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These queer newlyweds are modeling Jewish joy for LGBTQ youth
(New York Jewish Week) — The table at the center of the room, set for 16, was festooned with a rainbow tablecloth and sparkles, and surrounded by about a dozen college-age guests. At its head were two chairs decorated with rainbow necklaces and flags and set for the guests of honor: Both place settings came with a headband with the word “bride” written across the top.
The group had come together last week for a sheva brachot, a Jewish celebration in which loved ones and community members gather in the week following a wedding to bless the newlyweds over a festive meal. The celebrations are common among observant couples.
But for many of the celebrants, even those who had attended other such festive meals, the dinner was still a milestone: It was their first time attending a sheva brachot for an LGBTQ couple, Rachael Fried and Henna Warman, who were married on Sept. 3.
The dinner was hosted by Jewish Queer Youth, and for one of the brides, Rachael Fried, it was more than just a celebration of her marriage. It was also a step forward for the cause she champions: supporting Orthodox LGBTQ youth and showing them that they, too, can live full lives despite Orthodox Judaism’s traditional rejection of LGBTQ relationships.
The festive dinner was part of JQY’s “Share your simcha” initiative, meant to show young Orthodox LGBTQ teens what their futures can look like. (Abbie Sophia)
While some Orthodox communities have tried to make space for LGBTQ members, the vast majority of Orthodox rabbis, citing prohibitions in traditional Jewish law, do not conduct LGBTQ weddings. Orthodox LGBTQ Jews have said they feel marginalized and discriminated against in the communities where they grew up, and recent manifestations of that discrimination have catalyzed JQY’s work.
“Queer youth from Orthodox homes don’t really get to celebrate or see a lot of communal happiness or shared queer joy today,” Fried, 36, who is JQY’s executive director, told the New York Jewish Week. “It can also be really hard for a lot of JQYers to envision a future for themselves.”
JQY serves Orthodox youth ages 13 to 23, and the celebration was part of a larger initiative the group is launching called “Share your simcha,” a Hebrew term connoting a lifecycle celebration. The initiative invites queer Jews celebrating various life events to share their experiences with JQY members so that the young people can see a world in which they, too, can celebrate traditional Jewish milestones and other joyous moments.
“When you hear about queer life experiences, you usually hear lots of negative ones — you don’t really hear about the positive ones,” said Shlomo Satt, who attended the sheva bracha with his fiancé, Mattan Rozenek. “There’s certainly no frame of reference for queer joy or queer simchas. How many gay weddings as a teenager did I see? Zero. We’ve never been to a gay wedding and we’re getting married.”
Satt, who grew up in a Haredi community in Far Rockaway, Queens, said that he chose to join JQY for a sheva brachot by “putting myself in the perspective of the young queer person.”
“It would have meant the world to me to realize I don’t have to sacrifice anything. I can have a life. I don’t need to lose anything,” he said.
JQY’s entire membership was invited to Thursday night’s celebration, which took place in Times Square at the JQY “Drop-In Center,” a space where members can meet with social workers and psychologists, eat snacks, participate in support groups and hang out with fellow queer Jews.
The meal carried many of the hallmarks of a standard sheva brachot, and a few differences. It took place five days after the wedding and guests ate a sumptuous dinner of baked ziti, sushi, salad and cupcakes.
But instead of the seven blessings traditionally recited at the end of the meal — a repetition of the blessings said under the chuppah — guests went around the room offering personalized blessings for the couple’s marriage and future.
Amid those blessings, one JQY member shared a memory of when Fried helped them navigate a stalled subway after a JQY meeting late one evening. They wished upon Fried and Warman that “even when taking unexpected paths, they will always find their way back home.”
Others wished the couple “a lifetime of happiness” and to “appreciate the mundaneness and the quiet moments of living every day with your soulmate.”
Fried and Warman meant online during the pandemic; they were married in Connecticut on Sept. 3. (Abbie Sophia)
Fried and Warman, a 32-year-old psychiatric nurse practitioner, also offered to answer any questions about the logistics — and emotions — involved in planning and executing a queer Jewish wedding.
The two met on the Jewish dating app JSwipe at the beginning of the pandemic. Both grew up in traditional Orthodox communities — Fried in Fairfield, CT and Warman in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush.
One attendee asked them why they decided to switch the words of one of the seven blessings from “chosson v’kallah” — bride and groom — to “Rachel v’Henna,” their names. They said it was a friend’s idea and that it made the blessings feel more natural and personal.
Another asked what the biggest surprise of the wedding was, and a third what they felt most unprepared for.
“The biggest surprise was that, for all the stress of worrying about who would come and who wouldn’t come from my family, it didn’t end up mattering at all once the wedding was happening,” Warman said. “It was just such a happy day, I really couldn’t notice or care.”
And when it came to what they were least prepared for, the answer could have come from any newlywed: “Keeping up the stamina of dancing the whole night,” Fried said.
Those answers could be of use to Satt and Rozenek, the engaged couple at the dinner, who said they hope to host a sheva brachot with JQY when they get married next month. Rozenek said he wished he had been able to meet queer, observant couples earlier in life — not just so he could see his identity reflected, but for help answering the kinds of questions asked by attendees at last week’s event.
“It’s like networking, so to speak,” Rozenek said. “Once you know somebody [queer] who is getting married, you can say to yourself, ‘If and when I have a wedding, I know where I can turn to.’ We want to continue that train and help people realize: you are not the first person to ever do this,” he said.
The “Share your simcha” initiative was something Fried and other JQY staff had been formulating in recent years as a way to “bring Jewish queer joy to our community,” Fried said. She added, “The tagline for this initiative is to ‘celebrate Jewish queer joy today and picture a queer Jewish tomorrow.’ That is exactly what we’re trying to do.”
JQY decided to expedite the program in June, when the wedding of two Orthodox women went viral in Orthodox Whatsapp groups and on Twitter, where users lambasted the ceremony. In light of that, JQY wanted to show their support and joy for the couple, who had been members of the organization in the past, Fried said.
The launch of the initiative also follows what has been a busy year for the organization, which has been involved in an ongoing legal battle against Yeshiva University, the Modern Orthodox flagship, over its refusal to recognize an LGBTQ student group. After a judge ruled that the university must recognize the club, called the YU Pride Alliance, the university temporarily suspended all student clubs at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year. JQY responded by offering funding and event space to any student club affected by that decision. (The Pride Alliance later put its demands on hold pending the legal appeals process, and the school’s student groups were reinstated.)
Fried and Warman’s celebration was the fourth hosted by JQY since June as part of the “simcha” initiative. There have also been two other weddings, as well as an upsherin, a ceremony held at a boy’s third birthday in which his hair is cut for the first time. The boy’s two mothers were previously members of JQY.
In addition to being a way to showcase queer joy for younger Jews, Fried and Warman said it was a treat to be celebrated by a community that can relate to their identities.
“As much as this is for the youth, it’s also for the people who are celebrating,” Fried said. “I don’t really get to have a celebration where it is just the queer community celebrating my simcha, so it’s cool to have this queer space for this queer simcha.”
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The post These queer newlyweds are modeling Jewish joy for LGBTQ youth appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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America Orphaned Charlie Kirk’s Children — We Must Recommit to a Society of Open Debate
Roses and candles are placed next to a picture of Charlie Kirk during a vigil under the line “In Memory of Charlie Kirk, for freedom, patriotism, and justice” in front of the Embassy of the United States after US right-wing activist, commentator, Charlie Kirk, an ally of US President Donald Trump, was shot dead during an event at Utah Valley University, Orem, US, in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Annegret Hilse
Last week, America orphaned two young children.
Charlie Kirk — a husband, a father, and a son — was murdered for his politics. He leaves behind a three-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. Before we argue motives or policies, we should sit with this simple fact: in today’s America, toddlers lost their father because of what he believed. What kind of legacy is that for them?
Political violence has scarred this nation before. In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles, and Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis. Those assassinations did more than take lives. They deepened mistrust, fueled cynicism, and plunged a divided country into turmoil.
We appear to be back in that dangerous territory. The attempted assassination of President Trump last summer should have been a moment of unity. Instead, it was quickly absorbed into the partisan crossfire, treated as conspiracy fodder rather than as a flashing red warning.
Now comes the murder of Charlie Kirk. Whatever one thinks of his politics, Kirk embodied a younger generation of conservative voices: brash, combative, sometimes polarizing — but willing to engage with opposing ideas. He didn’t hide from debate. He invited it. That spirit, not the bullet that killed him, should be his legacy.
I’ve seen firsthand how difficult honest engagement has become. I recently completed my first year as CEO of The Algemeiner, a storied Jewish online media outlet. We are broadly center-right, but our mission has always been universalism, which is the translation of the Yiddish word Algemeiner: to provide space for diverse perspectives, including those we disagree with.
In today’s climate, that modest aspiration feels almost radical. Too many Americans don’t just want to win an argument. They want to delegitimize the other side. The result is echo chambers where grievances fester and extremists thrive.
History tells us where that road leads. The political murders of the 1960s did not settle disputes. They destabilized a nation. We should have learned then that violence is not catharsis. It is contagious.
The stakes today are not abstract. They live in the faces of Kirk’s daughter and son — and all of our children. What kind of America will they inherit? One where political disagreements are handled with contempt and violence — or one where adversaries still recognize each other as fellow citizens?
A reset is urgently needed. That doesn’t mean surrendering convictions. It means recovering the courage to listen, to tolerate, and to argue without erasing. Leaders on both sides must resist the urge to score points from tragedy and instead cool the temperature. Media institutions, including my own, must hold space for genuine, even uncomfortable debate. Citizens must step back from the dopamine rush of outrage and recommit to the hard work of coexistence.
Charlie Kirk’s murder is a tragedy. It is also a mirror. It reflects the society we have allowed ourselves to become — and dares us to choose differently. His children will grow up in the country we shape now. Let it be one where their father’s legacy is remembered not only for what he said, but for his willingness to engage across divides.
That is the democratic inheritance worth fighting for — not with bullets, but with words.
David M. Cohen is the Chief Executive Officer of The Algemeiner.
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The Price of Abandoning Jewish College Students (PART TWO)
Part one of this article appeared here.
As Jewish families vote with their feet, abandoning hostile campuses for welcoming ones, elite universities face a reckoning.
The exodus documented in Part 1 of my article isn’t just a demographic shift — it’s an indictment of institutions that once symbolized Jewish achievement in America.
Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and their peers are scrambling to respond. Task forces are being formed. Listening sessions are being scheduled, and security measures are being enhanced. But these surface-level responses cannot mask a deeper rot: a campus culture that has normalized hostility toward Jewish students while administrators equivocate and Jewish organizations struggle to mount an effective defense.
The question is no longer whether Jewish students will remain at these institutions. That verdict is being rendered in admissions offices across the country. The question now is what this abandonment will mean — for the universities losing their Jewish communities, for the schools gaining them, and for American higher education itself.
Elite Campuses Have Not Changed
Some elite northern universities have responded to criticism, but their actions reveal the depth of the problem rather than solve it.
Harvard recently agreed to cover security costs for its Hillel chapter, a basic safety measure that should never have been in question.
Columbia established a Task Force on Antisemitism and held listening sessions after months of campus upheaval. Yet these measures came only after Congressional hearings, donor revolts, and the resignation of two Ivy League presidents. The very need for “task forces” to address antisemitism in 2024, and debates over whether to fund security for Jewish students, speaks to how far these institutions have fallen.
But these surface-level responses cannot mask the underlying culture that remains hostile. Anti-Israel activism is normalized, sometimes even celebrated, while openly Zionist students are treated as suspect. Student governments pass BDS resolutions while refusing to condemn Hamas.
Professors who call October 7 “exhilarating” face no consequences, while students who tear down hostage posters are protected as exercising free speech. Jewish students report being excluded from progressive groups unless they denounce Israel, forced to pass ideological litmus tests that no other minority group faces.
Diversity and inclusion are loudly championed for some groups — but withheld from Jews.
The same DEI offices that rush to support other communities remain silent when Jewish students face harassment, or worse, frame Jews as white oppressors undeserving of protection. Orientation programs that celebrate every form of identity offer nothing for Jewish students. Ethnic studies departments that explore every Diaspora experience somehow omit Jewish history and culture.
Meanwhile, administrators hedge, equivocate, and fear controversy more than they fear injustice. They take days to condemn antisemitic vandalism but hours to denounce other forms of bias.
They parse the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, while Jewish students are told to hide their Stars of David. They invoke “context” and “nuance” when asked if calling for genocide against Jews violates campus policies, but show no such hesitation when other groups are threatened.
The irony is bitter.
A century ago, these same schools used explicit quotas to keep Jews out. When quotas fell, Jewish students and faculty showed up, helping make these universities world-class institutions. Now, through neglect and bias, those same institutions are driving Jewish students away.
Jewish Institutions Have Also Fallen Short
Universities bear primary responsibility for campus culture. But Jewish communal organizations have also failed to meet this moment.
I have argued that Jewish institutions have been far too focused on statements and elite conversations, and not nearly focused enough on real, on-the-ground action. Students need more than words: they need physical presence, legal support, and rapid response.
There are bright spots.
Hillel’s Campus Climate Initiative is doing important work, and some ADL and AJC interventions have made a difference.
As I documented in my recent AEI piece at The Algemeiner, Jewish fraternities like AEPi have become critical lifelines for Zionist and Jewish students, with brothers creating safety networks, walking each other to class, and providing the protection universities fail to offer.
But these efforts are patchy and uneven. Too often, a lone Chabad rabbi or Hillel director ends up serving as the first and last line of defense for hundreds of students, while national organizations issue press releases from afar.
Grassroots groups like Jewish on Campus and Students Supporting Israel are filling the gap heroically. Fraternity brothers are literally serving as bodyguards. Student volunteers are documenting incidents, organizing counter-protests, and providing real-time support to threatened peers. But they should not have to shoulder this burden alone.
The fact that 19-year-old fraternity brothers have become de facto security forces, and that student-run Instagram accounts are doing more to combat antisemitism than university administrations, reveals a complete institutional abdication. The lack of robust institutional backing is one reason families are choosing to leave hostile campuses rather than fight to change them.
A Debate About Leaving vs. Staying
These institutional failures have forced families into a difficult choice. This raises a painful debate within the Jewish community. Many believe Jewish students should stay and fight. These schools, after all, were built and sustained in part by Jewish effort and philanthropy. Walking away can feel like surrendering hard-won ground.
This instinct to fight is noble. And there are students and organizations committed to asserting Jewish presence on these campuses. But the data tell a different story.
Nearly two-thirds of Jewish parents are now eliminating colleges from their lists due to antisemitism. Enrollment numbers at elite northeastern schools are dropping. Simultaneously, Jewish life at southern universities is exploding.
Families are making a rational choice. They are prioritizing their children’s safety, dignity, and joy over symbolic battles. Leaving is not surrender; it is choosing to thrive rather than endure.
The message from Jewish students and their parents could not be clearer: we will go where we are welcome, and we will leave where we are not.
This shift also reflects a broader truth: the old northeastern elites no longer have a monopoly on intellectual vitality or success. Southern schools like Vanderbilt, Emory, and Tulane now offer world-class academics, robust Jewish communities, and a culture of belonging. Families are realizing that the future can be built elsewhere.
The Stakes for Universities
The consequences for elite schools are profound. They are not just losing students; they are losing some of their most engaged, high-achieving, and civically minded young people. Jewish students have historically been leaders in campus organizations, from student government to academic clubs, from literary magazines to debate teams.
They’ve been Rhodes Scholars and valedictorians, startup founders and social activists. These are the students who go on to become major donors, serve on boards of trustees, and send their own children back to their alma maters.
They are also risking long-term philanthropic support. Jewish alumni networks have been essential to these institutions’ growth. Names like Bloomberg at Johns Hopkins, Lauder at Penn, and countless others have transformed campuses through their generosity. If their loyalty wanes, endowments and influence will follow. We’re already seeing early signs: major Jewish donors pulling funding, reconsidering bequests, and redirecting their philanthropy toward schools that protect Jewish students.
The unraveling of this partnership will reshape higher education. Institutions that fought so hard to overcome their antisemitic past have allowed it to resurface in new forms, driving away the community that helped make them great.
A Broader Realignment and What Comes Next
Jewish students are at the forefront of a larger realignment in American higher education. Many non-Jewish students are also rejecting elite northern campuses. They are seeking environments that feel open, balanced, and sane: places where education takes priority over permanent protest.
Jewish families are simply the first to act. Their migration is a leading indicator of wider discontent.
Fall 2025 marks a turning point. The start of the academic year and the High Holy Days have converged to highlight a stark reality: Jewish students are voting with their feet.
Elite schools could choose to reform by enforcing clear standards, protecting all students equally, and rebuilding trust. Jewish institutions could choose to step up, placing resources and people where they are needed most.
But if they do not, this Fall’s movement will become a permanent migration. The Jewish campus map will be redrawn, and the old hierarchies of prestige will crumble.
The Ivy League once represented the pinnacle of Jewish aspiration. Now, for many families, it represents a question: Why fight to stay where we are not wanted, when there are places ready to welcome us?
This isn’t just a story about Jewish students or campus antisemitism. It’s about the collapse of institutional trust, the failure of moral leadership, and the quiet power of families making rational choices about their children’s futures. The map of Jewish campus life is being redrawn not by quotas or decrees, but by thousands of individual decisions that add up to a historic realignment.
And in that choice lies both a condemnation of what these institutions have become and hope for what American higher education might yet be.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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How Fringe Israeli Academics Are Emboldening Boycotts Against Israel
A demonstration of the group Europe Palestine to demand the boycott of Israel, in Paris, France on May 15, 2022. Photo: Xose Bouzas / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
While foreign activist groups drive much of the global push to isolate Israeli universities, some of the movement’s legitimacy is supplied from within.
A segment of Israeli academics actively support or collaborate with boycott campaigns — either out of genuine conviction that Israel is committing crimes in Gaza, or from a calculated belief that distancing the academy from the government will shield it from international sanctions.
Both approaches risk backfiring by handing boycott advocates the very moral and political ammunition they need to target Israel’s academic community.
A recent report documented 500 cases of academic boycotts, ranging from restricted access to funding to demands that Israeli scholars condemn their own country before being allowed to participate in conferences. One of the most high-profile incidents occurred in August 2024, when the International Federation of Medical Student Associations (IFMSA) suspended the Federation of Israel Medical Students (FIMS) over the war in Gaza.
According to Federation chairwoman Miri Schwimmer, hostility toward the Israeli delegation had already been on display months earlier at the European District Conference in Malta.
The hostility escalated at the IFMSA international conference in Finland, when the IFMSA decided to vote to suspend Israel. Before Schwimmer could speak against the suspension, attendees were warned that they could leave if they did not want to hear the position of the Israeli representative. Nearly half the room, including most of the executive committee and the federation’s president, walked out. They returned only after her remarks and voted without hearing Israel’s position.
Working with Israel’s Health and Foreign Affairs ministries, allied medical students, and groups such as the World Medical Association and the American Jewish Medical Association, Schwimmer participated in months of direct talks with IFMSA leadership. In March 2025, the federation overturned its decision.
But the threat is not limited to medicine. In June 2024, the World Society of Sociology suspended the Israeli Association for refusing to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza. Troublingly, a growing number of Israeli academics and student groups have been supporting boycotts of their own universities, along with anti-Israel activists.
An activist organization called Academy for Equality hosted a webinar with UN Special Rapporteur and anti-Israel ideologue, Francesca Albanese, where an Israeli participant asked whether there were “ways that Academy for Equality and our students in Israel can strategize with students in Europe who are fighting to cut ties with Israel.”
There are also Israeli academics who sign petitions accusing the Jewish State of war crimes, including the deliberate starvation of civilians.
Professor Emmanuel Dalla Torre of Bar-Ilan University, a member of its committee against academic boycotts, sees three main motivations.
Israeli academics who sign these sorts of petitions consist of either those who genuinely believe the allegations, those who fear of being ostracized by their international peers, and those who think that they are actually protecting Israeli academia by trying to distance themselves from the actions of their government.
Dalla Torre refers to the academics in the third category as taking “a naive approach,” warning that “letters like this simply bring weapons to those who want to boycott the State of Israel. They don’t make the distinction between the academy, the Israeli economy, and the government.”
His view is echoed by Professor Alessandra Veronese of the University of Pisa in Italy, who fought her university’s decision to cut ties with Reichman University and the Hebrew University. Veronese insists that such letters and petitions are useless because “these [Italian] professors don’t know anything about Israel … what they think is that in Israel, the entire population is happy about the war.”
Further, Professor Veronese explained that the level of antisemitism in Italian academia as “very very dangerous” and described her university’s animosity as hypocritical. This heavily suggests that all efforts to appease these anti-Israel professors and societies are made in vain.
Israeli academia is clearly under serious threat of isolation. While antisemitism and the war in Gaza are key drivers, internal actors, born of either conviction or strategic calculation, are emboldening those who seek to delegitimize and exclude Israel from the global academic community.
And therein lies the irony: the very voices within Israel that believe they are shielding the academy from harm may be among the forces making it more vulnerable.
In the hands of boycott advocates, their statements against the Jewish State become proof that the academy itself accepts the accusations against Israel, erasing the intended distinction between Israeli scholarship and Israeli policy, and helping to justify the case for its isolation.
Shahar Grufy is a member of CAMERA’s Israel office.