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These queer newlyweds are modeling Jewish joy for LGBTQ youth
(New York Jewish Week) — The table at the center of the room, set for 16, was festooned with a rainbow tablecloth and sparkles, and surrounded by about a dozen college-age guests. At its head were two chairs decorated with rainbow necklaces and flags and set for the guests of honor: Both place settings came with a headband with the word “bride” written across the top.
The group had come together last week for a sheva brachot, a Jewish celebration in which loved ones and community members gather in the week following a wedding to bless the newlyweds over a festive meal. The celebrations are common among observant couples.
But for many of the celebrants, even those who had attended other such festive meals, the dinner was still a milestone: It was their first time attending a sheva brachot for an LGBTQ couple, Rachael Fried and Henna Warman, who were married on Sept. 3.
The dinner was hosted by Jewish Queer Youth, and for one of the brides, Rachael Fried, it was more than just a celebration of her marriage. It was also a step forward for the cause she champions: supporting Orthodox LGBTQ youth and showing them that they, too, can live full lives despite Orthodox Judaism’s traditional rejection of LGBTQ relationships.
The festive dinner was part of JQY’s “Share your simcha” initiative, meant to show young Orthodox LGBTQ teens what their futures can look like. (Abbie Sophia)
While some Orthodox communities have tried to make space for LGBTQ members, the vast majority of Orthodox rabbis, citing prohibitions in traditional Jewish law, do not conduct LGBTQ weddings. Orthodox LGBTQ Jews have said they feel marginalized and discriminated against in the communities where they grew up, and recent manifestations of that discrimination have catalyzed JQY’s work.
“Queer youth from Orthodox homes don’t really get to celebrate or see a lot of communal happiness or shared queer joy today,” Fried, 36, who is JQY’s executive director, told the New York Jewish Week. “It can also be really hard for a lot of JQYers to envision a future for themselves.”
JQY serves Orthodox youth ages 13 to 23, and the celebration was part of a larger initiative the group is launching called “Share your simcha,” a Hebrew term connoting a lifecycle celebration. The initiative invites queer Jews celebrating various life events to share their experiences with JQY members so that the young people can see a world in which they, too, can celebrate traditional Jewish milestones and other joyous moments.
“When you hear about queer life experiences, you usually hear lots of negative ones — you don’t really hear about the positive ones,” said Shlomo Satt, who attended the sheva bracha with his fiancé, Mattan Rozenek. “There’s certainly no frame of reference for queer joy or queer simchas. How many gay weddings as a teenager did I see? Zero. We’ve never been to a gay wedding and we’re getting married.”
Satt, who grew up in a Haredi community in Far Rockaway, Queens, said that he chose to join JQY for a sheva brachot by “putting myself in the perspective of the young queer person.”
“It would have meant the world to me to realize I don’t have to sacrifice anything. I can have a life. I don’t need to lose anything,” he said.
JQY’s entire membership was invited to Thursday night’s celebration, which took place in Times Square at the JQY “Drop-In Center,” a space where members can meet with social workers and psychologists, eat snacks, participate in support groups and hang out with fellow queer Jews.
The meal carried many of the hallmarks of a standard sheva brachot, and a few differences. It took place five days after the wedding and guests ate a sumptuous dinner of baked ziti, sushi, salad and cupcakes.
But instead of the seven blessings traditionally recited at the end of the meal — a repetition of the blessings said under the chuppah — guests went around the room offering personalized blessings for the couple’s marriage and future.
Amid those blessings, one JQY member shared a memory of when Fried helped them navigate a stalled subway after a JQY meeting late one evening. They wished upon Fried and Warman that “even when taking unexpected paths, they will always find their way back home.”
Others wished the couple “a lifetime of happiness” and to “appreciate the mundaneness and the quiet moments of living every day with your soulmate.”
Fried and Warman meant online during the pandemic; they were married in Connecticut on Sept. 3. (Abbie Sophia)
Fried and Warman, a 32-year-old psychiatric nurse practitioner, also offered to answer any questions about the logistics — and emotions — involved in planning and executing a queer Jewish wedding.
The two met on the Jewish dating app JSwipe at the beginning of the pandemic. Both grew up in traditional Orthodox communities — Fried in Fairfield, CT and Warman in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush.
One attendee asked them why they decided to switch the words of one of the seven blessings from “chosson v’kallah” — bride and groom — to “Rachel v’Henna,” their names. They said it was a friend’s idea and that it made the blessings feel more natural and personal.
Another asked what the biggest surprise of the wedding was, and a third what they felt most unprepared for.
“The biggest surprise was that, for all the stress of worrying about who would come and who wouldn’t come from my family, it didn’t end up mattering at all once the wedding was happening,” Warman said. “It was just such a happy day, I really couldn’t notice or care.”
And when it came to what they were least prepared for, the answer could have come from any newlywed: “Keeping up the stamina of dancing the whole night,” Fried said.
Those answers could be of use to Satt and Rozenek, the engaged couple at the dinner, who said they hope to host a sheva brachot with JQY when they get married next month. Rozenek said he wished he had been able to meet queer, observant couples earlier in life — not just so he could see his identity reflected, but for help answering the kinds of questions asked by attendees at last week’s event.
“It’s like networking, so to speak,” Rozenek said. “Once you know somebody [queer] who is getting married, you can say to yourself, ‘If and when I have a wedding, I know where I can turn to.’ We want to continue that train and help people realize: you are not the first person to ever do this,” he said.
The “Share your simcha” initiative was something Fried and other JQY staff had been formulating in recent years as a way to “bring Jewish queer joy to our community,” Fried said. She added, “The tagline for this initiative is to ‘celebrate Jewish queer joy today and picture a queer Jewish tomorrow.’ That is exactly what we’re trying to do.”
JQY decided to expedite the program in June, when the wedding of two Orthodox women went viral in Orthodox Whatsapp groups and on Twitter, where users lambasted the ceremony. In light of that, JQY wanted to show their support and joy for the couple, who had been members of the organization in the past, Fried said.
The launch of the initiative also follows what has been a busy year for the organization, which has been involved in an ongoing legal battle against Yeshiva University, the Modern Orthodox flagship, over its refusal to recognize an LGBTQ student group. After a judge ruled that the university must recognize the club, called the YU Pride Alliance, the university temporarily suspended all student clubs at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year. JQY responded by offering funding and event space to any student club affected by that decision. (The Pride Alliance later put its demands on hold pending the legal appeals process, and the school’s student groups were reinstated.)
Fried and Warman’s celebration was the fourth hosted by JQY since June as part of the “simcha” initiative. There have also been two other weddings, as well as an upsherin, a ceremony held at a boy’s third birthday in which his hair is cut for the first time. The boy’s two mothers were previously members of JQY.
In addition to being a way to showcase queer joy for younger Jews, Fried and Warman said it was a treat to be celebrated by a community that can relate to their identities.
“As much as this is for the youth, it’s also for the people who are celebrating,” Fried said. “I don’t really get to have a celebration where it is just the queer community celebrating my simcha, so it’s cool to have this queer space for this queer simcha.”
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The post These queer newlyweds are modeling Jewish joy for LGBTQ youth appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US Democrats Demand Release of Pro-Hamas Columbia University Activist Mahmoud Khalil From ICE Detention
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
Democrats in the US Congress are largely defending a leading anti-Israel agitator at Columbia University in New York following news of his arrest and detainment by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian from Syria who completed post-graduate studies at Columbia in December, was apprehended by federal authorities on Saturday night and transported to an immigration jail in Louisiana. The pro-Hamas activist was informed that his green card had been revoked and that he would be deported from the United States.
In a statement, the US Department of Homeland Security said ICE agents arrested Khalil “in support of” an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump aimed at combating antisemitism on university campuses.
“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting US national security,” the department said.
US President Donald Trump defended Khalil’s arrest and said it will be the first of many.
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, antisemitism, anti-American activity, and the Trump administration will not tolerate it,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Many are not students; they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
However, a federal judge in New York City on Monday ordered that Khalil not be deported by the Trump administration until the court ruled on a lawsuit presented by his lawyers. According to ICE, the activist is currently being held at the Lasalle Detention facility in Louisiana. Khalil’s case is set to be heard on Wednesday.
Many observers criticized Khalil’s arrest and detainment, arguing that the Trump administration both violated his right to due process and undermined free speech. Critics also argued that the Trump administration does not possess the right to unilaterally revoke green cards from legal residents.
Congressional Democrats largely condemned the ICE arrest of Khalil, arguing that the Trump administration should release the pro-Hamas activist immediately.
“The warrantless arrest of any legal permanent resident seemingly solely over their speech is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of first amendment rights to free speech,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY).
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, lambasted the arrest, posted on social media that detaining a legal resident “for exercising his right to free speech is something we’d expect from Russia — NOT AMERICA [sic].”
The official BlueSky account of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused the Trump administration of seeking retribution against Khalil for expressing “his First Amendment rights in a way Donald Trump didn’t like” and condemned the White House for practicing “straight up authoritarianism.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most outspoken critics against Israel in Congress, said that Khalil’s arrest is part of a broader effort “to shred our constitutional rights to free speech and due process.” In addition, Tlaib spearheaded a letter to US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, demanding that Khalil be “freed from DHS custody immediately.” Thirteen other Democrats signed the letter.
The letter argued that Khalil has “not been charged or convicted of any crime” and that the Trump administration targeted him “solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader,” as well as his efforts in opposing Israel’s “brutal assault of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” The missive also claimed that the arrest of Khalil represents another example of the Trump administration’s purported “anti-Palestinian racism” and accused the White House of trying to dismantle the “Palestine solidarity movement in this country.” The lawmakers warned that the Trump administration’s tactics against Khalil “will be applied to any and all opposition to his undemocratic agenda.”
Some observers noted out that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), one of the most vocal opponents of the Jewish state in the US Congress, did not sign onto the letter calling for Khalil’s release. Though Ocasio-Cortez has spoken out in defense of Khalil, some on the political left have repudiated her for not taking more strident anti-Israel stances in the 16 months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel. The lawmaker came under fire by some of the political left last summer for calling for the release of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas to Gaza.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) also repudiated the arrest, writing that Khalil is “entitled to First Amendment protections like everyone in this country.”
Despite the widespread backlash over Khalil’s arrest, many congressional Republicans praised the announcement, arguing that the Trump administration has taken aggressive action to protect Jewish Americans and clamp down on antisemitism.
While at Columbia, Khalil spearheaded multiple pro-Hamas demonstrations on campus. He was a participant in Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a constellation of 100 anti-Israel campus organizations calling for the Ivy League institution to cut ties with the Jewish state.
In the aftermath of Khalil’s arrest, video circulated online showing the activist leading a takeover of a campus building at neighboring Barnard College. During the unsanctioned demonstration, activists spread pamphlets glorifying the Hamas Oct. 7 massacres across southern Israel.
In addition, Khalil helped lead the infamous Hamilton Hall takeover on Columbia’s campus in the final weeks of the 2023-2024 school year.
US Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) defended Khalil’s arrest, saying, “If you are on a student visa and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your Jewish classmates, you’re going home.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) condemned Democrats for “fighting for a pro-Hamas foreigner who has made life hell for Jews on campus.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) also lauded the detainment of Khalil, writing that “obtaining a US visa is a privilege, not a right. Friends of Hamas — don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
In the year following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 slaughters across Israel, Columbia University has emerged as a hotbed of anti-Israel student activism. Last spring, anti-Israel students and faculty erected a student encampment, protesting the university’s ties to the Jewish state. Moreover, Columbia has suffered an exodus of financial support from Jewish donors and alumni, alleging that the university has dragged its feet in combating antisemitism on campus.
Last week, the Trump administration cut $400 million in grants originally intended for Columbia, arguing that the university has not done enough to protect Jewish students. Mounting pressure from the Trump administration reportedly caused the university to collaborate with ICE to detain Khalil.
The post US Democrats Demand Release of Pro-Hamas Columbia University Activist Mahmoud Khalil From ICE Detention first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran’s President to Trump: I Will Not Negotiate, ‘Do Whatever the Hell You Want’
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian attends a press conference in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 16, 2024. Photo: WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Majid Asgaripour via REUTERS
President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran would not negotiate with the US while being threatened, telling President Donald Trump to “do whatever the hell you want,” Iranian state media reported on Tuesday.
“It is unacceptable for us that they [the US] give orders and make threats. I won’t even negotiate with you. Do whatever the hell you want,” state media quoted Pezeshkian as saying.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that Tehran would not be bullied into negotiations, a day after Trump said he had sent a letter urging Iran to engage in talks on a new nuclear deal.
While expressing openness to a deal with Tehran, Trump has reinstated the “maximum pressure” campaign he applied in his first term as president to isolate Iran from the global economy and drive its oil exports down towards zero.
In an interview with Fox Business, Trump said last week, “There are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal” to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran has long denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon. However, it is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, has warned.
Iran has accelerated its nuclear work since 2019, a year after then-President Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.
The post Iran’s President to Trump: I Will Not Negotiate, ‘Do Whatever the Hell You Want’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syrians Riot in Front of Jewish Museum in Munich Amid Rise in Antisemitic Incidents
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas demonstrators marching in Munich, Germany. Photo: Reuters/Alexander Pohl
Three young Syrian men rioted in front of the Jewish Museum in Munich this past weekend, spitting on photographs of Israeli hostages and deceased soldiers before one of the assailants threatened security personnel with a knife.
The incident, first reported by German media, was one of the latest antisemitic cases in a country that has experienced a surge in open hatred toward Jews since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
During the Gaza conflict, the Jewish Museum has displayed photographs of hostages taken by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel as well as deceased Israeli soldiers, along with candles, to honor and remember them.
On Saturday afternoon, three men — Syrian citizens living in Austria — vandalized the memorial by spitting on it while shouting antisemitic slogans, the German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Jüdische Allgemeine reported.
After witnessing the attack, two employees from the Jewish community’s security service tried to stop the assailants, who responded aggressively. One of the three men, a 19-year-old, allegedly kicked one of the employees before drawing a knife.
Several police officers assigned to protect the Jewish Center, located next to the museum, noticed the incident and intervened. Soon afterward, more than 30 officers arrived at the scene. Police and security guards had to threaten to use their firearms before the teenager dropped the knife.
According to local police, the man and his two accomplices, a 20-year-old and a 31-year-old, have all been arrested and are under investigation for threats, assault, defamation, and insulting the memory of the deceased.
The Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office has taken over the case, with senior prosecutor Andreas Franck, who also serves as the antisemitism commissioner of the Bavarian judiciary, overseeing the case.
Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).
The figures compiled by RIAS were the highest count for a single year since the federally-funded body began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015, showing the German capital averaged nearly eight anti-Jewish outrages a day from January to June last year.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.
However, experts believe that the true number of incidents is much higher but not recorded because of reluctance on the part of the victims.
“Only 20 percent of the antisemitic crimes are reported, so the real number should be five times what we have,” Felix Klein, the German federal government’s chief official dealing with antisemitism, told The Algemeiner in an interview in 2023.
Earlier this year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the ongoing discrimination faced by the Jewish community, calling it “outrageous and shameful.”
Last month, Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, passed a motion to address antisemitism and hostility toward Israel in schools and universities, seeking to combat a surge in pro-Hamas demonstrations on campuses and antisemitic incidents across the country.
Jewish students at German universities widely expressed a growing sense of insecurity and uneasiness following Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, amid a slew of incidents purportedly meant to protest the war in Gaza.
The recently passed parliamentary motion stipulates that the federal government — in collaboration with the ministers of education and the German Rectors’ Conference, an association of state and state-recognized universities — must ensure that antisemitic behavior in educational institutions results in sanctions.
“This includes the consistent enforcement of house rules, temporary exclusion from classes or studies, and even … expulsion,” the motion reads.
The post Syrians Riot in Front of Jewish Museum in Munich Amid Rise in Antisemitic Incidents first appeared on Algemeiner.com.