Noted transgender scholar and poet to speak at APSU’s Asanbe Diversity Symposium
March 26, 2015
Clarksville, TN – In 2006, Jay Ladin, a married father with three children, left Yeshiva University, where he worked as the Gottesman professor of English. Fifteen months later, Ladin returned as Joy, the first openly transgender employee at an Orthodox Jewish institution.
Ladin had struggled with her male identity throughout her life—attempting suicide twice by the time she was 10—but as a young boy, she found comfort in her Jewish faith. In a 2013 interview with the Peabody Award-winning podcast “On Being,” she said she experienced a powerful connection with the Torah’s one genderless character—God.
Joy Ladin
