Joy Ladin, author of “Through the Door of Life A Jewish Journey between Genders. ” discusses gender equality as an authentically Jewish value.*
On this edition of Independent Sources hosted by Zyphus Lebrun, Lebrun talks to Forward editor Naomi Zeveloff and transgender activist Joy Ladin about how the growing numbers of Jewish transgender men and women are influencing a few very old and sacred rituals in that community.
A Yeshiva University professor tells the story of her spiritual journey to being a woman and what it meant for her life as a Jew.
It’s tempting to read nearly anything by Joy (previously Jay) Ladin against the backdrop of her decision some five years ago to become a woman. That is certainly the case with “The Grave of Craving,” featured today on The Arty Semite as part of our poem-a-day series in honor of National Poetry Month. Taking its cue from the episode in the book of Numbers, in which the Children of Israel complain about the lack of meat in the desert, the poem speaks to themes of both re-birth and transgression. But “The Grave of Craving” is not limited by Ladin’s biography; its evocation of earthly appetite, simultaneously signaling both life and mortality, is universal.
In this, the second annual Forward Fives selection, we celebrate the year’s cultural output with a series of deliberately eclectic choices in film, music, theater, exhibitions and books. Here we present five of the most important Jewish poetry books of 2010. Feel free to argue with and add to our selections in the comments.
“The author is dead!” has been a consistent postmodernist refrain discouraging readers from reducing meanings of literary works to mere biographical outlines of their authors.