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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.
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High schoolers’ ‘human swastika’ on football field shakes San Jose Jewish community
(JTA) — The photo spread swiftly after a student posted it on social media: Eight California high schoolers were lying on their school’s football field, their bodies arrayed in the shape of a swastika.
Alongside the picture was a quote from Adolf Hitler, threatening the “annihilation of the Jewish race.”
The incident at Branham High School in San Jose began on Dec. 3 and has roiled the local Jewish community in the days since, as the wrenching saga has ignited suspensions, recriminations and alarm from around the world.
The photograph and the response to it were first reported by J. Jewish News of Northern California.
“We don’t want to see hatred,” Cormac Nolan, a Jewish Branham senior, told the local Jewish newspaper. “We don’t want to see the idolization of one of the most evil men to ever walk the face of the Earth. We don’t want someone who spews out hatred like this on our campus.”
The school’s student newspaper reported that the students involved had been suspended, and that dozens of other students walked out to protest the incident.
The San Jose Police Department told J. that it is investigating the incident, and the school’s principal, Beth Silbergeld, who is Jewish, said the school was working with the Anti-Defamation League and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, a local antisemitism advocacy group, “to ensure that we receive appropriate support and guidance as we work to repair the harm that’s been done to our community.”
Silbergeld told J. that she felt pressure to learn from the incident.
“I’ve been in education for a long time and have seen, sadly, lots of incidences of oppression and hate toward many groups,” she said. “I think that we always have a responsibility as schools to do what’s right and to take action and learn from the experiences of other other schools and other incidents as a way to hopefully eliminate actions like what we’ve experienced.”
The incident is not the first time Branham High School has faced controversy over antisemitism on its campus. In April, the California Department of Education ruled that the school had discriminated against its Jewish students by presenting “biased” content about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a 12th-grade ethnic literature curriculum.
It is also not the first instance of a “human swastika” roiling a school community. In 2019, nine middle schoolers in Ojai, California, also arranged themselves in a “human swastika” and faced disciplinary measures from the school.
Exactly what possessed the Branham students to do what they did is not clear. But psychologists told the J. that the teen years are a peak moment for transgressive behaviors that may or may not reflect deep-seated biases.
“It’s a developmental time where you’re doing new things, you’re trying new things, you’re making mistakes, you’re trying to fit in, you’re trying to get laughs and likes,” Ellie Pelc, director of clinical services at the Bay Area’s Jewish Family and Children’s Services, told the newspaper. “And you often do so in some hurtful or harmful ways that you don’t always have the capacity to think through in advance.”
The photo was met by condemnation by California State Sens. Scott Wiener, who wrote that antisemitism was “pervasive & growing” in a post on Facebook, and Dave Cortese, who said he was “deeply disturbed” by the incident in a statement.
“What happened at Branham High School was not a joke, not a prank, and not self-expression — it was an act of hatred,” wrote San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan in a post on X. “The fact that this was planned and posted publicly makes it even more disturbing.”
By Tuesday, the uproar had sparked a response from district leaders. In a post on Facebook, Robert Bravo, the superintendent for the Campbell Union High School District, wrote that the district “will respond firmly, thoughtfully, and within the full scope allowed by Board Policy and California law.” (Displaying a Nazi swastika on the property of a school is illegal in California.)
He added that the school district considered the incident an instance of “hate violence” based on California state education code, which allows for suspension or expulsion in such cases.
“Our response cannot be limited to discipline alone,” continued Bravo. “We are committed to using this incident as an opportunity to deepen education around antisemitism, hate symbols and the historical atrocities associated with them.”
The antisemitic post comes two months after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill creating a statewide office assigned to combatting antisemitism in California public schools. The office, which is the first of its kind in the country, was met with praise from local Jewish advocacy groups while some critics warned it could chill academic freedoms.
Marc Levine, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in the Central Pacific region, called the incident “repulsive and unacceptable” in a statement on X. The incident was also condemned by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, which wrote in a statement that it had been working with the school about “how to ensure an effective response.”
The Bay Area Jewish Coalition also issued a statement on Tuesday, writing that the antisemitic act had “shaken Jewish families across Northern California and beyond.”
“We hope that what happened at Branham serves as a wake-up call for California and for the rest of the country to take the antisemitism crisis seriously and reverse the trend through real, meaningful action and long-term change,” the statement continued.
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Nashville Jewish community center sues Goyim Defense League over alleged campaign of intimidation
(JTA) —
A Jewish community center in Nashville has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the neo-Nazi group Goyim Defense League and several of its leaders and affiliates, accusing them of orchestrating a campaign of antisemitic intimidation, harassment and trespass aimed at terrorizing the city’s Jewish community.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of the Gordon Jewish Community Center, a 120-year-old nonprofit that serves as a major hub for Jewish life in Nashville. The complaint names the Goyim Defense League, its founder and leader Jon Minadeo II, extremist streamer Paul Miller, who is also known as GypsyCrusader, and several associates.
At the center of the case is a January 2025 incident in which Travis Garland, a Tennessee man affiliated with the Goyim Defense League, allegedly disguised himself as an Orthodox Jewish man and infiltrated the Jewish center’s secured campus. According to the lawsuit, Garland livestreamed the intrusion, mocked Jewish customs and the Holocaust, and refused repeated requests to leave before being forcibly escorted off the property by a security guard.
Garland was later arrested and pleaded guilty in state court to trespassing at the Jewish center, receiving a sentence of nearly a year in jail, according to Nashville television station WTVF.
The complaint alleges Garland acted as part of a coordinated effort, receiving guidance and encouragement from Miller and others who followed the incident in real time via video chat and later promoted it online as a “stunt.”
“Using fear and harassment to threaten and intimidate groups is a despicable act that cannot be tolerated in a multicultural society,” Scott McCoy, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s deputy legal director, said in a statement. “This is the second lawsuit the SPLC has brought against the Goyim Defense League for their actions targeting Nashville’s Black and Jewish communities.”
The lawsuit also ties the January incident to a broader campaign by the Goyim Defense League during a 10-day visit to Nashville in the summer of 2024, when members of the group allegedly harassed Jewish and Black residents, assaulted a Jewish man and a biracial man, and intimidated Black children downtown while waving swastika flags. The SPLC previously filed a separate lawsuit on behalf of a biracial man who was assaulted during that tour.
According to the lawsuit, the Jewish center has spent roughly $75,000 on additional security in the wake of the incidents and says staff and members have altered how they use the campus because of heightened fear.
The lawsuit comes as the Goyim Defense League has faced mounting pressure online and in court. Following a recent investigation by Nashville television station WTVF, websites operated by Minadeo were taken offline by their domain registrar, and several of his accounts were suspended from X. Other Goyim Defense League members have been convicted or indicted in connection with violent incidents during the group’s 2024 visit to Nashville, according to local reporting.
The suit invokes the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and other federal civil rights statutes and seeks court protection as well as financial compensation and punitive damages.
“This lawsuit demonstrates the Nashville Jewish community’s resolve to stand firm in the face of antisemitic intimidation and to hold accountable those who perpetrate it,” said Ben Raybin, an attorney for the Jewish center.
For a time, the Goyim Defense League was among the most prolific distributors of antisemitic propaganda in the United States, with members spreading flyers in Jewish neighborhoods and other public spaces. While the group’s online reach appears to have diminished more recently, Nashville has remained a focal point of its activity.
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Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, beloved Jewish Theological Seminary professor and author, dies at 73
(JTA) — Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, who taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary for over three decades and left an indelible mark on generations of rabbis and Jewish scholars, has died.
Diamond died Thursday at 73, following several years battling multiple forms of cancer.
Born in 1952, Diamond received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and rabbinical ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University from 1968 to 1977.
But it was at JTS, the Conservative flagship in New York City, where Diamond earned his doctorate in Talmud and was the Rabbi Judah Nadich Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, that his talents for mentorship and teaching flourished.
“My beloved teacher, a precious mentor and friend to countless Jewish leaders, Rabbi Eliezer Diamond z”l, has departed this world for the next,” wrote Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a scholar in residence and rabbi for the UJA-Federation of New York, in a post on Facebook. “His wisdom changed the course of my rabbinate many times over, something I know to be true for many others.”
Over his long career as a highly respected Talmud scholar, Diamond published a chapter on the rabbinic period in the “Schocken Guide to Jewish Books,” as well as entries in the “Reader’s Guide to Judaism” and “The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception.” In 2003, he published his only book, “Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture,” with the Oxford University Press.
Diamond retired from JTS after the fall 2024 semester. In March during the previous semester, his legacy at the school was celebrated in a program titled “Diamonds of Torah: Honoring Rabbi Eliezer Diamond’s Teaching.”
“Generations of students have been profoundly impacted by his teaching, while his writings on prayer, asceticism, and issues of environmental law and ethics have influenced so many in the wider Jewish world as well,” wrote Shuly Rubin Schwartz, the chancellor of JTS, in a statement announcing his retirement.
On Facebook, where Diamond frequently posted photos of his wife, Rabbi Shelley Kniaz, five children and numerous grandchildren, he also documented his health struggles, providing deeply personal and rabbinic testimonies of his experience.
After hearing a grim prognosis in August 2024, Diamond posted, “I am not a statistic; I am a distinct human being, Eliezer Ben-Zion, son of Yehuda Idel and Chaya Golde. No one can know what the Shekhina’s plan is for me. What I do know is that She does not want me to live in the shadow of death but rather to bask in the radiance of life.”
As news of his death spread on Friday, many of Diamond’s former students and friends eulogized him on social media, many of them calling attention to Diamond’s legendary kindness.
Rabbi Ben Goldberg, a former student of Diamond and the rabbi of Congregation KTI in Port Chester, New York, wrote on Facebook that Diamond had “passed on to the supernal yeshiva, where I imagine he will be as beloved as he was in all of the places he taught in this world.” He recalled his time in Diamond’s classes at JTS where, he wrote, it was clear to all that Diamond “cared deeply about his students.”
“More than anything about Talmud, I’ll remember him writing lengthy (and unnecessary) notes of apology for saying something in class that might have been hurtful (which of course, it wasn’t),” Goldberg wrote.
Michael Rosenberg, another former student of Diamond who now serves on the faculty of the Hadar Institute, recalled meeting with Diamond in 2023 where the pair had a conversation that remained with him.
“That conversation was filled with pearl after pearl — about parenting, teaching, being in relationship,” wrote Rosenberg in a post on Facebook. “I am a better parent and teacher because of that conversation, and I am so sad that I will not get to follow up with my teacher and rabbi.”
Beyond his teaching at JTS, Diamond also previously taught at Stern College, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the 92nd Street Y, several Ramah camps and the now-defunct Solomon Schechter High School.
Diamond was also a longtime resident of Teaneck, New Jersey, and congregant of Congregation Beth Sholom, where he regularly held a Torah study session on Shabbat afternoons.
“Rabbi Diamond’s wisdom (and hazzanus [singing]) were matched only by his wit,” wrote David Spielman, who was had Diamond as a high school teacher, in a post on Facebook. “A devout Brooklyn Dodgers fan, he once chastised someone for wearing a Yankees cap, saying it was inappropriate attire for Minyan. He would also say that Ebbets Field would be rebuilt ‘Bimharah b’yamainu.’ Rabbi Diamond will be remembered for that wit, wisdom, and perseverance now that his suffering is finally over.”
Beyond the numerous eulogies that have been written for him on social media, Diamond’s prolific reflections on life and faith endure.
“What draws me back to Hashem, if not to my life as a whole, is Psalm 23 גם כי אלך בגי צלמות לא אירא רע כי אתה עמדי. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil for you are with me,’” wrote Diamond in his last post on Facebook. “Wherever I am, God is there too. I hope that I will return home soon.”
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