March 20, 2023
2023-03-20T19:00:00
Virtual - LGBTQ+ Book Club: Read "Becoming Eve" *For 15-100
Monday, March 20, 2023
We are so pleased to be partnering with the Peabody Institute Library (Peabody, MA) to bring this book club for the LGBTQ+ community! and allies! If you are between the ages of 15-100 (yes, really!) and would like to chat about books that celebrate LGBTQ+ lives, and to use books as a springboard to discuss the challenges, we hope you can join us. This month's book selection is "Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman" by Abby Stein. This book club will be facilitated by librarians from the LGBTQ+ community.
About the book:
The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a woman Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life. Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be?
About the author:
Abby Stein is a Jewish educator & rabbi, award winning author, speaker, and activist. She was born and raised in a Hasidic family of rabbinic descent, and is a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism. Abby attended Yeshiva, completing a rabbinical degree in 2011. In 2012, she left the Hasidic world to explore a self-determined life. In 2015 Abby came out as a woman of trans experience. Since coming out, she has been working to raise support and awareness for trans rights and those leaving Ultra-Orthodoxy.
Her story has been covered in the New York Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Jewish Daily Forward, Daily Mail, NBC, Vogue, InStyle, and more, as well as live appearances on CNN, Fox News, HuffPost Live, ShowTime, NowThis, PopSugar and internationally. In 2016, Abby was named by The Jewish Week as one of the “36 Under 36” young Jews who are inspiring change in the world, and in 2019 she was named by The Forward as one of the “Forward 50” most influential American Jews. In 2018 she was awarded the Pride Award by the Brooklyn Borough President.
She studied gender studies and political science at Columbia University in New York City. She currently serves on the National Council for Jewish Women’s “Rabbis For Repro” Advisory Board, as well as several other rabbinical boards.
You can order a copy of the book from our online catalog or we'll have several copies in the library if you'd like to come by and pick one up.
Please register for this event. You will receive a program link in the confirmation and reminder emails. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at ashlandprograms@minlib.net.
This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Ashland Public Library and the Peabody Institute Library (Peabody).
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