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Abby Stein Advocates for Transgender Pride
L OCA L
SASHA ROGELBERG | JE STAFF
WHEN RABBI AND trans-
gender activist Abby Stein was
growing up in her Chasidic
community, there was no word
for “transgender” in her first
language of Yiddish.

Stein said that she did not
witness homophobia or trans-
phobia in her community, but
instead had no knowledge
that queer or transgender
people existed.

“I wish I had a teacher when
I was 10 years old who would
tell me how terrible trans
people are, and that we’re going
to hell,” she said. “At least I
would have known that people
like me exist.”
In her June 3 talk over Zoom,
“Journey for One’s True Self,” of Chasidism. She attended leaving her Chasidic commu-
hosted by Hadassah of Greater yeshiva and became ordained nity in 2012, Stein married,
Philadelphia, Stein chroni- as an Orthodox rabbi. Before had a child and was divorced
cled her departure from her
by the age of 21.

Orthodox Jewish commu-
Her 2019 memoir,
nity and the challenges
“Becoming Eve: My Journey
she faced as a transgender
from Ultra Orthodox Rabbi
woman. to Transgender Woman,”
She asserted that LGBT
recounts her life up to that
people in the Jewish commu-
point and includes in the
nity should not just be visible
epilogue the story of when
or tolerated, but celebrated.

she came out to her father
“Tolerance is meant
in 2015.

for lactose or for nuts, or
“My dad never knew the
sometimes, for the choice of
word transgender until I
came out,” Stein said. “It
your friend’s latke toppings,”
wasn’t a matter of accep-
Stein said. “Tolerance is not
tance. He didn’t know that
for people. People, we need
trans people exist.”
to learn to celebrate.”
Though Stein remarked
Stein, 29, grew up in
on the difficulties of LGBT
Williamsburg, Brooklyn,
erasure and lack of support
the sixth of 13 children and
from her family after coming
a direct descendant of the
Baal Shem Tov, the founder
Abby Stein 
Courtesy of Kate Johnson out, she cautioned against
the belief that LGBT people
have only recently existed in
Jewish spaces.

“Regardless of how we have
been treated, we have always
been,” Stein said.

Stein asked her audience of
more than 80 how many genders
existed in traditional Judaism.

As audience members typed
“two,” “four,” “three,” “zero,”
Stein looked shrewd. “I take no
pleasure in saying what I’m about
to say but ... you’re all wrong!”
Drawing on excerpts from
the Mishnah from more than
1,800 years ago, poems from
13th-century rabbis and
kabbalistic teachings, Stein
assured her audience that she
wasn’t making anything up:
There are six-to-eight gender
identities described in Jewish
texts, each with their own
See Stein, Page 11
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