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An Orthodox woman says she is no longer welcome to pray at a New York synagogue because she is trans
(JTA) — When Talia Avrahami was asked to resign from a job teaching in an Orthodox Jewish day school after people there found out she was transgender, she was devastated. But she hoped to be able to turn to her synagogue in Washington Heights, where she had found a home for the last year and a half.
The Shenk Shul is housed at Yeshiva University, the Modern Orthodox flagship in New York City that was locked in battle with students over whether they could form an LBGTQ club. Still, Avrahami had found the previous rabbi to be supportive, and the past president was an ally and a personal friend. What’s more, Avrahami had just helped hire a new rabbi who had promised to handle sensitive topics carefully and with concern for all involved.
So Avrahami was shocked when her outreach to the new rabbi led to her exclusion from the synagogue, with the top Jewish legal authority at Yeshiva University personally telling her that she could no longer pray there.
“Not only were we members, we were very active members,” Avrahami told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We hosted and sponsored kiddushes all the time. We had mazel tovs, [the birth of] our baby [was] posted in the newsletter, we helped run shul events. We were very close with the previous rabbi and rebbetzin and we were close with the current rabbi and rebbetzin.”
Avrahami’s quest to remain a part of the Shenk Shul, which unfolded over the past two months and culminated last week with her successful request for refunded dues, comes at a time of intense tension over the place of LGBTQ people in Modern Orthodox Jewish spaces.
Administrators at Shenk and Y.U. said they are trying to balance Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law, or halacha, and contemporary ideas around inclusion — two values that have sharply collided in Avrahami’s case.
Emails and text messages obtained by JTA show that many people involved in Avrahami’s situation expressed deep pain over her eventual exclusion. They also show that, despite a range of interpretations of Jewish law on LGBTQ issues present even within Modern Orthodoxy, the conclusions of Yeshiva University’s top Jewish legal authority, Rabbi Hershel Schachter, continue to drive practices within the university’s broader community.
“I completely understand (and am certainly perturbed by) the difficulty of the situation. Nobody wants to, chas v’shalom [God forbid], oust anybody, especially somebody who has been an active part of this community,” the synagogue’s president, Shimon Liebling, wrote in a Nov. 17 text message to his predecessor. But, he continued, “When it came down to it, the halachah stated this outcome. As much as we laud ourselves as a welcoming community, halachah cannot be compromised.”
Liebling went on, using the term for a rabbinic decision and referring to a ruling he said the synagogue rabbi had obtained from Schachter: “A psak is a psak.”
The saga began this fall, several weeks after Avrahami lost her short-lived job as an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Magen David Yeshivah in Brooklyn, which she had obtained after earning a master’s degree at Yeshiva University. She had been outed after a video of her in the classroom taken during parent night began circulating on social media.
Around the High Holidays, when Orthodox Jews spend many days in their synagogues, Avrahami learned that people within the Shenk Shul community were talking about her, some complaining about her presence. As she always had, she had spent the holidays praying in the women’s section of the gender-segregated congregation.
Concerned, Avrahami reached out to the new rabbi, Shai Kaminetzky. He confirmed the complaints and told her he wanted further guidance from a more senior rabbi to deal with the complex legal issue before him: Where is a trans woman’s place in the Orthodox synagogue?
For Avrahami and some others who identify as Modern Orthodox, this question has already been resolved. They heed the rulings of the late Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, known as the “Tzitz Eliezer,” an Orthodox legal scholar who died in 2006. He ruled that a trans woman who undergoes gender confirmation surgery is a woman according to Jewish law.
But Waldenberg’s determination is not universally held among Orthodox Jews — and one prominent rabbi who does not accept it is Hershel Schachter. In a 2017 Q&A, Schachter derided trans issues, saying about one trans Jew, “Why did he decide that God made a mistake? He looked so much better as a man than as a woman.” He also suggested that a trans person asking whether to sit in the men’s or women’s section should instead consider attending a Conservative or Reform synagogue, where worshippers are not separated by gender.
“We know we’d have no problem if we were at a Reform or Conservative synagogue when it comes to the acceptance issue. The thing is, that’s not the only thing in our life,” Bradley Avrahami told JTA.
The couple became religiously observant after spending time in Israel and the two now identify as Modern Orthodox. They were married by an Orthodox rabbi in 2018, and when they had their baby via surrogate in 2021, it was important to them that the infant go through a Jewish court to formally convert to Judaism. Avrahami seeks to fulfill the Jewish legal and cultural expectations of Orthodox women, wearing a wig and modest skirts. The pair both adhere to strict Shabbat and kashrut observance laws.
“We didn’t want to be the only family that kept kosher at the synagogue, we didn’t want to be the only family that is shomer Shabbat and shomer chag,” Bradley Avrahami added, referring to strict observance of the Sabbath and holiday restrictions. “It kind of becomes isolating.”
Kaminetzky kept both Talia Avrahami and Eitan Novick, the past president, in the loop about his research, in which he consulted with Schachter. It was a natural place for him to turn: He had studied at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and learned from Schachter there. And while the Shenk Shul includes members not affiliated with Yeshiva University, it is closely entwined with Y.U., occupying space in a university building and hiring rabbis only from a list of options presented by the university.
After speaking with Schachter, Kaminetzky reached a conclusion, according to messages characterizing it by Liebling, the synagogue president.
“He made an halachic decision that Talia isn’t able to sit in the women’s section for the time being,” Liebling wrote Nov. 17 in a message to his predecessor as president, Eitan Novick. But Liebling left the door open for change, writing, “All in all, the ‘official shul policy’ is still being decided.”
He said Kaminetzky had spoken extensively the previous evening with the Avrahamis and had been determined to share his judgment in a way that was respectful “despite the difficult-to hear halachic conclusion.”
Liebling added a parenthetical: “I honestly can’t imagine how difficult it is for them. If I were told I couldn’t sit in the men’s section, I’d be beyond heartbroken and likewise feel displaced.”
Talia Avrahami did indeed feel heartbroken. She told Kaminetzky and others that she felt like she wanted to die, alarming her friends and prompting some of them to reach out to the rabbi. “The concern about Talia’s well-being is likewise the #1 — and only — factor on my mind right now,” Kaminetzky told one of them that night.
The Avrahamis stopped attending the Shenk Shul, but they held out hope for Kaminetzky to change his mind, or for the synagogue to set a firm policy that would permit her participation. Over the next six weeks, though, they heard nothing — a situation that so disappointed Novick that he and his wife also stopped attending. (Kaminetzky’s third child was born during this time.)
“We really feel like this is a pretty significant deviation from the community that we have been a part of for 11 years, which has always been a very accepting place,” Novick said. “This is just not the community that I feel comfortable being a part of if these are the decisions that are being made. It’s not just about the Avrahamis.”
While Avrahami waited for more information, Yeshiva University and Schachter were already in the process of rolling out what they saw as a compromise in a different conflagration over LGBTQ inclusion at the school. Arguing that homosexuality is incompatible with the school’s religious values, Yeshiva University has been fighting not to have to recognize an LGBTQ student group, the YU Pride Alliance, and has even asked the Supreme Court to weigh in after judges in New York ruled against the university. This fall, the school announced that it would launch a separate club endorsed by Schachter, claiming it would represent LGBTQ students “under traditional Orthodox auspices.” (The YU Pride Alliance called the new club “a desperate stunt” by the university.)
Multiple people encouraged Avrahami to make her case directly to Schachter. When she headed to a meeting with the rabbi on Jan. 1, she hoped that putting a face to her name and explaining her situation, including that she had undergone a full medical transition, might widen his thinking about LGBTQ inclusion in Orthodoxy.
The meeting lasted just 15 minutes. And according to Avrahami, who said Schachter told her she was the first trans person he had ever met, it didn’t go well.
In an email to another rabbi who attended the meeting, Menachem Penner, Avrahami said Schachter had called her “unOrthodox” and accused him of “bullying Rabbi Shai Kaminetzky into accepting bigoted psaks.”
Penner, the dean of Yeshiva’s rabbinical school, characterized the conversation differently.
“Rabbi Schachter rules that it is prohibited to undergo transgender surgery and does not accept the opinion of the Tzitz Eliezer post-facto,” he wrote in an email response that day in which he denied that Kaminetzky had been pressured to follow Schachter’s opinion.
“That’s simply a halachic opinion that many hold,” Penner wrote. “He did not call you ‘unorthodox’ — you come across as very sincere in your Judaism and he wished you hatzlacha [success] — but simply said that the surgery was unorthodox, meaning it was not something that is accepted by what he feels is Orthodox Judaism.”
The meeting so angered Avrahami that she asked Liebling to refund her Shenk Shul dues that day, saying that Kaminetzky had kicked her out of the congregation.
“Of course! I’ll send back the money ASAP!” Liebling responded. “I’m so sorry how things are ending up.”
Yeshiva University and Schachter, through a representative, declined to comment, referring questions directly to the Shenk Shul. Kaminetzky directed requests for comment to a representative for the Shenk Shul.
“We have had several conversations with the Avrahamis and we understand their concerns,” the Shenk Shul said in a statement. “It’s important to emphasize that the Avrahamis were not asked to leave the congregation.”
That response doesn’t sit right with Novick, who said blocking Talia Avrahami from praying on both the men’s and women’s sides of the synagogue was tantamount to ejecting her.
“They seem to be trying to have their cake and eat it, too,” he said of the synagogue’s leadership. “They may not be wrong in saying they didn’t tell Talia she was ‘kicked out’ of Shenk, but they’ve created a rule that makes it impossible for her to be a full participant in our community.”
Bradley Avrahami argued that the rabbis who ruled on his wife’s case were short-sighted, giving too little weight to the fact that Jewish law requires Jews to violate other rules in order to save a life. Referring to that principle and pointing to the fact that transgender people are at increased risk of suicide, he said, “It was pikuach nefesh for the person to have the surgery.” His brother, he noted, survived two suicide attempts after coming out as trans.
“They really just don’t understand the harm that they caused when they make these decisions and put out these opinions,” Bradley Avrahami said. “A rabbi should not take a position knowing that that position will cause someone to want to harm themselves.”
Bradley Avrahami said he has received several harassing calls to his work number at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School, where he is liaison for student enrollment and communications and taught Hebrew in the fall 2022 semester. Talia Avrahami, meanwhile, has struggled to find a job to replace the one she left under pressure in September, although she recently announced that she had landed a temporary position.
For now, they are attending another synagogue in Washington Heights, though Talia says she and her husband would consider returning to Shenk Shul if she were invited back and permitted to participate.
So far, there are no signs of that happening. On Jan. 1, after her meeting with Schachter, Talia sent a WhatsApp message to Kaminetzky.
“We elected you because you said you would stand up for LGBT people, not kick us out of shul,” she wrote.
The message went unanswered.
—
The post An Orthodox woman says she is no longer welcome to pray at a New York synagogue because she is trans appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Students Form ‘Human Swastika’ at California High School, Post Image With Hitler Quote
Students forming “human swastika.” Photo: Screenshot.
Eight students at Branham High School in the city of San Jose came together last week to form what police described as a “human swastika” on the campus’ football field in another disturbing antisemitic incident at a California K-12 school.
The students captured the moment in a photograph and later posted it to social media, captioning it with a quote by Adolf Hitler.
Authorities in San Jose have launched a hate crime investigation into the incident, according to local media outlets.
School officials denounced the students’ actions.
“Our message to the community is clear: this was a disturbing and unacceptable act of antisemitism,” Branham High School principal Beth Silbergeld said in a statement. “Many in our community were rightly appalled by the image. Personally, I am horrified by this act. Professionally, I am confident that our school community can learn from this moment and emerge stronger and more united.”
According to the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC), which supports the local Jewish community,
“This incident did not occur in isolation,” BAJC spokesperson Tali Klima told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “Over the past two years, we have seen a troubling pattern in which Jews are increasingly demonized and targeted. While the circumstances differ from those of Nazi Germany, the common thread is the deliberate spread of harmful narratives.”
Klima continued, “The fact that eight students felt emboldened to engage in this hateful behavior on campus (and then post publicly) reflects an educational environment that has allowed extremist political agendas which are blatantly antisemitic into our schools. The district and state must take decisive action to restore a climate of tolerance, respect, and inclusion for Jewish students and the broader community.”
California’s state government recently approved legislation for combating K-12 antisemitism which called for establishing a new Office for Civil Rights for monitoring antisemitism in public schools, appointing an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, setting parameters within which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be equitably discussed, and barring antisemitic materials from the classroom.
State lawmakers introduced the measure, also known as Assembly Bill (AB) 715, in the California legislature following a rise in antisemitic incidents, including vandalism and assault. The list of outrages includes a student group chanting “Kill the Jews” during an anti-Israel protest and partisan activists smuggling far-left, anti-Zionist content into classrooms without clearing the content with parents and other stakeholders.
Elsewhere in California, K-12 antisemitism has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In Berkeley United School District (BUSD), teachers have allegedly used their classrooms to promote antisemitic stereotypes about Israel, weaponizing disciplines such as art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler-colonial” apartheid state committing a genocide of Palestinians. While this took place, high level BUSD officials allegedly ignored complaints about discrimination and tacitly approved hateful conduct even as it spread throughout the student body.
At Berkeley High School (BUSD), for example, a history teacher forced students to explain why Israel is an apartheid state and screened an anti-Zionist documentary, according to a lawsuit filed last year by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The teacher allegedly squelched dissent, telling a Jewish student who raised concerns about the content of her lessons that only anti-Zionist narratives matter in her classroom and that any other which argues that Israel isn’t an apartheid state is “laughable.” Elsewhere in the school, an art teacher, whose name is redacted from the complaint for matters of privacy, displayed anti-Israel artworks in his classroom, one of which showed a fist punching through a Star of David.
In September 2023, some of America’s most prominent Jewish and civil rights groups sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then in February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit.
One month later, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Hitler.
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to data compiled by the ADL. In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.
California is not alone in dealing with the issue. Pennsylvania has a significant K-12 antisemitism problem as well, a fact acknowledged recently by a surrogate of the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro following Congress announcing an investigation into antisemitism in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and a disturbing anti-Israel statement at a high school in the Wissahickon School District.
“Governor Shapiro takes a back seat to no one on these issues, and as he has repeatedly spoken out about antisemitism, and this kind of hateful rhetoric is unacceptable and has no place in Pennsylvania — especially not in our classrooms,” Rosie Lapowsky, a spokesperson for Shapiro, said in a statement first shared with Fox News Digital. “This is a matter the governor has made clear the district needs to take very seriously.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Groups Slam Basque Government for Honoring Anti-Israel UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Jewish communities in Spain and France have condemned the Basque government’s decision to award UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese a human rights honor, citing her long record of making antisemitic remarks, promoting anti-Jewish hatred, and seemingly legitimizing Hamas’s terrorist attacks on the Jewish state.
Last week, the government of the Basque Region in northern Spain announced that Albanese will receive the 2025 René Cassin Human Rights Award, named after French Jewish human rights and Zionist activist René Cassin – author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Through her work at the United Nations, Francesca Albanese has played a key role in exposing human rights violations, challenging impunity, and advocating for the effective enforcement of international norms that protect people in conflict and occupied territories,” the announcement read.
Albanese’s work “is marked by legal rigor, independent judgment, and a strong ethical commitment that should guide all those working to uphold human rights on the international stage,” it continued.
In a joint statement on Monday, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain (FCJE) and the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) denounced the decision, arguing it undermines the principles that Cassin stood for.
“René Cassin, author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and fervent defender of justice, held an unwavering commitment to peace, human dignity, and the right of the Jewish people to live in security,” the statement read.
“Awarding this prize to Ms. Albanese constitutes a distortion of Cassin’s legacy and a serious misunderstanding of the values of human rights,” it continued.
Communiqué conjoint – La Fédération des Communautés Juives d’Espagne @fcjecom et le Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (Crif) expriment leur profond désaccord avec l’attribution, par le Gouvernement basque, du Prix René Cassin 2025 des droits de l’Homme à…
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) December 5, 2025
Albanese is set to receive the award at a ceremony on Wednesday in Bilbao, a city in northern Spain.
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) also condemned the Spanish government’s decision, voicing support for the Jewish communities in Spain and France and calling the move “deeply troubling.”
“Albanese has repeatedly advanced narratives that minimize or excuse violence against Jews and has a documented record of antisemitic rhetoric,” WJC posted on X.
The Basque Government’s decision to award the 2025 René Cassin Human Rights Prize to Francesca Albanese is deeply troubling. Albanese has repeatedly advanced narratives that minimize or excuse violence against Jews and has a documented record of antisemitic rhetoric.
We support… https://t.co/ZT5QfOgzpa
— World Jewish Congress (@WorldJewishCong) December 5, 2025
Despite objections from several governments including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands, as well as numerous NGOs, Albanese was reappointed earlier this year for a three-year term amid concerns about her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Since taking on the role of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories in 2022, Albanese has been at the center of controversy due to what critics, including US and European lawmakers, have described as antisemitic and anti-Israel public remarks.
In the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israeli communities, Albanese accused Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli actions.
She has also previously made comments about a “Jewish lobby” controlling America and Europe, compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and stated that Hamas’s violence against Israelis — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — needs to be “put in context.”
Last year, the UN launched a probe into Albanese for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
In the past, she has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and give her “hope.”
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Helen Nash, kosher cookbook author and NYC philanthropist, dies at 89
(JTA) — Helen Nash, a New-York based kosher cookbook author and philanthropist who pioneered modern kosher cooking starting in the 1980s, died on Dec. 8 at the age of 89.
Her first cookbook “Kosher Cuisine,” was published in 1984 by Random House, and adapted a variety of international recipes for kosher cooks. Its publication, Nash told the Detroit Jewish News at the time, sought to prove that kosher cooking “could be as varied, elegant and exciting as one wished to make it.”
She went on to demonstrate that in two more cookbooks, demonstrating what one reviewer called “her ability to expand the kosher palate.”
“Keeping kosher is more, to me, than just a sensible way to live and to eat healthfully. The ancient Jewish dietary laws help to organize my life around family, Friday nights, and holidays,” wrote Nash in her 2012 book, “Helen Nash’s New Kosher Cuisine: Healthy, Simple, and Stylish.”
Nash was born Helen Englander in Krakow, Poland, on Dec. 24, 1935 where her family owned a textile business. With her parents and sister, Nash survived World War II with her family after they were deported to Siberia.
“There was no cooking in my childhood,” Nash told the Jewish Book Council in 2012. “When I was four and a half, my family was transported out of Krakow, and we spent the war in labor camps in Siberia. Food was nonexistent — no fruit, no vegetables. It was a ration diet of subsistence level.”
Following the war, Nash’s family reunited with her maternal grandparents in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, before settling in Crown Heights.
In 1957, she met and married her husband, Jack Nash, who was also a refugee from Berlin. Having grown up in an Orthodox family, Nash insisted that she keep a kosher kitchen.
“It was my interest,” Nash told New York Jewish Week in 2015. “Most women didn’t have careers outside the home, and I sort of carved a niche for myself, and the niche was entertaining in a certain style. Jack was very encouraging. And I met so many people I wouldn’t have met if I’d stayed in the religious mode.”
While her husband, who died in 2008, went on to serve as the chairman of the Oppenheimer & Company mutual fund business and founded the revival of The New York Sun, Nash charted her own path in the kitchen.
Following the birth of her children, Joshua and Pamela, Nash took classes with famed chefs including Michael Field and Millie Chan and worked on how to adapt their cuisines to a kosher palate.
Her second cookbook, “Helen Nash’s Kosher Kitchen,” published in 1988, also sought to break boundaries in kosher recipes. “’Kosher food is more than chopped liver and gefilte fish,” said Nash at the time.
“Helen Nash’s New Kosher Cuisine,” published following the death of her husband, also took kosher cooking to new heights, incorporating new global ingredients that had been made kosher since the publication of her earlier books.
Nash also chaired the Nash Family Foundation, which supported numerous Jewish organizations in New York City. She and her husband were also contributors to UJA-Federation of New York, Mount Sinai Medical Center, the Israel Museum, Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Yeshiva University.
Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a scholar in residence and rabbi for the UJA-Federation of New York, dedicated his Torah study on Youtube Wednesday to Nash.
“Helen Nash was many things, including a renowned author of recipe books and chef, she was a matriarch in her family,” said Creditor. “Her family foundation has changed the Jewish world for the better in countless ways, and I was blessed, privileged since the first moment I began at UJA almost eight years ago to learn Torah with Helen every single Wednesday for these last eight years.”
Nash is survived by her children and grandchildren. A funeral service for her was held on Dec. 9 at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The post Helen Nash, kosher cookbook author and NYC philanthropist, dies at 89 appeared first on The Forward.