About this item
Reading some of the best-known Torah stories through the lens of transgender experience, Joy Ladin explores fundamental questions about how religious texts, traditions, and the understanding of God can be enriched by transgender perspectives, and how the Torah and trans lives can illuminate one another. Drawing on her own experience and lifelong reading practice, Ladin shows how the Torah, a collection of ancient texts that assume human beings are either male or female, speaks both to practical transgender concerns, such as marginalization, and to the challenges of living without a body or social role that renders one intelligible to others - challenges that can help us understand a God who defies all human categories. These creative, evocative readings transform our understanding of the Torah's portrayals of God, humanity, and relationships between them.
About the Author
Joy (formerly Jay) Ladin is the author of a memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders (U. of Wisconsin Press) , and six books of poetry, The Definition of Joy, Forward Fives award winner Coming to Life, Transmigration (a 2009 Lambda Literary Award finalist) , The Book of Anna, and Alternatives to History, all from Sheep Meadow Press, and Psalms, a collection of original psalms from Wipf & Stock. Her poems and essays have been widely published. She holds the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern College of Yeshiva University, where, in 2007, she became the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. She has given many talks on writing, literature, Judaism, and gender identity. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Keshet.
