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Surging LGBTQ enrollment in Jewish seminaries signals ‘astounding’ shift in US rabbinate
(JTA) — Hannah Karpel-Pomerantz and her wife met as rabbinical school classmates in Jerusalem four years ago, bonding over their love of Jewish texts and rituals. This August, as they began their final two years of school, Hebrew Union College splashed the couple across its website in an essay celebrating their relationship.
“HUC wanted to feature me and my wife as a love story — as something that makes the school look good,” Karpel-Pomerantz said. “It signals that American progressive Jewish life has evolved to the point where LGBTQ inclusion is a no-brainer.”
A new national study suggests just how deeply that shift has taken hold: 51% of the rabbinical students surveyed identified as LGBTQ+. It’s an eye-popping finding that provides the first empirical evidence for a phenomenon many in the non-Orthodox rabbinate have been noticing for years.
“If you take a historical perspective, it is rather astounding, given the fact that rabbinical schools weren’t even accepting LGBTQ students until the 1990s or later,” said Jonathan Krasner, a professor of Jewish studies at Brandeis University.
The demographic shift can be linked to a broader transformation in the rabbinate, as the old “sage on the stage” model gives way to a more pastoral, responsive style of leadership. Aspiring rabbis are entering the field with new expectations, while congregations are placing unprecedented demands on clergy, fueling a placement crisis that has left many pulpits empty.
As they make the case for their students, educators say LGBTQ rabbis, shaped by the long fight for inclusion, are emerging as the leaders the community needs amid polarization and rising antisemitism.
“For 23 years, SVARA has invited queer Jews into the long project of upgrading the tradition,” said Rabbi Benay Lappe, founder of the queer yeshiva whose alumni now populate rabbinical schools across the country. “Queer people understand upheaval, resilience, and creativity — the same toolkit that catalyzed rabbinic Judaism itself. When people who’ve had to reimagine their own lives step into spiritual leadership, they bring clarity and empathy that enrich the whole community.”
Lappe added, “The question is not ‘Why so many queer people?’ but rather, ‘Why is this extraordinarily good news for the future of Judaism?’”
The new research, published by a group called Atra, bills itself as the first comprehensive, cross-denominational study of the American rabbinate. But its headline-grabbing LGBTQ+ figure requires some clarification: It is based on a survey of 181 volunteer respondents, with limited participation from Orthodox students, making it impossible to know how precisely it reflects the entire population of aspiring rabbis.
Still, the study’s lead researcher, Wendy Rosov, said the finding should not be dismissed. “Even if the estimate is high, it’s not far off — it is not a crazy statistic,” she said.
Rosov noted that seminaries do not systematically track students’ sexual orientation or gender identity, but several told her team informally that as many as half of their current students identify as LGBTQ+. She also pointed to broader survey data showing rising rates of LGBTQ identification among young Americans — and among young Jews in particular — which helps explain the pattern.
There is clear year-over-year evidence within the study itself. Among surveyed rabbis ordained before 2004, only 7% identified as LGBTQ+. The share rises to 15% for those ordained between 2005 and 2014, 29% for the 2015-2024 cohort, and 51% among current students.
The study does not attempt to explain the trend, and Rosov declined to offer theories, citing a lack of data.
Scholars and educators expect the dramatic numbers to stir murmurs in some corners of the Jewish community about the “queering of the rabbinate.” Krasner said those anxieties echo an earlier chapter in Jewish history, when women began enrolling in rabbinical schools in significant numbers and some predicted a “feminization” of Judaism and a loss of rabbinic authority.
“Those concerns were overblown,” he said. What mattered then, he added, is what matters now: that people can see themselves reflected in their religious leaders. “I’m not worried about the rabbinate ‘going queer.’ We should be cautious about that kind of anxiety.”
Deborah Waxman, president of Reconstructing Judaism, remembers that earlier era firsthand. When she came out to her mother during her first year of rabbinical school in 1993, the reaction was immediate — and telling.
“My mother cried,” Waxman recalled. “She said, it’s already going to be so hard for you as a woman rabbi, I’m so worried that you will never get employed as a lesbian.”
At the time, Waxman said, those fears weren’t unfounded. Many queer students worried that being open about who they were could jeopardize their ordination or leave them unemployable. Waxman’s career bridges both eras, and she has learned to reinterpret the social anxieties of the past as markers of how dramatically the landscape has shifted.
One leading theory among rabbinic educators is that the surge in LGBTQ students represents not only a new openness but also generations of pent-up aspiration. For much of modern American Jewish history, LGBTQ Jews were barred from the rabbinate. Once that barrier fell, seminary leaders say, the long-deferred interest began to surface.
Andrew Rehfeld, president of Hebrew Union College, calls it a “backlog of interest.”
“For years, gay and lesbian Jews were excluded not only from leadership, but from many communities themselves,” Rehfeld said. “Now that the doors are open, it’s not surprising there’s an equilibrium happening.”
Shuly Rubin Schwartz, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary and a historian of American Judaism, said she is reminded of the pattern that unfolded before. When the rabbinate first opened its doors to women, she said, there was an initial wave of interest from people who had long been denied access.
“You have a group that has been marginalized throughout Jewish history finally given the opportunity to exercise leadership,” she said. “What we’re seeing now is similar.”
Another theory holds that the trend reflects a deeper affinity between queer identity and Jewish spiritual life.
Lappe sees this clearly through SVARA, her queer-centered yeshiva, where thousands of LGBTQ Jews have engaged in Talmud study over the past two decades. Many of her students later apply to rabbinical school.
“This shift isn’t an accident,” she said, referring to the new study. “It’s a predictable outcome of a tradition that has always been renewed by people moving through upheaval. When people who have had to courageously reimagine their own lives step into spiritual leadership, they bring clarity, empathy, and a commitment to justice that enriches the whole community. That shows you where this energy is coming from.”
For many aspiring rabbis, that process begins long before they arrive on campus.
Karpel-Pomerantz said LGBTQ Jews often come to the rabbinate with a level of self-awareness that grows out of the work of understanding their identities. “LGBTQ people are sometimes almost on the fast track to having done a lot of the soul-searching that can help prepare people for the rabbinate in a meaningful way,” she said.
The increase in LGBTQ enrollment has come in tandem with an evolution in the role of a rabbi. Once defined primarily as a learned authority who delivered sermons and rendered halakhic decisions, the rabbi was positioned above the community. Today, rabbis are expected to serve as pastoral caregivers, counselors, organizers and companions in moments of crisis. Their authority is less formal and more relational, grounded in presence, empathy and trust rather than in scholarly distance.
Krasner noted that LGBTQ Americans are generally overrepresented in “helping professions” like social work, counseling, and education. Rabbinic work, increasingly centered on pastoral care, fits that pattern.
Karpel-Pomerantz sees the same phenomenon in herself and in many peers. “I’m in rabbinical school because I want to be a clinical pastoral educator,” she said. “First, I need to become a hospital chaplain, and then I can learn to teach other people how to do it.”
Even as seminaries become more welcoming, the job market is still uneven for LGBTQ clergy. Rabbi Leora Kaye, director of career services for the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the association for Reform rabbis, said she tries to prepare students honestly.
“I can’t promise them they won’t encounter bias,” she said. “What I do promise is that we’ll do everything we can to make it as safe as possible. We respond when situations arise. We don’t let people face it alone.”
As a sign of the Reform movement’s commitment, she cited anti-bias training that is now a requirement for search committees in congregations before they begin interviewing rabbis.
Often, Kaye said, LGBTQ graduates find congregations that are enthusiastic about their leadership.
“We see many situations where sexuality or gender identity is not an issue at all, or where it’s embraced,” she said. “Communities want rabbis who are compassionate, grounded, and capable. And many of them are explicitly seeking rabbis who reflect their own diversity.”
Rehfeld also said that despite broad acceptance in many congregations, discrimination still happens. He recalled how one HUC graduate ended an interview process after being asked inappropriate questions.
“The harm was real for the student,” he said. “But the bigger loss was for the congregation. Discrimination keeps talent out of the pool.”
The student ultimately found a “fantastic” pulpit, he added: “They still ended up in middle America in a relatively rural place that they never thought about living.” He sees the outcome as a testament to the movement’s ethical guidelines and support systems.
Both working as rabbinic interns at congregations in the Los Angeles area, Karpel-Pomerantz and her wife feel confident about what they have to offer and optimistic about what will come after graduation.
“At this particular moment in history, there is something really valuable about people who have multiple marginalized identities being willing to take on the role of leader of communities,” she said. “And I hope that our communities are able to see the presence of queer folks as the gift that I believe it to be.”
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A gunman attacked a Michigan synagogue. Here’s what happens to the community next
On Thursday, a driver rammed his pickup truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a large Reform Temple about 25 miles from downtown Detroit. Blessedly, there were no casualties besides the shooter, whom security guards rapidly engaged. One guard was injured. Aside from that, everyone who was inside the synagogue, including 140 children attending school there, was unscathed.
“There’s hopeful news and there’s sad news about the aftermaths of these shootings,” said Mark Oppenheimer, author of Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood, a methodical, lyrical look at what happened to the Pittsburgh neighborhood shattered by the Oct. 27, 2018 shooting that left 11 people dead.
The hopeful news is that older, established Jewish communities can rely on close, long-established bonds within and outside the community to get them through.
The sad news is that people unaffected by the shooting tend to move on and forget.
“So whereas this will haunt the Jewish community for years,” Oppenheimer told me in a phone interview, “most people outside the Jewish community will quickly move on to whatever the next horrible incident is.”
What happens next
Authorities have not confirmed the attacker’s motive, although he has been identified as a Michigan man who was born in Lebanon. But among all the unknowns, we do know a few things for certain.
We know that a great tragedy was averted due to the guards’ bravery and expertise, and due to the planning and preparation of synagogue leadership.
We know such attacks have gone from being extremely rare in the United States, to being more frequent.
And we know that what happens now, in the aftermath, matters a great deal.
That’s why, in writing about the worst mass shooting in American Jewish history, Oppenheimer spent most of his time researching what came after the atrocity.
“When the cameras and the police tape were gone, what stayed behind?”Oppenheimer, who teaches at Washington University’s John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, wrote in the book’s introduction.
The power of connection
Both the Tree of Life synagogue and Temple Israel are older, deeply entrenched congregations with close ties to a number of local communities — Jewish and non-Jewish alike.
In one chapter of Squirrel Hill titled, simply, “Gentiles,” Oppenheimer chronicles how non-Jews came to the aid of the stricken congregation, including clergy, politicians and neighbors.
Emblematic of that was the capacity crowd of 2,500 people that came together at Soldiers and Sailors auditorium on the one-year anniversary of the shooting, where law enforcement, politicians and Christian, Muslim and Jewish clergy all spoke.
“There are usually people in government, in community organizations, in neighborhood organizations, who reach out, who want the Jews to know that they’re not alone,” said Oppenheimer.
Evidence of such connection was already on show in Michigan on Thursday. One reporter interviewed a woman praying outside the synagogue, who said, through tears, that the “Holy Spirit” had told her to turn her car around once she saw police cars racing past her to the scene, and go lend support.
In Pittsburgh, the 2018 shooting was also a time for the Jewish community itself to come together.
Squirrel Hill’s close-knit Jewish community crossed denominational divides to show support. An Orthodox rabbi organized a spreadsheet to manage the 24-hour vigils Jewish law prescribes over the bodies of the dead prior to burial.
“In Squirrel Hill, one of the nice things is there is a lot of community and solidarity across denominational lines and levels of observance,” said Oppenheimer, “and that’s pretty rare in American Judaism. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out in Detroit.”
A new reality
Iin recent years, the need for solidarity and resilience in the face of such attacks has become, unfortunately, more apparent.
When Oppenheimer wrote his book, he was able to state the shooting was “a unique event” in American history. It’s true that until the Tree of Life massacre, antisemitic violence had claimed just 26 lives in U.S. history. The U.S., more than any Western country, and far more than Israel itself, had truly been a safe haven for Jews.
Since Squirrel Hill, six more people have died in four attacks. The previously well-earned sense of safety has been shattered.
“While the odds that any given Jew will be attacked remain quite low, it is obviously pretty terrifying,” said Oppenheimer.
Some critics of the national focus that fell on Squirrel Hill after the Tree of Life shooting argued that the tragedy got far more attention than similar mass shootings that had befallen non-Jewish communities.
But it’s the very rarity of these attacks that makes them so shocking and, at least for American Jews, so memorable.
In this new normal, it’s even more important for Jews to form strong, mutually supportive bonds among themselves, and with others.
And the world moves on
Those bonds are especially crucial because while the victims of violence don’t soon forget and move on, the world does.
“It’s a short burst of solidarity, and then people leave. Understandably so,” Oppenheimer said.
I suspect that even though prayers of gratitude and deliverance will echo through the sanctuaries of Detroit — and in Jewish hearts everywhere — the attack will haunt its intended victims long after the police tape comes down.
What will make the difference in how the community faces those fears and moves forward is the amount of support it receives from those outside it. If the broader Bloomfield and Detroit community refuses to forget this awful incident, it will change the course of healing.
I asked Oppenheimer what lesson he learned from the Tree of Life aftermath could apply to Temple Israel.
“In Pittsburgh, there was a long history of people showing up for each other,” he said Oppenheimer. “The relationships, or lack of relationships, that exist become more noticeable when something goes wrong.”
“Where there are strong ties before a shooting, there are strong ties afterwards.”
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Political standoff causing DHS shutdown delays security grants for synagogues
(JTA) — A shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security since Feb. 14 is halting the review of millions of dollars in security funding for nonprofits, leaving Jewish institutions and other vulnerable groups in limbo at a moment of heightened concern about antisemitic threats.
The most recent threat came Thursday when an armed assailant rammed his vehicle into a large synagogue in suburban Detroit, where trained security forces shot at him and he was killed before he could injure anyone.
The closure stems from a political standoff over immigration enforcement: Senate Democrats are refusing to fund DHS unless the bill includes new oversight and limits on ICE operations, while Republicans and the Trump administration insist on passing funding without those changes. The dispute intensified after the killings of U.S. citizens during recent immigration operations.
Applications for the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which helps synagogues, schools and community centers pay for security guards, cameras, reinforced doors and other protections were due Feb. 1 But because the program is administered through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a component of DHS, the ongoing shutdown has frozen the process before applications could be reviewed. An effort to end the shutdown failed in the Senate on Thursday.
That means organizations that spent months preparing proposals are now waiting indefinitely to learn whether they will receive funding, at a time of rising anxiety and threats.
The grant program has become a cornerstone of security planning for Jewish institutions across the United States, especially in the wake of sometimes deadly attacks. Demand for the grants has surged in recent years as antisemitic incidents have climbed and security costs have soared.
According to data from the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents in the United States have reached historic highs in recent years, with Jewish institutions frequently targeted with threats, vandalism and harassment. Community leaders say the uncertainty surrounding the grants is arriving at precisely the wrong moment.
The NSGP is designed to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars annually to nonprofits considered at high risk of attack. Organizations submit detailed applications outlining their vulnerabilities and the security improvements they hope to fund, which FEMA then reviews and awards through state agencies.
But during a federal shutdown, most DHS personnel responsible for reviewing those applications are furloughed. As a result, the process has effectively stalled.
For many nonprofits, the delay creates practical and financial uncertainty. Security upgrades such as surveillance systems, bollards, access-control systems and trained guards often depend on the grants, and institutions typically plan their budgets around the expectation of federal support.
Jewish communal security groups say the program has been one of the most successful federal efforts to help protect religious institutions. Michael Masters, CEO of the Secure Community Network, a Jewish security nonprofit, said Jewish organizations rely on federal funding to cover essential security needs, saying that it was “a challenge” that DHS was currently not processing security grant applications.
“There’s no other faith-based community in the United States that needs to spend $760 million a year, at a minimum, on security that we do,” Masters said. “That’s a reality of the threat environment that we have to adapt to, that we have adapted to.”
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A gunman rammed a Michigan synagogue. Its security preparations may have saved lives.
(JTA) — The suspected assailant, armed with rifles and smoke bombs, who rammed into Temple Israel on Thursday encountered a synagogue that was well prepared for just such an attack.
He hit and injured the congregation’s security director with his car as he plowed through the synagogue’s doors and drove down a hallway. But he didn’t manage to harm anyone else as he was found dead after trained and armed security guards shot at him
And because the rest of the staff knew exactly how to respond to an active shooter threat.
“We always worry that you can plan and plan and plan and practice and practice, and it won’t matter, because it will be something else, but it feels like a miracle that everything worked the way it was supposed to, that our team was so incredibly brave, local law enforcement’s been amazing, and that everybody’s OK,” Rabbi Jen Lader of Temple Israel told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard and West Bloomfield County Police Chief Dale Young also immediately praised the security response in the wake of the attack.
“I am deeply proud of the response, not only from the security that was on site, but also of all the police officers and the firefighters that are here right now, we train on active shooter events a lot,” Young said during a press conference outside the synagogue on Thursday. “I think that training certainly helped to mitigate what happened here today.”
Indeed, it was a situation that Jewish institutions across the United States have trained for, as antisemitism and threats of violence have ticked up in recent years, especially following the 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that killed 11 Jews during Shabbat services. The rabbi of a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, credited a security training with enabling him to respond when a man took him and three congregations hostage in 2022.
“Everybody flees danger, and our team went straight toward it, and they were the ones who neutralized the terrorist and saved everybody,” said Lader. “And our teachers followed, you know, to the absolute letter, our active shooter training and lockdown procedures, and saved every kid.”
Beyond the synagogue’s full-time director of security, Lader said Temple Israel also has a full team of armed security guards on the premises at all times as well as a remote security system that is able to secure different areas of the building during threats.
In late January, FBI agents also visited Temple Israel to train clergy and staff about how to respond to an active shooter.
According to a social media post from FBI Detroit, the Active Shooter Attack Prevention and Preparedness course “combines lessons learned from years of research and employs scenario-based exercises to help participants practice the decision-making process of the Run, Hide, Fight principles and take necessary actions for survival.”
Michael Masters, the national director and CEO of the Secure Community Network, an organization that coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, said that the outcomes of the attack Thursday reflected the preparedness of Temple Israel.
“Investing in security is an investment, it’s a down payment on the Jewish future,” said Masters. “The community that made up the synagogue, the larger Detroit Jewish community, has been making that investment for years and years, and today, that investment paid off and lives [were] saved.”
Among the security measures that Masters said his organization recommended were “bollards or fences or natural obstructions” to the building, controlling access to the facility through reinforced doors or windows and having a security presence.
“What we hope this reaffirms is that security needs to be an ongoing investment in order to allow Jewish life, faith based life, to thrive,” said Masters. “And very much that investment can result, and did result, in Jewish lives being saved, and so we all need to recognize that and commit ourselves as members of the community at every level to be a part of making that investment at whatever level we can.”
In the wake of the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington D.C. in June, the synagogue hosted a town hall on hate crimes and extremism.
Among the speakers at the town hall was Noah Arbit, a lifelong congregant of Temple Israel who represents West Bloomfield in the Michigan House of Representatives. Arbit said in an interview on Thursday that after he first learned of the attack while working on the state house floor, he immediately began to cry and raced down to his home synagogue.
“I campaigned on taking on hate crimes,” said Arbit. “To be working on these issues, and then to see it come home to roost in my own community, in my own synagogue, in my hometown that I represent is, frankly, just like my worst nightmare.”
While Arbit praised the response by security and law enforcement as the attack unfolded, he said he was “outraged and enraged and deeply pained that it was necessary in the first place.”
“Jewish communities across the country and world have watched, you know, for the past decade, as our institutions have congealed into fortresses,” he said. “We are now forced to live behind, basically, you know, militarized, institutionally securitized institutions, and what a shame that is. It’s not just a shame, It’s unfathomable, it’s unforgivable.”
For Rabbi Mark Miller of Temple Beth El, another Reform synagogue a 20-minute drive away in Bloomfield Hills, the attack on Temple Israel served as a stark reminder of why security infrastructure was essential for Jewish institutions.
“This is one of those moments when, for years and years, we have bemoaned that we have to put so much time and energy into security for our institutions,” said Miller. “And this is one of those days that reminds us that we don’t have a choice.”
Miller’s synagogue had a recent security crisis of its own, when a man drove through its parking lot in December 2022 and shouted antisemitic threats as parents walked their preschoolers into the building. The assailant, Hassan Chokr, was sentenced to 34 months in prison in September for illegally possessing multiple firearms inside a gun store after leaving the synagogue.
“It’s a terrifying day, obviously for a lot of people, especially for parents with their kids at not only Temple Israel but at ours and other temples and Jewish institutions,” Miller said.
Lader said that among her congregants, two competing sentiments had jumped out: Those who “never, in a million years, in our heart of hearts, thought it was ever going to happen to us” and others who “knew it was only a matter of time before it knocked on our door.”
But another feeling was even stronger, she said.
“I think the overarching sentiment, and the one that I want to make sure gets out there, is our absolute gratitude to our internal teams, our amazing staff, local law enforcement and our teachers for really, like, a building full of absolute heroes, who were able to keep us safe,” Lader said.
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