Struggling With the Ultimate Change

If yet more evidence is needed to prove that the heart wants what the heart wants, you will find it in a remarkable memoir by Abby Chava Stein, “Becoming Eve: My Journey From Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman” (Seal Press).

Over the years, I have read and reviewed several accounts of Jewish men and women who were raised in Orthodoxy but chose to pursue any number of different paths into Judaism, or other religions, or no religion at all. But I can’t recall a book in which the author was a rabbi and the transformation included not only a change of faith but also a change of gender.

Abby Stein is a 10th-generation descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidic Judaism. Born as a boy in the Yiddish-speaking Chasidic community in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., Stein was circumcised, called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah, ordained as a rabbi, married at the age of 18 and became a father at 20. “I devoted myself to religion, and with it to family history, Hasidic theology, and family customs,” Stein recalls. “Still, my piety was, in part, an overcompensation for what I recognized back then as an ‘evil thought’ that defined my interior life: I am a girl.” Significantly, Stein could not have understood these feelings as anything but an affliction. 

“I had no idea there was anyone else like me,” Stein writes. “Without the Internet, without English, I had no name for what I felt.” 

The truth revealed itself in slow motion. At age 3, when Jewish boys in traditional communities are given their first haircuts, young Stein protested. “Don’t cut my hair. I want to have long hair! Why is Hindy allowed to have long hair and not me?” asked Stein, referring to his sister. “You are a holy boy,” said his father. “Girls don’t get to have payos [sidelocks], only holy boys do!” Later, Stein poked at his genitals with a safety pin: “I was angry at ‘it’ for existing, and I wanted to make it feel my pain,” writes Stein. His mother screamed: “Bist meshuge gevorn!” — “Have you gone totally insane?”

Ironically, it was traditional Jewish prayer that held out some hope for young Stein. “Boys were taught to thank God each day by proclaiming, ‘Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who did not make me a woman,” she writes. “But girls say this instead, and so did I: ‘Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has made me according to His will.’” So it was that Stein, at an early age, began to embrace the notion that he may have been born as a boy but God had willed him to be a girl.

“Becoming Eve” is also a glimpse into the history-soaked world of Chasidic Judaism in all of its colorful detail and diversity. Williamsburg was the home of many movements in Chasidism – Satmar, Pupa, Viznitz, Vien, Tzhelim, Skver “and so on.” Several of these movements were represented in Stein’s family, which afforded her a window of opportunity. “So there I was, a mostly Viznitz child attending a school that was dominated by Satmar Hasidim,” she explains. “I was in a perfect position to find a new way to rebel: everyone there followed the rules of the Satmar sect, so I would follow the rules of the Viznitz. It was the perfect strategy for a girl who was attending a boys’ school and wanted to rebel while still being a good student.”

Abby Chava Stein has been hurt, but she is not bitter. And that’s what makes “Becoming Eve” such a sublime and redemptive reading experience.

Much attention was paid to the study of Torah and Talmud, she reveals, but secular instruction was sparing. “I doubt there was a single student who could carry on a full conversation in English,” she recalls. “The last reading book we ever used, an ‘advanced’ one in eighth grade, was a book about the US Mint. It was the only non-Jewish history we ever learned.” Prayer was conducted in Hebrew, and Yiddish was used for everything else. Even so, secular subjects were not the only ones that were neglected. “While Yiddish does have an expression for love, Ich hub dir lieb, I had never heard anyone say it, to me or to anyone else.”

Stein’s gender struggle did not go unnoticed in the boy’s own home. “You are a boy, you are a strange boy,” said his sister Miriam. Stein replied: “I want to live like a girl, but everyone says that I am boy, and I have to follow along.” “ ‘Shtisim,’ Miriam replied, using the Yiddish word for BS. “You have a choice, you are just not trying hard enough!’” And when Stein asked his beloved sister to tell him what to do about the dilemma, she replied: “You have to die and only then will you be reborn as a real girl,” she said. “It is easy, you can do it! Just jump off the balcony.”

Stein readily concedes that her journey to her authentic gender identity led to her departure from Chasidim. “Faith is beautiful for those who possess,” she concludes, “but I’d lost it at age twelve and never got it back.” She found her way to books that questioned the true beliefs of traditional Judaism, including Richard Elliott Friedman’s “Who Wrote the Bible?” and Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” Tellingly, she could not yet read the books in English, “so I read them in their Hebrew translations.” Only much later did she arrive at the affirmation that we encounter at the end of her memoir: “Today I am proudly Jewish, and proudly transgender.”

“Becoming Eve” is a frank account of an exceptional life. Stein is a gifted writer, full of grace and compassion. Although she describes a painful ordeal that began at birth, she recalls her community of origin — and, especially, her own family — with love and respect, even if her parents will no longer speak to her. She dedicates the book to “my dear son, the love of my life.” She has been hurt, but she is not bitter. And that’s what makes “Becoming Eve” such a sublime and redemptive reading experience.

Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is the book editor of the Jewish Journal.