CTJC Bulletin Pesach 2021

Abby Chava Stein: Becoming Eve My journey from ultra-orthodox rabbi to transgender woman SEAL £16.50 Reviewed by Jane Liddell-King “Tati,” I said, looking him in the eye. “Tati, I am a girl”. I am a girl, I’d said it.

At the end of this memorable book, Abby Stein’s father faces the fact that his firstborn son has suffered from a lifelong experience of dysphoria and is in the process of changing his body to accommodate his psyche. “I don’t get it” he asserts, “Men have a higher place in society. Men have better roles in the world. Why would you do that?”

Rabbi David (Abby’s new rabbi and mentor) said, “Your child is coming to you and telling you who she truly is. She wants you to see her for who her soul is”.

Sadly and shockingly, Abby’s father responds by declaring that his daughter’s decision probably means an end to contact between them.

He refuses to allow her to speak to her mother, the family’s house phone being the only means of communication. And 10 of her 12 siblings have stopped speaking to her.

What lies behind such uncompromising rejection?

The sixth child and firstborn son of a Hasidic family, at the brit Abby Chava Stein was named Yisroel Avrom Ben Menachem Mendel. A direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, he was repeatedly told that he was “a holy boy”. With courage and painful accuracy, Abby Stein’s book maps the journey from the earliest experience of dysphoria as an agonised and mystified 3 year old to her renaming 21 years later. Then, after a profound struggle to adapt, which included marriage and fathering an adored son, she stands in a synagogue her father could Page 22