Live as a woman or die. That was the internal ultimatum Jay Ladin, a father of three and married to his college sweetheart, faced at the age of 45 when his gender dysphoria reached a breaking point.
Live as a woman or die. That was the internal ultimatum Jay Ladin, a father of three and married to his college sweetheart, faced at the age of 45 when his gender dysphoria reached a breaking point.
For decades, Ladin had desperately tried to be the male archetype in his family’s life, but the unrelenting reverie of transition to the opposite sex consumed his thoughts. Killing him from the inside was the male persona that Ladin had frantically tried to keep intact for the sake of his wife and children. The family was ensnared in a cruel paradox: for Ladin to finally live as a whole person, and shift from the unlivable to the livable, meant the fracture of the family.
Ladin prayed to God to end his life. Thoughts of suicide snaked around Ladin’s consciousness for years.
To achieve harmony between body and gender identity, Ladin began taking female hormones in the spring of 2007. And so she found herself — at middle age — experiencing the vulnerabilities and awkwardness of puberty. Transition is a process that can take several years; cross-gender hormones ushered in a period of ambiguity and uncertainty. Gender limbo. Ladin felt neither male nor female as she was compelled to present as a male for her family and at work; however, in the safety of close friends, she would don women’s garments and release her female core. Unlearning decades of being socialized as a male and relearning how to live in the world as a female was an arduous journey. She trained her voice to sound feminine, developed a woman’s walk and was constantly mindful of her other behaviours and gestures. During this interval of self-discovery, Ladin was flummoxed by female clothing styles and committed several fashion faux pas before learning the dos and don’ts.
Several months into the transition process, the family went through a painful split. Complicating matters further was that Jay, now known as Joy, is a professor of English at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women in New York — making her the first openly trans faculty member of a Jewish Orthodox institution.
“Not only was I teaching, but I was teaching as myself in plain sight — not hiding. I wanted to continue teaching at Yeshiva University. I love teaching. I love my students,” says Ladin.
Her gender identity evoked mixed reactions: a few were fine with it, some bristled at her, and several colleagues, she would soon discover, had muted disapproval.
One rabbi’s scathing comments appeared in a local newspaper. “… He’s a person who represents a kind of amorality which runs counter to everything Yeshiva University stands for. There is just no leeway in Jewish law for a transsexual. There is no niche where he can hide out as a female without being a massive violation of Torah law.”
To these blistering statements, Ladin responds: “What he’s saying in terms of Judaism is not true. He doesn’t understand gender identity. Gender identity is who we are to ourselves and who we are to God. The Torah can’t conceive of who we feel we are. It’s not saying we can’t be trans.”
Photograph by: Vincenzo D’Alto, The Gazette
Joy Ladin will be at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal on April 24 to discuss the effects of gender transition on family, other relationships, her relationship with God and the Jewish community, as well as how her Orthodox school has responded to her.
Ladin knows all too well that those who violate gender norms enshrined in society can be perceived as upsetting the natural order of things, and although she understands the rabbi’s views, she disagrees with them.
“The gender binary organizes concepts. What he’s saying is, if you can’t distinguish between male and female, you can’t distinguish between good and evil,” Ladin says. “Therefore, if you accept a trans identity, you accept a world for which there is no basis for moral judgment — that’s why it’s ‘amorality.’”
Some time had passed; the situation quieted down and seemed settled at the university. The subject of her gender identity was tacitly understood to be taboo.
Ladin, an award-winning author and poet equipped with a PhD in American literature, published her memoir titled Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders in 2012. It drew considerable public attention, and the tribulations of transition were once again at the forefront. Enrolment in Ladin’s two classes plummeted, jeopardizing her job.
“I was a very popular teacher as a male,” says Ladin. “There wasn’t anything that explained the drop in enrolment except my being trans.”
She approached her colleagues to discuss the issue.
“It’s tolerance and denial. For some, it was shocking to talk about this. Some said: ‘We fixed this. We don’t need to talk about it.’ That’s the problem with things you don’t talk about, you don’t work them out.”
Ladin believes growing up Jewish helped prepare her for the challenges of being trans because it gave her experience as a public minority. But she is aware of many gender-nonconforming individuals who struggle to reconcile religion with their gender variance. She is part of a Reconstructionist Jewish community and intermittently goes to the synagogue she belonged to prior to transition. Although she is welcome, Ladin finds it extremely difficult to live a full Jewish life because her children no longer accompany her to temple. The relationship with her ex-wife and middle child are strained; she relishes the two days a week she spends with her youngest, speaking with her over the phone on the days they aren’t together, and reunites with her son when his college schedule permits.
“There are ways of interpreting the Torah that allow for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender), but orthodox rabbis, for the most part, have not engaged in those interpretations. Informally, there are orthodox rabbis who have trans people in their communities, who tell them they’re accepted — but not to draw attention to themselves,” says Ladin.
Traditional interpretations of the Jewish religion distinguish between men and women for prayer and religious obligations, according to senior Rabbi Lisa Grushcow of Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, a Reform synagogue in Montreal. But the rabbi also points to the Talmud, a collection of Jewish laws and rabbinical commentaries central to Judaism, which recognizes that gender is not limited to the binary of male and female.
“If you go back to earlier sources, to the early interpretations, there’s always been recognition of the diversity of humanity in very specific ways,” Grushcow says. “Jewish tradition and texts from hundreds of years ago show an awareness that gender has never been as simple as male and female. There have always been people who don’t fit neatly in either category or find themselves mismatched. Our tradition knew that people not only came in all shapes and sizes, but all kinds of bodies, all kinds of expression of gender. We have sources that are aware and compassionate for the human element.”
Grushcow also notes that liberal Judaism does not differentiate between male and female roles, and makes space for individual journeys. “In modern times it takes a lot of courage to be who you are.”
The Very Rev. Paul Kennington, Dean of Montreal, Rector of Christ Church Cathedral, part of the Anglican Church of Canada, says: “If a trans person says, ‘I’m a woman,’ we would treat her as a woman. A transsexual person in the Anglican Church is treated the same as everybody else — they’re looked after, ministered to, cared for and involved in the same way as everyone else.”
Not only are trans people welcome in the Anglican Church, there are priests who were ordained as men and have since transitioned and are working as women priests. And there are priests who have been ordained post gender transition.
Kennington sees two challenges for trans people with respect to his church.
First, social issues: To provide a welcoming space for trans people, the Montreal church has removed the binary from the bathroom. “We’ve taken off the male and female washroom signs. It was a conscious effort to take them off. It’s an easy thing to change and it doesn’t offend people.”
The reaction from the congregation? “There wasn’t any.”
He adds that this was also done to accommodate male parents who require the use of baby-changing facilities.
The second issue is in regard to changing the sex on the baptism certificate. “If they were baptized as a girl, can we issue a new baptism certificate that says male? That’s an issue — there isn’t agreement on that one,” Kennington says. “I would say what we need from a Christian perspective is confirmation that the person in front of me was baptized. I need a historical line that connects the person to the person who was born. It’s a question of identity, not gender. Baptism is how you enter the Christian church. It’s not about gender.”
“From a rabbinic perspective, you always have to assume that the person telling you about their life knows more about their life than you do — even if you’re not hearing what you expect to hear,” says Grushcow. “It requires humility to listen even though you’re hearing something that doesn’t match your own experience. I think you can see things as black and white only if you don’t open your eyes. God made a beautiful and complicated world, as far as I can tell. We have a responsibility to look and listen.”
Joy Ladin will be speaking at the Jewish Public Library on Thursday, April 24 at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $10 for JPL members and students, and $15 for non-members.
An intimate dinner conversation with Ladin will be held beforehand at 6 p.m. Tickets for the conversation will include dinner and reserved seating at the public lecture. They cost $25 for JPL members and students, $35 for non-members. For tickets and information call 514-345-6416 or visit: www.jewishpubliclibrary.org
This program is part of an enhanced lineup for the Jewish Public Library’s 100th Anniversary.
Organizations in Montreal that offer support for LGBTTIQ people (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, two-sprit, intersex, queer/questioning), their friends and families:
PFLAG Canada: http://www.pflagcanada.ca/en/index.html
ASTTeQ: http://www.astteq.org/