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In the new play Becoming Eve (at New York Theater Workshop until April 27), Chava—a descendent of a dynastic Hasidic rabbinical family—has left her community and is living in the secular world as a woman. As the Jewish high holidays approach, she attempts to come out as trans to her deeply religious father. Armed with ancient texts, she tells him trans people have always existed. (“God made us that way, on purpose.”) The message is simple yet radical. Rather than asking a her father to accept something unfamiliar and unconventional, she’s urging him to embrace tradition.
Alongside this coming-out narrative, Becoming Eve also tells the story of Chava’s early romantic experiences. Even though these queer relationships weren’t socially acceptable, the connections were powerful and affirming.
Based on the 2019 memoir Becoming Eve: My Journey From Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman by Abby Chava Stein and written by playwright Emil Weinstein, the play reminds us that trans love can sustain and inspire people even in the face of rejection.
Amid the show’s busy previews schedule, author Abby Chava Stein, playwright Emil Weinstein, and actor Tommy Dorfman answered Cosmopolitan’s questions about religion, romance, inspiration and identity.
When coming out as a woman to her very religious father, Chava cites religious texts that suggest that “soul and the body can be in mismatch.” Why is it meaningful to find evidence of trans people in religious doctrine?
Stein: My family wasn’t just Hasidic—we often set the tone of what it is to be Hasidic. It’s very much a part of who I am. Any Hasidic home will have an entire bookcase of a few hundred books. Everything in my life as a child was focused on text. It’s a big part of our entire culture. When I was 15, a rabbi pushed me to get into Jewish mysticism. I found 1,800-year-old texts that disagree with the notion that there are only two sexes and texts about reincarnation—it opened up a whole new world for me. It also gave me a lot of pride. Since Jewish texts have begun, we have been aware that gender isn’t black and white. Doesn’t mean everyone agrees, but it’s a strong argument against that this isn’t new.
It should be enough to listen to trans people. Every human being deserves to be listened to. But we live in a society that is obsessed with religion. Finding religious justifications helps a lot of trans people and shuts up a lot of transphobes.
Weinstein: We have such a narrow view of history. If we can zoom out and remember that these conversations have been happening forever and that this is nothing new, then we can break patterns of the patriarchy. We can also reach across the aisle to people who don’t speak like us or who don’t understand like us and try to use their language. That doesn’t always work, but it can bridge the gap.
Though Chava’s relationship with her dad is fraught, there are two largely positive romantic relationships in the play. As a teen, she has an intense flirtation with Chesky that can’t go anywhere because they’re classmates at a boys’ school. She also has a deep but ultimately unsustainable domestic bond with her wife Fraidy. The story is mostly about religious and family acceptance, so why show these other connections as well?
Stein: When you look at stories of trans people and Hasidic people, they’re usually either overly exoticized or overly demonized, but at the end of the day, this is a story about a girl trying to find herself as an adult. It’s a very human story. Chava’s experience at a—quote-unquote—boys-only Hasidic school was very true to my experience. People don’t think a two-year relationship between boys happens there, but it does. At the time, I felt guilty, but looking back, it was beautiful.
Weinstein: The connections to both Fraidy and Chesky are moments of real trans and queer joy. This play is so much about the death of Chava’s relationship with her father that I wanted to show the possibility of sustainable, joyful queer life even inside religious fundamentalism.
Emil, your own wedding was highly publicized and trans-affirming. In this play (or in the other queer TV shows and projects you’ve worked on), do you draw inspiration from your own relationship or the celebration of romantic partnership?
Weinstein: Well, for the girlies who know, my sun is in Virgo in my seventh house of committed partnerships. To me, long-term partnership is everything. I mean that in terms of friendships, work collaborations, and also in terms of my romantic life. My wedding was my baby. I spent a year working on it. I wanted it to be a celebration of weddings in a very queer/trans way and also silly and tacky...because it’s a wedding.
In many ways, this play is a funeral for a relationship between a father and child, but I still want a play to feel like a party. I also want people to feel joy even as they’re feeling other emotions. I’m like Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I just love drama and romance and sex and I love positive chaos and mischief. I definitely learn through relationships with other people and—especially in my 20s—a lot of my tortured romances taught me who I was and who I wasn’t.
Abby, has love (romantic or otherwise) helped you better understand your own gender, identity, or sense of self?
Stein: In so many ways. I didn’t have cultural competency growing up. Hasidism is not the TV definition of a cult, but it’s the dictionary definition of a cult. I knew nothing of the outside world. I’m grateful for all my queer relationships and partnerships no matter how long they lasted. I learned so much about myself and my body from them. Queer people grow together as people and hearing, “I like you the way you are,” has been very affirming.
Tommy, living life in the public eye, as a queer person with an evolving identity, what about this story or the character of Chava appealed to you?
Dorfman: Having an opportunity to play a character from the age of 3 to 25 is a gift so rarely offered to a trans performer—or any performer. I am deeply honored to have this exploration in my life. With every character I approach, I want to ensure I have a reason to explore their humanity. It was clear that I could learn so much from Chava. Her reclamation of womanhood and Jewish identity offered a wellspring of inspiration.
We’re living in a moment when trans people are being discriminated against within schools, health care, and government. Support for anti-trans measures seems to be growing. What’s the best approach for dealing with loved ones who use religion and tradition to discredit their experiences?
Stein: There are two kinds of people who use religion to justify transphobia. One genuinely believes it’s against their religious beliefs. You can have a conversation with those people. When I published a list of the Jewish texts I use to understand gender and identity, some people who are fully religious in the most intense way reached out to me and said, “Interesting—I’ve never thought about this.”
But the vast majority of transphobic people are using religion to justify their transphobia. Those people? You can’t have a conversation with. The easiest way to deal with them is to cut them out of your life. Sad to say, but you just need to stick to your experience and not let anyone challenge it. No debates. Just be like, “This is who I am. This is my lived experience. This is my story.”
For an expanded list of resources specific to the trans community, click here.
