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‘Where do I stand?’ Queer Modern Orthodox teens navigate a changing world
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
(JTA) — Until recently, Jacob Feldon considered Yeshiva University a serious candidate for his college education. As a senior at a Utah high school who has embraced Modern Orthodoxy and harbors dreams of potentially becoming a rabbi, he said he was drawn to “the idea of going to school in an observant community where I can study Torah and Talmud with some of the smartest people doing such a thing today.”
But Feldon is also bisexual and serves as a Jewish youth ambassador for Beloved Arise, a national interfaith support organization for queer youth. So Feldon took notice when Yeshiva University declined to officially recognize a Pride Alliance group on campus, and then pressed its case to the U.S. Supreme Court when mandated to do so.
“As a queer man I can’t see going into that environment right now with everything happening,” Feldon told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I’m getting a pretty clear message that I won’t be welcomed, authentically welcome.”
Feldon is not the only high school student who identifies as Modern Orthodox to have complicated feelings about Yeshiva University at the moment. As the main Modern Orthodox university, the school blends secular and religious instruction and values. Its attempt to navigate a balance between being welcoming and inclusive and fighting for the right to control LGBTQ students’ official expression on campus has made national headlines — and caused some Modern Orthodox teens to question whether they would feel comfortable attending.
For LGBTQ teens, the lawsuit and other controversies around gender and sexuality in Modern Orthodoxy have created “a little hopelessness,” said Rachael Fried, executive director of the support nonprofit Jewish Queer Youth.
Fried described the mindset of Modern Orthodox LGBTQ adolescents as, “I’m trying to live an Orthodox life. I’m trying to build my future as a queer Orthodox person, and this is what the main, flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy thinks about me. Then where is my future and what’s the hope for me and what are my dreams?”
For queer teens, the Y.U. saga is just one high-profile touchpoint in an ongoing grappling with their place within Modern Orthodoxy. Modern Orthodox communities range widely in many ways depending on their history, geography and leadership, meaning that some queer Orthodox teens say they have found acceptance and support while others say they’ve had more challenging experiences.
Rachael Fried is the executive director of the support nonprofit Jewish Queer Youth. (Courtesy JQY)
Often teens say they experience both. Like many of the queer teens interviewed for this article, Rivka Schafer and their parents first thought it best to keep their queer identity private due to the repercussions they feared with being LGBTQ in a Modern Orthodox community. When they did come out in middle school, Schafer said they received mixed reactions in their Jewish day school.
“The kids had a lot of stigma and the administration did too, but they tried to be really accepting and really supportive which was also really, really beautiful,” Schafer told JTA.
“Currently I identify as Modern Orthodox because Judaism is a really important part of my identity and I find Judaism to be really meaningful to me,” said Schafer, who is nonbinary, from their home in Teaneck, New Jersey. “So although I struggled a lot with the acceptance in the Jewish community, and stigma within the Orthodox community, I really ultimately believe it is and should be a strong part of who I am.”
But while Schafer has remained committed to their religious identity, Fried, of Jewish Queer Youth, said the Pride Alliance lawsuit and other LGBTQ-related controversies sometimes “pushes people away from Orthodoxy in a really unfortunate way.”
This is what happened to Mattie Schaffer. “I would describe it as [having] a religious identity crisis,” said Schaffer, a student at Lev Miriam Learning Studio in Passaic, New Jersey who uses he/they pronouns and identifies as queer. Schaffer, 16, said their neighborhood is a more right-wing Modern Orthodox community, colloquially called yeshivish, though his family is not.
“A part of all the alienation and isolation comes from a feeling of not having a place anywhere,” Schaffer said. “And as much as you try to conform, there just isn’t really a place for you to fit unless you want to be sticking out or be bending yourself in half.”
Modern Orthodox queer teens’ feeling “of not having a place” can be quite literal, particularly for those teens that are non-binary or transgender, said Schafer, the teen from Teaneck.
Schafer finds their nonbinary identity sometimes at odds with even the most basic rules of the Hebrew language, which assigns a gender to nearly all words, and of their synagogue. “Where do I stand? On the mechitza?” they asked, referring to the divider separating men and women in Orthodox synagogues.
The question of LGBTQ individuals in gender-separated prayer spaces recently reared up at Y.U., when one of its leading rabbis decreed that a transgender woman could not pray in either the women’s or men’s section of her university-affiliated synagogue.
But while recent months have been abundant in controversy, the last decade has shown tremendous progress for LGBTQ Modern Orthodox teens, according to multiple people in and around the community.
Rabbi Steve Greenberg, who was ordained by Yeshiva University before coming out as gay in 1999, heads the Orthodox queer advocacy group Eshel. His organization surveyed approximately 240 Orthodox synagogues and rabbis and found that 74% of interviewees were “high welcoming,” meaning that “inclusion is explicit, principled and broadly acknowledged” and queer families’ life cycle events other than marriage are celebrated. Another 22% offered “moderate welcome,” while 4% were “low welcoming/inattentive.”
Nadiv Schorer, right, married Ariel Meiri in 2020 with Orthodox rabbi Avram Mlotek officiating. (David Perlman Photography)
Approximately 10 rabbis said they were willing to perform same-sex marriages, according to Eshel’s research.
“They do their best to make it possible for LGBTQ folks to belong to Orthodox environments,” said Greenberg. “And it’s grown.”
The head of school at North Shore Hebrew Academy on Long Island, Rabbi Jeffery Kobrin, said he believed that growing conversations about LGBTQ issues in Orthodox communities has had benefits.
“I think it’s easier to be a queer teen now than it was in 2012, just because it’s more out there,” Kobrin said. “People talk about it more, people try to be more accepting of it, and people, community-wise, seem to less feel this contradiction between Orthodoxy and alternative lifestyles.”
Some teens say they have witnessed change in just the last couple of years. Benjamin Small, a gay teen who graduated from SAR High School last year and now attends Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa in Israel, said his rabbi, Chaim Poupko, of Congregation Avahath Torah in Englewood, New Jersey, has advocated for queer members of the Orthodox community in his synagogue.
“That would be unheard of two or three years ago,” Small said.
Few Modern Orthodox schools in the New York area have an LGBTQ support club. But Fried, JQY’s executive director, said students are learning how to organize and build community independently, in the absence of recognition from their schools and synagogues.
“That comes with people choosing themselves, feeling empowered to build their own communities and to step-up and create the groups that others are not creating for them,” she said.
Before the Y.U. court case, “the messaging that I heard from the Modern Orthodox community was ‘your identity is not wrong, and we want to support our queer members of the community,’” said Fried, whose organization gave grants to student groups affected by the Y.U. case.
But now, she said, the message that queer Modern Orthodox teens are hearing has shifted.
“Actually, your queer identity is what is problematic. It’s not just the sentence in the Torah that is about behavior, but actually your identity,” she characterized Modern Orthodox institutions as saying. “You want to gather and build community that is based around identity and that, in and of itself, is problematic, and it’s inherently a threat.”
For its part, Yeshiva University has tried to thread a narrow needle.
A person walks by the Wilf Campus of Yeshiva University in New York City, Aug. 30, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
“We love all of our students including those who identify as LGBTQ,” Y.U. said in a FAQ after it launched a school-sanctioned LGBTQ club. “Through our deep personal relationships and conversations with them, we have felt their struggles to fit into an orthodox world that could appear to them as not having a place for them.” (The YU Pride Alliance called the new club “a feeble attempt” at compromise and said they were not involved in its formation.)
There was no consensus among teens who spoke to JTA about how much the Y.U. saga would affect inclusion in other spaces. It’s also unclear the degree to which queer Modern Orthodox teens and their allies are incorporating the situation in their decision-making about college.
Y.U. declined to share student enrollment and admissions data, saying that the university does not generally release that information. But according to a recent Y.U. advertisement, last fall the school had “the largest incoming undergraduate class in over 20 years.”
Still, the school’s lawsuit and rhetoric has been a turnoff for 19-year-old Penny Laser, a queer student at a secular college who had envisioned possibly pursuing graduate studies in Talmud at Y.U. and grew up in a non-Orthodox household. (Laser asked to be identified using a pseudonym because she is seeking a giyur lechumra, a conversion for Jewish individuals to remove any doubt of their Orthodox Jewish legal status, and feared the Rabbinical Council of America would not grant her one if she was quoted in this article.)
“I’m not sure how I can trust or engage with Y.U. in the future,” said Laser. “A. I don’t know if it’s going to be a safe place for me, and B. I don’t want to align myself with an institution that has values like this.”
Schafer, from Teaneck, and Schaffer, from Passaic, are both not considering Y.U.
And the consequences of the Y.U. litigation goes beyond influencing the decisions of individual students, according to Fried.
“What the Y.U. situation is doing right now is forcing this conversation into the spotlight,” she said. “So different institutions and leaders are forced into having this conversation, or even thinking about where they stand. People are asking them to communicate where they stand.”
Feldon, from Utah, has hope. He thinks that the Modern Orthodox world needs queer rabbis to lead the conversation on inclusion from a halachic perspective — and he thinks that can still happen, despite the push by Modern Orthodoxy’s flagship university to block the Pride Alliance.
“I choose to believe,” said Feldon, “that we’ll get there. My dream life is where I can bring my boyfriend to minyan [prayer services] three times a day. And I choose to believe that we are on that path.”
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The post ‘Where do I stand?’ Queer Modern Orthodox teens navigate a changing world appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Suspicious Explosive Package Targeting Jewish Leader Heightens Antisemitism Fears in Argentina
People hold up pictures of the victims of the AMIA Jewish center bombing during a ceremony to mark the 22nd anniversary of the 1994 attack in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2016. Photo: REUTERS/Enrique Marcarian
Argentina’s authorities are investigating yet another suspected antisemitic incident after a suspicious package addressed to a local branch president of the country’s main Jewish umbrella organization was intercepted, further heightening alarms among community leaders amid a recent surge in attacks.
On Wednesday, the Pilares del Rosario medical center received a package containing explosive material addressed to Gabriel Dobkin, who serves as both the institution’s director and president of the local branch of the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA) in Rosario, a major city in the central-eastern Santa Fe province.
According to local media, clinic staff received a package containing a pack of Philip Morris cigarettes wrapped in transparent tape, which the facility’s manager said felt unusually heavy and immediately aroused suspicion.
Because the package had arrived unrequested via a delivery service, the clinic’s manager quickly raised concerns and called in the police explosives unit.
Police bomb squad dogs later detected explosive material inside the cigarette pack. According to the ongoing investigation, the package also contained a strange substance, though authorities have not yet released further details.
After digging a pit in the facility’s backyard, police experts carried out a controlled detonation of the material.
Even though the package did not include an automatic triggering mechanism, it reportedly contained a number of coins intended to serve as shrapnel in the event of an explosion.
Local law enforcement is treating the incident as a targeted antisemitic attack, describing it as either an attempted act of violence or, at the very least, an act of intimidation.
As the investigation continues, detectives are still analyzing the substance found inside the package but have not yet determined its composition or origin. Surveillance footage from the area is being reviewed, and staff from the clinic are also expected to be interviewed.
DAIA Rosario strongly condemned the attack, describing it as a troubling escalation of threats against Jewish institutions, reflecting a wider atmosphere of hostility toward the community.
“This is an expression of hatred that not only targets the Jewish community, but also undermines the fundamental values of coexistence, respect, and democracy. Such acts must be condemned unequivocally and confronted with resolve. Simply denouncing them is not enough — decisive action is essential,” the organization said in a statement.
“Impunity cannot be an option. Every act of antisemitism that goes unpunished sends a message of tolerance toward hatred,” it continued. “Every firm response from the state is a clear signal that society will not back down. To prevent these acts from recurring, determination, action, and justice are essential.”
This latest incident comes amid heightened security concerns within Argentina’s Jewish community after unknown individuals threw a homemade firebomb at the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Community Center in La Plata, a city in southeastern Buenos Aires Province, last Sunday.
The Buenos Aires Security Ministry and Police Counterterrorism Division have opened an investigation into the incident, examining possible links to another attack last week that appears to share a similar modus operandi.
The Israelite Literary Center and Max Nordau Library in La Plata were also targeted last Thursday when unidentified individuals threw a homemade Molotov-type device at the building’s entrance.
Although the device failed to ignite, it shattered the building’s windows and caused some material damage. Fortunately, no fires broke out and no injuries were reported.
In response to these latest attacks, Jewish institutions across the country have strengthened preventive protocols and reinforced internal security and surveillance measures.
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US, Israel Cripple Iran’s Nuclear Weaponization Work, New Report Shows
Symbolic mock-ups of Iranian missiles are displayed on a street, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 22, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
More than two months into the war, Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons has suffered a major setback as US and Israeli strikes have ravaged critical facilities, crippled essential infrastructure, and killed personnel central to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, according to a new analysis
On Friday, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington, DC–based think tank, released a new assessment of the impact of Israeli and US strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, concluding that the attacks significantly damaged Tehran’s ability to advance nuclear weapons development, particularly by disrupting its weaponization activities.
A nuclear program generally begins with uranium enrichment, the process of producing material that can power civilian reactors or, at higher levels of purity, be used in a nuclear weapon. Much of Iran’s enrichment infrastructure was destroyed during last year’s 12-day war.
The second element is weaponization, which involves the design, testing, and production of the components needed to assemble a functioning nuclear device — a central focus of the more recent Israeli and US military campaign.
According to ISIS’s newly released report, at least six confirmed nuclear-related sites were destroyed so far, with three additional locations possibly connected to the program also struck, bringing the total number of targeted facilities linked to nuclear weapons development to between nine and 12.
Since the start of the war earlier this year, Israel and the United States have struck a wide range of military-industrial facilities involved in missile, drone, and conventional weapons production.
However, the report indicates that some previously undisclosed sites may also have had connections to Iran’s nuclear activities, potentially raising the true scale of the damage.
By analyzing satellite imagery, the report concludes that Iran’s ability to successfully complete a nuclear weapon has been significantly degraded, with the strikes greatly extending the timeline required to produce a bomb while sharply increasing the likelihood of technical failure.
Before the June 2025 war, intelligence assessments estimated Iran could likely produce a nuclear weapon in less than six months with a high probability of success.
Now, the regime’s chances of successfully completing the weaponization process are considered technically low even over a one- to two-year period, largely because the strikes destroyed not only facilities, but also critical equipment and personnel involved in the final stages of bomb development.
ISIS’s latest findings contradict earlier US intelligence assessments, which reportedly concluded that Iran’s nuclear timeline had not been significantly delayed, arguing that such data is inconsistent with extensive visible destruction across key nuclear sites.
The report also argues that there are no signs Iran has resumed uranium enrichment activities, as facilities repeatedly targeted by Israeli and American airstrikes remain heavily damaged with no detectable reconstruction efforts underway.
Despite extensive damage to the regime’s infrastructure, the report cautions that Iran’s nuclear threat has not been fully eliminated.
ISIS has identified tunnel complexes near Esfahan and Natanz in central Iran that were not directly targeted and are believed to contain most of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, including roughly 440 kilograms enriched to 60 percent — far above civilian requirements and much closer to weapons-grade material.
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ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan Sidesteps ‘Genocide’ Accusations Against Israel
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan speaks during an interview with Reuters in The Hague, Netherlands, Feb. 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Karim Khan, the embattled chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has cast fresh doubt on accusations that Israel committed “genocide” in Gaza, arguing in a new interview that no legal conclusion has yet been reached in the ongoing legal battle.
In a lengthy interview with anti-Israel journalist Medhi Hasan this week, Khan refused to engage in the popularized rhetoric labeling Israel’s military campaign against Hamas terrorists in Gaza as genocidal, even as pressure mounts on the ICC by activists to pursue more sweeping charges against Israeli officials.
When asked directly whether Israel’s conduct amounted to genocide, Khan emphasized the need for sufficient evidence to level charges against Israeli officials and that prosecutors must follow evidence and legal standards rather than political narratives.
“So, you’re not ruling out that there could be a warrant in the future?” Hasan asked.
“Everything is a function of evidence,” Khan responded, arguing that accusing Israel of genocide for political purposes would be “reckless.”
“You’re saying in the past three years there hasn’t been evidence of genocide in Gaza?” Hasan asked, visibly flummoxed.
Khan lamented the “suffering” in Gaza but reaffirmed that the ICC could not proceed in making final judgements about the nature of Israel’s military operations in Gaza without sufficient evidence. He asserted that officials within the ICC are vigorously analyzing the case and that he cannot reveal more about the nature of the investigation.
“So, genocide is not off limits?” Hasan pressed.
“No crime is off limits if the evidence is there,” Khan responded.
Khan has come under fire for making his initial surprise demand for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on the same day in May 2024 that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation reportedly infuriated US and British leaders, as the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Nonetheless, Khan’s latest remarks are likely to reverberate through international legal and diplomatic circles, where the genocide accusation has become one of the most contentious aspects of the war between Israel and Hamas. Over the past two years, an array of humanitarian organizations and human rights experts have accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza. These accusations have been controversial and widely contested, with critics alleging these groups and individuals lack sufficient evidence.
Khan’s comments come as the ICC faces intense scrutiny over its investigation into the conflict. In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which has provided significant humanitarian aid into the war-torn enclave throughout the war.
US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
Genocide is among the most difficult crimes to prove under international law because prosecutors must establish specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Hasan, one of the most prominent anti-Israel critics in media, has spent the past two years unleashing an unrelenting barrage of criticism against the Jewish state, repeatedly accusing the Israeli military of pursuing a “genocide” in Gaza.
In the interview, Khan also forcefully denied allegations of sexual misconduct that have engulfed his office in recent months, accusing critics of politicizing the claims amid the ICC’s high-profile investigations into Israel, Russia, and other global conflicts. He dismissed suggestions that his pursuit of Israeli leaders was intended to distract from the allegations against him, saying that he did not have evidence to substantiate the claim.
Khan further alleged that senior Western officials attempted to pressure the ICC over its investigation, including what he described as warnings from prominent American and British political figures about the geopolitical consequences of targeting Israeli officials.
The ICC’s investigation has placed the court at the center of an increasingly bitter international divide over the Gaza war. Khan’s comments won’t settle the debate, but the ICC prosecutor appeared to signal a more cautious legal approach than some of Israel’s fiercest critics have demanded.