Dr. Joy Ladin

Dr. Joy Ladin holds the Gottesman Chair in English at Yeshiva University, and, in 2007, became the first (and still only) openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. Her memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Her 2018 book, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Triangle Award. Dr. Ladin has also published nine books of poetry, including, most recently, The Future is Trying to Tell Us Something: New and Selected Poems. Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, an American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship and two Hadassah Brandeis Institute Research Fellowships, among other honors. A nationally recognized speaker on transgender and Jewish identity, she serves on the Board of Keshet, an organization devoted to full inclusion of LGTBQ Jews in the Jewish world.