“Shekhinah Speaks” and More: Joy Ladin on the Human-Divine Relationship

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Joy Ladin is joined by Gregg Bordowitz for a conversation about her triptych of books exploring the human-divine relationship – The Book of Anna, Psalms, and Shekhinah Speaks. In her National Jewish Book Award-winning The Book of Anna, Ladin’s language and imagery of sacred Jewish texts tell the narrative of Czech-German Jewish Anna Asher in a concentration camp. Psalms portrays the tempestuous intimacy of the divine-human relationship from the human perspective, while in her new book, Shekhinah Speaks, written in the voice of female aspect of God, Ladin explores the other side of the relationship, divinity’s efforts to convince us that we are truly seen, known, and loved.

Joy Ladin is the author of ten books of poetry, including 2022’s Shekhinah Speaks, National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna, and Lambda Literary Award finalists Impersonation and Transmigration. She has also published a memoir of gender transition, Through the Door of Life, and a groundbreaking work of trans theology, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective. Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, among other honors. She is an emeritus member of the Board of Keshet, an organization devoted to full inclusion of LGTBQ Jews in the Jewish world. 

Gregg Bordowitz is an artist and writer whose most recent book is titled Some Styles of Masculinity (Triple Canopy and D.A.P. 2021). He is also the author of The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986–2003, Volition, and General Idea: Imagevirus. His work has been exhibited widely. 

Gregg Bordowitz © Justin Bettman.