arts entertainment
Sense Of Self
Documenting the fraught journey from Jay to Joy Ladin.
Sandee Brawarsky
Special to the Jewish News
n an interview, Joy Ladin begins sev-
eral responses, "When I started living
as myself..." For the Stern College
professor, poet and author, the boundary
between then and now, between living
a lie and leading an authentic life, is her
transition from man to woman.
Ladin, who received a doctorate from
Princeton, joined the faculty of Stern
College for Women of Yeshiva University
in 2003, then as a bearded, kipah- and
tzitzit-wearing man. In the spring of 2007,
after receiving tenure, Ladin told the dean
that she would be returning to the school
— but as a woman. Ladin was given a paid
research leave and told not to set foot on
campus. But after her lawyers demanded
that she be allowed to return, the school
agreed while setting forth certain condi-
tions, like which bathrooms to use.
In September 2008, Ladin returned to
teaching. The tabloid press covered her first
day. But in the halls of the English depart-
ment, when the sign outside of Ladin's
office door was changed from Jay Ladin to
Joy Ladin, no one made much of it.
The David and Ruth Gottesman
Professor of English, Ladin is the first
openly transgender employee of an
Orthodox Jewish institution. She is the
author of six volumes of poetry, including,
most recently, The Definition of Joy, and
has recently published a memoir, Through
the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey between
Genders (University of Wisconsin Press).
Compelling seems like an overused
word when it comes to memoirs, but hers
is unforgettable. At turns painful and life-
affirming, the story is written in a voice
that is poetic, precise, soulful and breath-
takingly candid, but possessed of humor,
too. It also is one of those books that alter
the reader's — this reader's — understand-
ing of a complex subject, in this case the
meaning of gender and, so, humanity.
Many transgender mnoirs have been
written, and Ladin jokes that penning a
memoir might be part of the transition
process. For her, writing became an essen-
tial tool to learn a new language, to be
able to articulate the sense of self that she
never before experienced.
When she began writing and showed
a first chapter of the memoir to a friend
who is a lesbian, the friend told her that
she wrote like a man, and Ladin was both
devastated and furious.
"I realized that the language that I had
to talk about what was inside of me was
54
October 18 n 2012
e writing gave
me a voice of the
perso*I was trying
me before I
becom
became- that person."
inadequate:' she recalls. She then began
connected from her body and gender for
revising.
as long as she could remember and had
"My training was as an academic. I
an accompanying sense of shame. She
didn't know I had a self. I didn't know how describes feeling like a ghost, inhabiting a
to talk about my feelings. Nothing of me
body that didn't feel like her own.
had been seen.
"Yom Kippur was always awful for
"The writing gave
to. me — I had this sense of wrongness;
me a voice of the
I wasn't grateful to be alive," she
person I was trying
explains. "I would make teshuvah
to become before I
and then feel like the same miser-
became that person:'
able person:'
Ladin explains. She
Throughout, she felt a strong
has strong presence,
connection to God, and notes that
choosing her words with
it's common for "trans" kids to
great care and holding a
have intense experiences of God.
listener's gaze intently.
"I really did feel for a lot of
Other memoirs leave out
my life that God was the only
a lot of the difficult stuff,
relationship I had where I was
but Ladin didn't want to do
known," she says. "I couldn't have
that. "Happily ever after was
made it without that sense of being seen.
not life as I know it. There are many other
It was very hard to be loved, but I did feel
people involved."
loved by God."
Ladin was married and the father of
She continues, "I didn't believe in God,
two daughters and a son when she began
I didn't have faith in God — it's hard to
to transition. But she had felt deeply dis-
know what those things are. I just felt
God:' She adds, "I never stopped talking
to God."
She did understand the huge amount
of pain that the changes would cause her
wife — who felt Ladin was killing off the
man she had loved for more than 25 years
— and their children. Ladin contemplated
suicide. But she chooses life.
For her, the transition is an experience
of rebirth. In midlife, over the last five
years, Ladin has been learning how to
walk, talk, order in restaurants, shop for
clothing, make friends. For the first time
in her life, when she looks in the mirror,
she sees someone who resembles herself,
the self she never thought she had the
wherewithal to become.
Ladin understands that people who
knew her as Jay often just don't know what
to say, so they say nothing and avoid her.
She'd much prefer conversation — even
that they just mention that they don't
really know how to react. She says it's not
unlike seeing someone in a wheelchair;
people often avoid the person rather than
interact as they would with anyone else.
She has faced some rejection but overall
has been met with compassion, acceptance
and generosity of spirit.
At Stern, she doesn't feel completely
seen or understood but understands that
she's there to teach. "My job is to be the
best teacher I can be for all of the stu-
dents:' she says. She has been sought out
there by students going through all sorts
of difficult experiences.
"They know that I'm on public record
as having a life that fell apart:' she says.
"There are moments when I feel that what
I've gone through enables people to make
deep connections to me."
She speaks of how we understand
human beings in the image of God. "When
you really see someone as human, you
really see God," she says, and then adds,
"If you can see God in me, you can see
God everywhere"
During the school year, she divides
her time between her home in Western
Massachusetts and New York City. Her
partner is a woman. As for her age, she
says she is 51 or 5, "depending on how you
want to count."
Joy Ladin will be among the
memoirists appearing at the Jewish
Community Center's annual Jewish
Book Fair, running Nov. 7-18. Hear
her 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov.11, at the
JCC in West Bloomfield. www.jcdet.
org .