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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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Hochul makes play for Orthodox voters with tuition relief and synagogue buffer zones
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is making an early play for Jewish voters ahead in her reelection bid, coupling a major initiative to help families pay for yeshivas with tough-on-antisemitism legislation.
The moves aid Orthodox Jewish voting blocs — before her Republican challenger, Bruce Blakeman, gains traction.
A recent Siena University poll of 804 voters found Hochul leading Blakeman statewide by 16 points, 49% to 33%. But among the smaller sample of 65 Jewish voters, the race was far tighter, with Hochul leading just 46% to 41%.
Central to Hochul’s outreach was her announcement last week, during a private meeting with Orthodox leaders, that New York will opt into President Donald Trump’s new federal school-choice tax credit program. Known as the Education Freedom Tax Credit, it allows taxpayers to receive up to a $1,700 federal tax credit for donations to scholarship-granting organizations, which can then fund tuition assistance and other educational expenses.
A spokesperson for the governor confirmed that Hochul is supportive of the program as part of a broader commitment to helping families afford nonpublic education. Emma Wallner, the spokesperson, added that the administration is reviewing the federal program to ensure there are no “poison pills that could harm New York’s education system.”
For Orthodox voters, tuition relief has long ranked alongside Israel and antisemitism as a political priority. In 2014, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a last-minute effort to court the community by pledging to expand a state tuition assistance program to cover yeshivas as “a matter of justice.” Cuomo ultimately won 70% of the vote in Borough Park, one of the largest Orthodox strongholds. That proposal later failed in the state legislature.
Hochul and her allies remain mindful of the results of the 2022 governor’s race, when former Rep. Lee Zeldin came within five percentage points of defeating her. Zeldin, who is Jewish, was powered by strong Orthodox support.
That memory looms large as Hochul prepares for a likely matchup against Bruce Blakeman, the first Jewish executive of Nassau County, who has positioned himself as a tough-on-crime conservative focused on antisemitism and support for Israel.
Blakeman has so far struggled to gain broader traction statewide and has yet to build deep relationships within the Orthodox political infrastructure in Brooklyn and Rockland County. Orthodox voting blocs, a traditionally Republican-leaning constituency, have repeatedly backed incumbents and even Democrats when communal priorities align.
A spokesperson for the Blakeman campaign did not immediately respond to questions from the Forward about whether the Republican candidate supports the tuition-relief initiative or plans to offer a proposal of his own.
Addressing rising antisemitism
Blakeman, who met with Trump at the White House last week to discuss his candidacy, could further face a challenge presenting himself as a stronger protector of the estimated 1.8 million Jews across the state amid rising antisemitism.
Hochul, who endorsed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani last year after remaining neutral during the Democratic primary, has been seen by some in the Jewish community as a counterweight within the Democratic Party to the mayor, whose handling of antisemitism and criticism of Israel has left many Jewish voters uneasy.
The Democratic incumbent has publicly opposed several key Mamdani priorities, like universal free buses and a millionaire tax, and has also distanced herself from Mamdani on Israel and pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
Hochul is moving fast on that front, too.
Last week, she announced a tentative budget deal that includes a measure to create a 25-foot buffer zone to protect houses of worship statewide from protest. “We’ve seen demonstrations targeting faith communities outside synagogues, mosques and churches,” Hochul told reporters. This is not free expression, this is harassment, and it has no place in the state of New York.” The measure would go further than a more limited enactment passed by the New York City Council requiring safety plans for protests near houses of worship, which Mamdani allowed to become law without his signature.
Hochul has also proposed an additional $35 million in security funding for vulnerable institutions, bringing total state spending on such protection to $131 million since she took office.
The legislation remains unresolved in Albany. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters Thursday there was “no deal” yet on the broader state budget package. Some Jewish lawmakers have also criticized the proposed 25-foot buffer zone as too narrow, arguing it should be expanded to at least 100 feet, similar to protections already in place around polling sites.
Blakeman told the Forward last week that he would push to expand the buffer zone if elected governor. “I think 25 feet is too close,” he said.
David Greenfield, a former New York City Council member who introduced Hochul to Orthodox leaders when she became the lieutenant governor candidate in 2014 and boosted her in 2022, said that Hochul is “cementing her status as the best friend the Jewish community has had in Albany in decades” by pushing this agenda. “At a moment when Jewish New Yorkers are looking for leaders who will actually show up for them, Hochul keeps showing up,” said Greenfield, now head of the Met Council charity organization.
Blakeman’s play
Blakeman has also made fighting antisemitism a central theme of his campaign. On Sunday, Blakeman addressed a rally held by Zionist groups in Queens, after swastikas were found spray-painted on synagogues and homes in Forest Hills and Rego Park. “We have to make sure that every antisemite knows that we will not back down, that we will stand up to it,” he said in his remarks. Speaking to the New York Post, Blakeman also called Mamdani “un-American” and “antisemitic.”
Last week, Blakeman held a press conference in Brighton Beach, a Brooklyn neighborhood with a significant Russian-speaking Jewish population, calling for the cancellation of a planned concert by Yulduz Usmonova, an Uzbek singer accused of making antisemitic statements. “Never again will we tolerate antisemitism or attacks on the Jewish people anywhere in the world, and especially here in Brooklyn, with this huge Jewish community of which my wife Segal was a member of,” Blakeman said.
The battle for the Jewish vote traditionally unfolds later in the season, closer to the High Holidays season, when voters pay more attention to the election. But Hochu’s recent moves signal she is not waiting until the fall to lock up support from a swing and reliable voting bloc.
The post Hochul makes play for Orthodox voters with tuition relief and synagogue buffer zones appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Antisemitism Crisis in America’: Swastika Graffiti Again Appears Across New York City Boro
Swastikas graffitied in Forest Park in Queens, New York City over the weekend. Photo: Screenshot.
Antisemitic vandals in Queens, New York City are painting the town Nazi red, having added over the weekend two new incidents of swastika graffiti to a spree of hate crimes targeting Jewish institutions and homes across the borough.
As seen in photographs shared on social media, the unknown suspects graffitied some eleven swastikas at Highland Park and Forest Park for locals to discover on Monday — just one week after perpetrating the same crime at four Jewish owned properties in Rego Park and Forest Hills.
“This is yet another hateful incident meant to intimidate Jewish New Yorkers and divide our city,” New York City Council speaker of the house Julie Menin said in a statement posted on the X social media platform. “We want to be clear: we cannot and will not accept this as normal.”
The vandalism wave came just as the New York City Police Department (NYPD) announced that an ongoing surge in antisemitic hate crimes in the metropolis, which is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, continues unabated.
According to newly released data the agency published on Monday, Jews were targeted in 60 percent of all confirmed hate crimes last month, despite making up just 10 percent of the city’s population.
In April, the police confirmed 30 antisemitic incidents out of 50 total hate crimes in the city. As for all reported/suspected hate crimes, 38 out of the total of 65 targeted Jews.
The NYPD had previously reported suspected, but unconfirmed, hate crime incidents. In February, the police began reporting confirmed incidents instead. And then after receiving scrutiny, the department began reporting both suspected and confirmed hate crimes in March.
Regardless of the methodology, the majority of all hate crimes in New York City this year have targeted Jews, especially the Orthodox community, continuing a surge in antisemitism that has swept the city after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in October 2023.
In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November 2024, for example, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery. In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
In November, just days after the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, hundreds of people amassed outside a prominent synagogue and clamored for violence against Jews.
The change in New York City’s climate since Mamdani’s election is palpable, Jewish advocacy groups have said. On his first day in office in January, Mamdani voided the city government’s adoption of the IHRA definition, lifted the ban on contracts with companies boycotting Israel, and modified key provisions of an executive order directing law enforcement to monitor anti-Israel protests held near synagogues.
“Mayor Mamdani pledged to build an inclusive New York and combat all forms of hate, including antisemitism,” a coalition of leading Jewish groups said in a statement addressing the changes enacted by the new administration. “But when the new administration hit reset on many of Mayor Adams’ executive orders, it reversed … significant protections against antisemitism.”
Mayor Mamdani has denounced the swastika graffiti as a “deliberate act of antisemitic hatred” and said that he has assigned the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force to investigate it.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Middlebury College Hillel votes to rebrand, distancing from parent on Israel
The student leaders of the campus Hillel at a small liberal arts school in Vermont have voted to rename the student group, moving to distance it from an international organization they say is too pro-Israel.
Middlebury College’s Hillel student board made the decision last week after a yearlong consultation process with active participants in the campus organization, university administrators and Hillel International leadership, according to the student group’s co-presidents. The board also voted to disaffiliate from Hillel International, but were told by Middlebury’s administration that they lacked the authority to take that action, the co-presidents told the Middlebury campus newspaper.
The student group, renamed to Jewish Association of Middlebury, will continue to perform similar functions as Hillels do on hundreds of campuses around the world — holding events around Shabbat and Jewish holidays and other Jewish religious and social programming. The board says it will maintain an on-paper link with Hillel without adhering to its guidelines.
“While Middlebury College will continue to be affiliated with Hillel International, we believe this name better reflects our local community,” the board wrote last week in an email to students, according to the Campus, the school newspaper. This decision was made to reflect the desires of our diverse student body, and it doesn’t endorse any one political persuasion.”
Hillel International did not respond to a request for comment.
Hillel has said it is “steadfastly committed” to supporting Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and it prohibits association with student organizations that endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
The renaming at Middlebury comes amid a nationwide campaign against Hillel on college campuses, premised on the organization’s involvement in Israel, including sending students there to volunteer.
Hillel buildings have been occasional targets for pro-Palestinian protests since Oct. 7. More recently, anti-Zionist student groups have pushed to defund campus Hillels or disaffiliate them from the century-old Jewish organization.
The student senate of the New School in New York recently voted to defund its campus Hillel and call on the school to stop partnering with the organization — a vote the college administration rejected, saying that it did not have the authority to act. A group of Jewish students and faculty at New York University has also called to boycott Hillel.
But Middlebury College is believed to be the first school where the push to untether from the international movement were leaders of the campus Hillel itself.
Hillel/JAM co-president Caroline Jaffe told the Campus that conversations around disaffiliating from Hillel dated back to Nov. 2023, when Middlebury Hillel sold challah to raise money for World Central Kitchen, a humanitarian aid group that was delivering food to Palestinians in Gaza.
“We got a stern email from Hillel International, saying, ‘Why are you guys raising money for Gaza?’” Jaffe told the Campus. “I think that was the first time I remember [thinking], oh wow, this really isn’t aligned with my Jewish values at all, to be like, ‘Why are you guys feeding these starving people?’”
In response to Hillel’s concerns, the student group edited the Instagram post about the event to say it was a fundraiser for WCK’s team in “Israel and” Gaza.
The Forward has reached out to Jaffe for comment.
After that incident, the student-led board of Middlebury Hillel began soliciting feedback about possible disaffiliation in online forums, in person and through anonymous forms. The response, Jaffe said, was broadly supportive of disaffiliation, leading the board to schedule a vote on the matter.
Rabbi Danielle Stillman, the campus chaplain and the Hillel’s rabbi, told the Campus that the students had received support from college administrators, who helped them “think through the different perspectives of various stakeholders in the community who might be impacted by a name change.” (Stillman, who is not employed by Hillel International, did not respond to an inquiry.)
A week before the Nov. 2025 vote, however, the college administration informed Jaffe that the board did not have the power to rename the group or disaffiliate from Hillel. The board voted anyway, resulting in a 7-1 recommendation to disaffiliate.
“Let us be clear: this decision is not a rebuke of Zionism, Zionist students, or the importance of Israel to many in the Jewish community,” a Dec. 2025 email to JAM membership read. “Rather, it reflects a desire to create the most welcoming and pluralistic space possible.”
At the university’s behest, the students then met virtually with Hillel International, whose representative reiterated that the board members must universally adopt Hillel International’s political views and values about Israel, according to the Campus. But the representative also conceded that it couldn’t stop the students from changing the organization’s name.
“We said we want to disaffiliate, and they said you can’t. And we said, well, we’re going to change the name anyway. And they said, we can’t stop you,” Jaffe said.
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