The first publicly transgender woman from an Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community, Abby Stein, joins the health committee with an eye toward advancing LGBTQ+ rights and economic justice.
Featured Image: via Facebook, photo by Katie McCurdy
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is wasting no time staffing up after his win. One week ago, he announced the formation of 17 transition advisory committees made up of more than 400 people who will help with policies and appointments, as he guides New York City’s future forward.
One of the latest additions to the Committee on Health: Rabbi Abby Stein, who happens to be the first publicly open transgender woman from an Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community.
Stein, 34, is a former member of New York’s Ultra Orthodox Jewish community, and grew up in a Hasidic rabbinical family in a Williamsburg enclave. She has described it as an isolated culture—one that shunned modern life, following the laws and practices of 18th Century Eastern Europe, and speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew. She was raised as the eldest boy, the 6th of 13 children and is a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism.
Rabbi Stein earned a rabbinical degree in 2011. One year later, she made her exodus from the Hasidic community in the direction of a feminine identity, leaving almost everything she knew behind and coming out three years later as a woman. She is the author of Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman. It is a coming-of-age account of struggle, revelation and her journey of “shedding of one identity and growing into another.”
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Stein is currently Interim Rabbi at Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives, a progressive synagogue in Brooklyn that self-describes as “a dynamic, independent and aspirationally antiracist Jewish congregation.” As a committed activist, Stein focuses her advocacy on trans rights and on supporting those leaving Ultra-Orthodoxy. “You are not alone” is the message that sits at the core of her mission.
During Mamdani’s electoral bid, she was involved with the grassroots effort, “Jews for Mamdani,” with sights set on LGBTQ+ rights and economic justice—a snug fit with the mayor-elect’s affordability agenda. She has also expressed pride for being “the first pulpit rabbi to have my friend Zohran Kwame Mamdani attend a Shabbat service during [his] campaign… in February, when he was polling at 4%!”
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To date, Mamdani’s transition team is comprised of about 400 people. Stein’s appointment sends a signal: LGBTQ+ perspectives and experiences matter to the incoming administration and to the benefit of the boroughs. In addition to Stein, other LGBTQ community notables on the Committee on Health include Patrick McGovern, CEO of LGBTQ+ healthcare org Callen-Lorde and Dr. Carla Smith, CEO of the NYC LGBT Community Center.