(JTA) - Five years ago, Rabbi Guy Austrian made a small but powerful change at the synagogue he leads: He wrote down the language his community used to call non-binary members to the Torah.

That language had been developed informally over time through a process that Austrian recalled as being "a little awkward" because it involved tweaking language on the fly for congregants whose gender did not fit into the male-female binary that's baked into Hebrew.

Codifying the language meant changing only a few words of a formula in use in synagogues around the world, but it was essential to including...