But Jay was allowed to return 15 months later as Joy. In 2007, after announcing his gender transition, he was placed on a leave of absence from Stern. Jay married his college love, fathered three beloved children, and became a tenured professor.
She was born Jay Ladin in upstate New York. She is the David and Ruth Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University. She’s recently published a new book called The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. So the external was my gateway into a whole bunch of self-defining things that normally we’d think of as proceeding from the inside and working their way out. I needed to see myself, first of all, just to be visible at all. Joy Ladin: In a very literal sense, my deepest self was something that could only be manifested superficially, in the most superficial way, literally putting on makeup.
We take in what she’s learned about gender and the very syntax of being. Still, she knows what it is to move through the world with the assumed authority of a man, and the assumed vulnerability of a woman. Hormones transformed her appearance, though not her mid-life vocal cords. And it was an incremental, imperfect process. Joy Ladin unsparingly admits the pain this caused for people and institutions she loved. She became the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution. In her mid-40s, Joy Ladin transitioned from male to female identity. Her story sheds unusual light on how gender shapes the lifelong work of being at home in ourselves. Krista Tippett, host: For as far back as she can remember, Joy Ladin says her body didn’t match her soul.
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