A Genderless God

A Genderless God

The CU Program in Jewish Studies and the CU Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections

2017

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Portable Document Format

English

EJ2017_SHE_020

MS. TIPPETT: I spoke with Joy Ladin in 2013. She is Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University. She was born Jay Ladin in upstate New York…. In 2007, after announcing his gender transition, he was placed on a leave of absence from Stern. But Jay was allowed to return 15 months later as Joy. From what I’ve been reading about you, I think you’ve described your family as Jewish but not religious. But you, yourself, it sounds like, from a young age, were very drawn to the rituals and to Jewish tradition. MS. LADIN: I had a very strange relation to Judaism.… I was kind of like — in terms of — because I was religious and no one in my world was religious, it was almost like I was a Jew raised by wolves in that regard.… But what really drew me to Judaism was that, like many trans-kids, I had an intense sense of God as a real, living, constant presence.… Traditional Judaism is extremely gender divided. However, the Torah includes one really genderless character, and that’s God. Because despite the male pronouns, God doesn’t have a body. And when I was a kid, that was a very powerful, not really articulated sense of connection that I had because I had male pronouns, but I didn’t feel like I had a body.