We are grateful to Joy Ladin, PhD and Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler for sharing their insights with us! Please enjoy the conversation recording below.

Joy Ladin, PhD is a teacher, widely published essayist and poet, literary scholar, and nationally known speaker on transgender issues. She is the author of twelve books, including 2021 National Jewish Book Award winner, The Book of Anna, newly published Shekhinah Speaks, and 2018’s The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective. She has a PhD in English Literature from Princeton and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts. Since 2003, Joy has held the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern College of Yeshiva University.

Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler is the Dean of Students and Director of Spiritual Development at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Hasidism and Pastoral Torah. She is also a faculty fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Rabbi Dr. Leib Smokler is the editor of the recently published volume, Torah in a Time of Plague: Historical and Contemporary Jewish Reflections (Ben Yehudah Press 2021), which received a 2021 National Jewish Book Award. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought and her AB from Harvard University. She received ordination from Yeshivat Maharat.