But devout prayer and daydreams were only able to sustain Abby for so long, and by the age of 12, she began to question God, religion, and increasingly, her own identity.

Abby eventually met a rabbi who was dedicated to the study of kabbalah. He introduced her to the ancient Jewish mysticism and it resonated.

“Gender is quite fluid in kabbalah. And there’s a lot of talk of people being in different bodies than where they’re supposed to be,” she shares.

The strong tide of the Vizhnitz tradition swept Abby along as she stayed on the pre-determined path taken by so many before her. She underwent shidduch, married by the age of 18 and began her rabbinical studies.

“Not a lot of people are ordained as a rabbi by 20,” tells Abby, “but I did that because it was a way of forgetting about everything else, by immersing myself in that, all the way.

“And the other part of it was, I always felt that if I’m going to rebel against something, I want to know exactly what it is that I’m rebelling against!” she says with a laugh.

While Abby wrestled with living life in the gender ascribed to her, it was the arrival of her son, in the year following her marriage that was “my final punchline”.

“The idea of gender was punching me in the face,” she says.

“I think it was one thing for me in trying to deal with my own identity, my own struggles and trying to suppress what I felt – which sometimes worked, and sometimes didn’t.”

Abby remembers the usual excited speculation leading into her child’s birth; was the baby going to be a boy? Was she going to be a girl?

“And it made me think, no one takes into account if the baby will be physically one gender, but identify as another.

“Having to face that, in a big way, was what ended up weighing down on me even more.”

In January 2012, Abby used her phone on Shabbat for the first time.