on a matter of Jewish law against the majority. For this he was exiled. The Rabbis teach us that for the rest of his life, his wife made sure he never said the tachanun prayer, for if he spoke these powerful words, supplicating G-d from his weakness and desperation, she knew that the nasi – the leader of the community — would die. Rabbi Eliezer had sinned by breaking the norms of his community, but the sin of his community, in abominating him, was far greater. One day Rabbi Eliezer did say tachanun and the nasi died. We learn that Rabbi Eliezer was exiled for his transgression. But we learn through the nasi’s death that this punishment, abominating him from his whole community with no recourse, was far a greater sin than the crime.
How many Black transsexual women would see their nasi die if we lived in a moral world? The Rabbis teach us that we cannot guard the city with violence and punishment. Such systems serve only the vanities of the world. We must instead build moral technologies which protect the dignity of everyone, especially the begotten sinner. It is too easy to become a sinner when the world has already abandoned you. We learn that ‘that day Rabbi Eliezer gave all the answers in the world, but [the rabbis] would not accept them from him’.[5] Too often the game is rigged from the start against the sinner. When we move together in communities of the vulnerable, we must remember that abominating the rule-breaker is far graver than breaking the rules.
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[1] Eikhah Rabbah, Petichta 2. The same story is found in Talmud Yerushalmi, Chagigah 1:7. Author’s own translation.
[2] See: Etz Yosef to Eikhah Rabbah, Petichta 2; Pnei Moshe to Talmud Yerushalmi, Chagigah 1:7.
[3] Porpentine, ‘Hot Allostatic Load,’ The New Inquiry, 11 March 2015, https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/ (accessed 5 March 2026). My language here is indebted to Tara Knight, ‘Group Dynamics, Conflict and Fascism: The Psychology Of Why Everyone Loves To Hurt A Tran,’ Bundle of Styx, 18 February 2026, https://bundleofstyxx.substack.com/p/group-dynamics-conflict-and-fascism (accessed 20 March 2026).
[4] Talmud Bavli Bava Metzia 59b. Thank you to my friend Miriam Zimrah for teaching me this story.
[5] Ibid. Author’s own translation.
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