Yeshiva U. prof on indefinite leave after sex change

Jay Ladin, an expert in American poetry, now goes by the name Joy.

By ALLISON HOFFMAN, JPOST CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK
ladin before and after 224 88 (photo credit: )
ladin before and after 224 88
(photo credit: )
An English professor at Yeshiva University returned last week from a two-year leave as a woman - though she had left as a man. Jay Ladin, an expert in modernist American poetry, now goes by the name Joy and has traded his blonde goatee for a shoulder-length mop of light brown curls, skirts and womanly curves. Ladin, 47, declined to comment on her newfound status as the Jewish university's only publicly transgender faculty member. "I'm afraid I can't comment on the record at this time," she wrote in an e-mail to The Jerusalem Post. In a blog posting last year on the Web site of Jewish Mosaic, a center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Jews, Ladin responded to a rabbi's essay about the theme of liberation in the Pessah Haggada, "As a currently transitioning practicing Jew who has inwardly ached each Pessah knowing that I am celebrating freedom while embracing the slavery of my skin, I am so grateful for this dvar Torah." The New York Post reported that Ladin wrote in the prologue of her unfinished memoir, Inside Out: Confessions of a Woman Caught in the Act of Becoming, that she had taken hormones to develop breasts and feminize her appearance but had not undergone surgical sex-reassignment procedures. Not everyone was happy to see Ladin return under her new identity. Rabbi Moshe Tendler, an Orthodox rabbi who is a senior dean at Yeshiva's rabbinical school, said Jewish law does not tolerate an individual's physical alteration for any reason. "This individual wants the rest of the world to accept his decision that he is now her and should be recognized as female, and I think that is a relatively unfair request," Tendler said. "I think a teacher that behaves in so aberrant a way must also impinge on the moral conscience of the student body," said Tendler, who is also a professor of biology and medical ethics at the university. "They become less judgmental in judging him, but I believe we should reserve that right to be judgmental when someone violates the basic tenets of society." The New York Post reported that the university had placed Ladin on indefinite leave after she told them about her desire to become a woman. That revelation came after Ladin had been granted tenure. University spokeswoman Hedy Shulman declined to comment on Ladin's return after making the public transition from man to woman, saying it was a confidential personnel matter. New York City law prohibits the firing of employees based on gender identity and expression. Ladin, who teaches at Yeshiva's Stern College for Women, earned her doctorate on the poetry of Emily Dickinson at Princeton University. She has taught at Tel Aviv University as a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence. Yeshiva University, with 7,427 students, is America's oldest Jewish institution of higher learning.