Joy Ladin - The Soul of the Stranger

2018, English, Joy Ladin,

Full title: "The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective" by Joy Ladin.

"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."

"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."

In 2014, I interviewed Joy and asked her why God is so merciless towards transgender people, placing their minds in the opposite gender bodies: "I don't know – I missed the memo in which God explains that policy! Seriously, though, I'm not sure that what transgender people suffer due to their mismatched bodies is greater than what many non-trans people suffer as a result of having human bodies. Human bodies are prone to all sorts of conditions, illnesses, and disabilities that make it hard for people to live full lives and to be seen and accepted by others. I have met many younger trans people who have grown up in families that accept them and love them as they are; for many of them, the acceptance and love they have known seem to ease the pain that I and many other trans people experience.

This leads me to suspect that much of the pain of being transgender is social, that the mercilessness we need to focus on is that of human beings rather than God. But I have more personal reasons for not feeling that God is merciless toward transgender people. I know many non-trans people who feel estranged from their lives and bodies – people who envy me that I actually have been able to become and live as myself. They have helped me see that becoming myself is a miracle – and throughout the transition, I kept experiencing God's mercy in helping me through overwhelming hardship and pain."

Available via Amazon

Photo via Heroines of My Life