Abby Stein shows us the Hasidic Williamsburg she left behind
Stein’s memoir about growing up transgender in the Hasidic community, ‘Becoming Eve,’ is being adapted into a new play
Abby Stein grew up in the Hasidic community in Williamsburg before coming out as a transgender woman. Today, her story is being re-imagined in a new play,Becoming Eve, produced by the New York Theater Workshop. Photo by Rachel Burnett
By Samuel Eli Shepherd March 19, 2025
In case you were wondering about Abby Stein’s preferred bagel order, it’s a sesame bagel with tuna, tomatoes and pickles. That has been her go-to since she was a kid growing up Hasidic in Williamsburg.
“At the end of the day, if you just ask me what I want, I will choose the food I grew up with,” said Stein when I met up with her at Williamsburg Bagel early one morning. She ordered that exact sandwich to-go, before she launched on a tour of her home neighborhood.
Stein spoke at a rapid pace as she pointed out long-standing synagogues and playground signs painted with Yiddish instructions. She showed me her grandparents’ high-rise apartment, as well as a the building in which she grew up.
“Right in front of me is my bedroom window,” Stein said, pointing from across the street. “That shed, I don’t know if you can see the maroon one next to the green one. It also has a lot of storage, and my stuff from when I came out, and I never got them.”
Stein is the author of Becoming Eve, a memoir that recounts her upbringing in this insular, religious community and culminates with her coming out as a transgender woman. She is also a descendent of the founder of Hasidic Judaism, Baal Shem Tov, and an activist and rabbi. We met for bagels because her memoir has recently been adapted into a new play produced by the New York Theater Workshop, and I wanted to get the scoop — both of the play, and of some cream cheese.
Stein said she rarely returns to Hasidic Williamsburg solo since she came out as transgender, but she often comes back with groups, including a recent tour with the play’s all-Jewish cast. On our walk, she recognized her old 11th grade teacher on the street: an old man with a black hat and a long white beard. He did not in turn recognize Stein in her bright pink pea coat and sunglasses.
“Past Broadway it’s a different universe,” Stein said.
Sages of the stage
Once we grabbed our bagels, Stein and I met up with the show’s playwright, Emil Weinstein, and the director, Tyne Rafaeli, at the Sobel Playground in Williamsburg. Birds chirped in the park, while yellow school-buses filled with Yeshiva children skidded by.
“The premise of the play is based on the epilogue basically, which is my coming out to my dad,” said Stein, who explained the play was not an exact adaptation of her memoir. “I had to put my distance between myself and Chava,” Stein said, the latter being both Stein’s middle name and the name of the play’s protagonist.
In the play, three rabbis must help a family wrestle with questions regarding tradition and modernity. One of those rabbis is Chava, the child of a prominent Hasidic dynastic family whose gender identity prompted rejection from the world in which she was raised. The play features flashbacks to show how Chava came to recognize and embrace her identity.
Like Stein’s memoir, the stage version of Becoming Eve is an exploration of family dynamics, religious expectations and learning to embrace one’s authentic self in a rigid environment.
“We want to talk about the trans experience in a way that is ultra-specific to this group of people and this person in particular,” said Weinstein. “But that hopefully sheds light on the universal experience.”
“I think this play is about how to build bridges from the ancient to the modern,” Rafaeli added. “That could be the Quran, the Bible, the constitution, how these bedrocks of our civilization can adapt and change as the human experience expands.”
Approaching the Hasidic community with nuance and knowledge
Early into the pandemic, Weinstein reached out to Stein with the idea of adapting her memoir to the stage. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, he remembers walking around Manhattan with his mask on while listening to Stein narrate the audiobook.
“I fell in love with the book and then it took a little while to bring the project together,” Weinstein said. “I started writing it in 2021 and then Tyne joined in 2022.”
Rafaeli, an award-winning British-American theater director, identifies as a “spiritual, but secular Jew.” Weinstein grew up attending weekly synagogue services and minored in Jewish studies in college. But neither he nor the director had much familiarity with the Hasidic community beforehand.
“I didn’t want this to be a ‘hit piece,’” Stein explained. “It’s not about being like, Hasidic Jews: bad. Everyone else: good.”
Instead, Stein, Rafaeli and Weinstein worked together to create a piece that portrays the Hasidic community in an honest light, displaying “the beautiful parts,” Stein said, as well as the sexism and transphobia that indeed exists within the community.
Stein, an ordained rabbi educated in the Viznitz yeshiva, a prestigious Hasidic rabbinical school in New York state, also engaged Weinstein and Rafaeli in lessons about traditional Jewish texts — many of which are mentioned in the show.
“It’s an epic and ongoing process,” said Rafaeli. “Abby has been such an extraordinary teacher.” Rafaeli pulled up a photo on her phone of a diagram Stein made that mapped out connections between ancient Jewish texts like the Talmud, Midrash and the Zohar. “The more I learn, the more I realize what I don’t know,” she said.
Telling an authentic trans story today
Producing Becoming Eve has been a drama of its own. The play was originally supposed to premiere in the Connelly Theater in the East Village, until the building’s landlord, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, rejected the script.
After they lost their spot at the Connelly, the Becoming Eve team eventually found a new home for the show at the Abrons Arts Center: a Lower East Side theater that was once the home of a thriving Yiddish theater scene.
“It’s actually kismet and where we’re meant to be,” Rafaeli said. “Lemonade of lemons.”
To the team, being rejected by the Archdiocese reinforced the importance of putting on a play by and about transgender people. Tommy Dorfman a Jewish and transgender woman known for roles in 13 Reasons Why and Romeo + Juliet, is starring as Chava.
“We’re one percent of the population,” Weinstein said, referring to transgender Americans. “But we’re a very vulnerable one percent of the population, and we need to be seen and heard on our own terms.”
For the creative team, the current political climate has made the play’s staging more crucial. Wenstein mentioned the rise of transphobia under the Trump administration. He referenced a proposed bill in Texas that would make it illegal to identify as transgender.
“There’s so much misinformation, especially around trans identity right now,” Weinstein said. “We’re being used as scapegoats in a very strange way.” He referenced a recent statistics of how nearly half of all transgender adults in the US have attempted suicide.
“We’re really, really hopeful that if people can see our stories, see Abby’s story and the stories we tell that they can have empathy for us and help us fight back and survive,” Weinstein said.
“It’s not a question of politics,” he added. “It’s a question of survival.”
Becoming Eve will be performed at the Abron Arts Center from March 20-April 27.
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