Welcoming the Souls of Strangers: A Conversation with Joy Ladin

Welcoming the Souls of Strangers: A Conversation with Joy Ladin

12:30pm PDT

As the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution, Joy Ladin knows firsthand how complex it can be for institutions and communities to respond to and embrace those they see as different. A well-known poet, literary scholar, and public speaker, she has empowered many with her personal journey of integrity and resilience.

Don’t miss this conversation with AJU’s Rabbi Dr. Gail Labovitz, scholar of rabbinics and Jewish law, as they explore the questions that we all share of how to find your own place in this vast and complicated tradition.

We encourage everyone to watch the presentation live. It will not be available to view as we are currently working behind the scenes to improve the user experience.

Joy Ladin, Gottesman Chair in English at Yeshiva University, is the first (and still only) openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. Her memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award; her most recent book, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, was a Lambda Literary Award and Triangle Award finalist. Episodes of her online conversation series, “Containing Multitudes,” are available at https://www.jewishlive.org/multitudes. Links to her writing are available at https://joyladin.wordpress.com/. She serves on the Board of Keshet, an organization devoted to full inclusion of LGTBQ Jews in the Jewish world.

Rabbi Gail Labovitz, PhD, is Professor of Rabbinic Literature and former Chair of the Department of Rabbinics for the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. She also enjoys serving as the Ziegler School’s faculty advisor for “InterSem,” a dialogue program for students training for religious leadership at Jewish and Christian seminaries around the Los Angeles area. Dr. Labovitz formerly taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) and the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York. Prior to joining the faculty at AJU, Dr. Labovitz worked as the Senior Research Analyst in Judaism for the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project at Brandeis University, and as the Coordinator for the Jewish Women’s Research Group, a project of the Women’s Studies Program at JTS. Rabbi Labovitz is also the author of a teshuva (rabbinic responsum) adopted by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly on whether a person who is unable to fast for medical reasons may nonetheless serve as a leader of communal prayer on Yom Kippur.