If you are in New York City and struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call 1-888-NYC-WELL for free and confidential crisis counseling. You can also dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
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Yeshiva University is left in mourning after a beloved gay alum dies by suicide
(New York Jewish Week) — Before eulogizing their friend on Thursday night, Beth Weiss draped a rainbow flag with a Jewish star over the podium.
It was a potent symbol of the twin identities that Weiss and others who knew Herschel Siegel said he had struggled to reconcile, particularly as a student and 2021 graduate of Yeshiva University. Siegel died by suicide Friday in Atlanta, where he grew up and had been living.
Weiss said during the eulogy they recalled having “a conversation with a gay friend about what it felt like to be queer in the Orthodox world” for the first time with Siegel, a classmate at Y.U., the Modern Orthodox flagship in uptown Manhattan.
“I can’t tell you how invaluable conversations and connections like that are,” Weiss said. “We talked about our dreams for the future, but also the reality of how our future might look because of our queerness.”
Weiss’ comments, delivered at a memorial held on the Y.U. campus and organized by some of Siegel’s friends from college, reflect a narrative solidifying around Siegel’s death. Many believe — based on their conversations with Siegel, his social media posts and their own experiences — that Siegel had considered that there may have been no place for him as a gay man in the Orthodox community where he grew up and attended college.
Even as some in Siegel’s community have downplayed the focus on his sexuality following his death, friends say his suicide should be a wakeup call at a time when Yeshiva University is deeply divided over whether and how to include LGBTQ students. In recent years, the school has fought not to have to recognize an LGBTQ student group, even petitioning the Supreme Court for relief. A trans woman was also told she could no longer pray in a synagogue affiliated with the school.
Weiss told the New York Jewish Week that there are many “Orthodox queer people who are possibly suffering, who feel like they are alone, and who feel like they don’t have a future,” adding, “I know that Herschel felt that way at points in his life because he told me.”
Experts caution that it is a mistake to attribute suicides to single causes. Still, there is no question that LGBTQ youth are at increased risk, particularly when they are not accepted in their communities. According to a 2023 survey by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention in the LGBTQ community, 41% of LGBTQ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year.
Siegel made his struggle transparent. In an Instagram post from March that has circulated widely after his death, he wrote about how the word “abomination” in a Torah portion brought up trauma for him as a gay man within the Orthodox community.
“According to that trauma, my very EXISTENCE as a gay, Jewish, Male was an abomination,” Siegal wrote. “And even decades later, that fear-based thought pattern erupted into my consciousness, at the most unexpected of times.”
He then asked, “Do we ever REALLY heal from the deeply traumatic memories within us? Or is it rather a Journey, like many other emotions, and then we come to realize that one day we are at ease while riding ‘the trauma-coaster’?”
Siegel ended the post on a positive note, sharing gratitude for anyone who “has ever experienced a profoundly traumatizing event within your lives. … The fact that we made it this far is something to be proud of in and of itself!”
He died a month later, on the eve of the Shabbat when the weekly Torah portion includes the Jewish legal prohibition on homosexual intercourse, calling it an “abomination.”
“I think about the bravery, the heroism, the strength of this kid,” said Mordechai Levovitz, a therapist and the clinical director of Jewish Queer Youth, an organization that seeks to support and empower Jewish LGBTQ teens, with a focus on the Orthodox community. “I think any person at all willing to endure a community in a religion that is very cruel to him — and yet sees the value because there is also still value — is someone that I think we can look up to, and that we can learn from, and that we can be inspired by.”
He added, “But also, we can admit and witness and bear the fact that it is because of the community that we created that this kid could not find a future for himself and thought that it would perhaps be better off if he was not here, or if he did not exist.”
Not everyone who has commented on Siegel’s death is connecting it with his sexuality. Rabbi Ilan D. Feldman of Beth Jacob Atlanta, Siegel’s synagogue, wrote an email to the congregation saying that “our thoughts and tefillos [prayers] go out to the Siegel family, whose agony can never be fully fathomed, and who will be embraced and supported by us, their community.” Siegel is survived by his parents and five siblings.
Feldman presided over a funeral on Sunday that people who were present said was attended by about 200 people, with more than 450 tuning in on Zoom. Levovitz said that at the funeral, the rabbi referred to Siegel as being “mentally ill.” Mental illness is considered the strongest predictor of suicide.
Feldman told the New York Jewish Week over the phone that “even by reducing this story to a one-dimensional story of a guy who was gay, who committed suicide, we’re actually doing a disservice to gay people.” He also said Siegel’s family is distressed by the narrative, which they believe is untrue.
“The storyline of this particular case is an openly gay person who had wonderful relationships with the entire Orthodox community, including haredi Orthodox leaders,” Feldman said. “And now we’re going take this guy after his death, during his shiva while his family is grieving, and start talking about [how] gays are marginalized and whether this drove him to suicide, when this is the one case where an Orthodox community embraced a gay person with love and with no exceptions.”
But he acknowledged that there is “a big difference between pressures from the Jewish community and pressures from Jewish tradition,” which under Orthodox interpretations does not permit homosexuality.
“If he ever felt pressure, it was relieved by the love that he received in the community, but the pressure may have been there because Jewish tradition is inconsistent with gay activity,” Feldman said.
A source in the Atlanta community who said he had known Siegel since Siegel was a child said Siegel’s death comes on the heels of another suicide in the Atlanta Orthodox community, also of a young person who identified as a member of the LGBTQ community.
“There is a cloud of sadness. People just feel confused and lost. This is the second time in six months,” the source said. “It’s just resonating very hard for people. Young people taking their lives, it’s not supposed to be something that is normal and is regularly happening.”
Hundreds of people attended the funeral for Herschel Siegel last weekend in Atlanta. (Courtesy)
Chaim Nissel, a dean at Yeshiva University who was an associate provost during Siegel’s tenure as a student, spoke at the Thursday night gathering and said he had known Siegel well, and even had the student visit his home. (Nissel was originally named in the lawsuit by the YU Pride Alliance against the university but was dropped after Y.U. argued that he did not have authority over whether the LGBTQ student club was approved.)
“He struggled to reconcile his identity and love of Torah,” Nissel said. “He died from mental illness.”
Yeshiva University had previously released a statement about Siegel’s death.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Herschel Siegel, a member of the Yeshiva University family,” the statement said. “We express our deepest condolences to his family. May his memory be a blessing.”
Siegel’s family did not respond to a request for comment. People close to the family said they were too distraught to speak to the press. The source from Atlanta who knew Siegel since he was a child said the family was “angry for the way that this is being spun,” suggesting that Siegel’s sexuality should not be the only focus.
“I do resent anyone that is trying to make this about him being gay,” the source said. “It’s the chicken or the egg situation. Did being gay in the Orthodox community make his depression more triggering, or was it that he was depressed, and felt alone, which made being gay so much harder?”
Even his closest friends say it’s impossible to untangle those forces.
“Herschel struggled with mental illness and struggled with accepting himself as a gay Orthodox man,” said Emily Ornelas, a friend who was close to Siegel when he was at Y.U.
“That’s a reality,” Orneles said. “Gay people in any organized religion struggle with that. But I do wholeheartedly believe that by the end of his life, he had come to terms with and accepted himself and was able to love himself for who he was in whatever capacity he could. I feel that is true.”
Ornelas says she is choosing to remember the many bright spots in her friend’s life, rather than focus solely on trying to identify reasons for his death. She recalled the way he connected with children when the two staffed a Passover retreat, as well as his energy in his many theater performances at Y.U., the way his smile lit up a room.
“I remember that his hugs were absolutely crushing,” Ornelas said. “I think he could have cracked my ribs easily. I remember that when he smiled, he smiled literally with every single one of his teeth. You could probably count them. I can hear his voice. He has a very particular affect to the way he spoke, and I think it was like a tiny bit of a Southern drawl. He was just like a really big part of my life — and all of our lives — for a very long time.”
At the memorial service, Weiss exhorted others who might feel tormented about being gay in an Orthodox community to hold on, despite their pain.
“You are not alone,” they said, holding back tears. “You have a future, and you have people who love and see you fully. You have people who celebrate all the wonderful, beautiful parts of you. And if it feels like you don’t have those people yet, we are here waiting for you with open hearts.”
They then shifted to a “a message to everyone else here with us tonight” — those who identify as allies, and those who are just deeply sad about their friend’s tragic death.
“Be like Herschel,” Weiss said. “Be like Herschel and embrace and love each of us with enthusiasm and with joy. Be like Herschel and see us as the full, valid and nuanced human beings that we are. Be like Herschel, and support us unconditionally. Be like Herschel so that we can continue to be here even though Herschel can’t. And be like Herschel, so that this never ever happens again.”
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The post Yeshiva University is left in mourning after a beloved gay alum dies by suicide appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Tucker Carlson Calls Trump a ‘Slave to Israel’ as Feud Escalates
Tucker Carlson speaks on first day of AmericaFest 2025 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Dec. 18, 2025. Photo: Charles-McClintock Wilson/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson repudiated US President Donald Trump as a “slave to Israel” in his morning newsletter on Monday, the latest rhetorical escalation in a growing public feud between the controversial podcaster and the commander-in-chief.
“President Trump is a slave to Israel,” Carlson wrote in his newsletter.
Carlson lambasted Trump for comments he made in a Sunday interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, in which the president condemned the Iranian regime for its reluctance to accept American conditions in ending the US-Israeli war with Iran. Carlson further criticized Trump for maintaining consistent communication with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the ongoing negotiation efforts with Iranian officials and accused the White House of presenting Tehran with an unfavorable set of demands.
“Reporting that uncomfortable fact brings us great pain, but it is the tragic truth. This weekend alone, America’s leader parroted Israeli talking points on Fox News,” Carlson wrote.
In the Fox News interview, Trump identified Iran’s unwillingness to abandon its nuclear program as the key sticking-point in negotiations between the two nations. Trump warned that Iran armed with a nuclear weapon would “use it on Israel and the Middle East.” Trump also lauded the “incredible partnership” between the US and Israel.
Carlson went on to criticize Trump for having purportedly “continued his daily ritual of reporting war updates to Benjamin Netanyahu as an employee does to their manager,” seemingly implying that the US was waging war with Iran under Israel’s direction.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren recently said the argument that Trump had been pushed into war by Israel ignored decades of Iranian hostility and repeated attacks on Americans.
“Every day since 1979, the Iranian regime swore to destroy the United States and, in pursuit of that pledge, sought to develop strategic weapons while committing hundreds of acts of war against Americans,” Oren told The Algemeiner last month. “President Trump did not need to be dragged into defending the American people from this looming threat and certainly not by a purportedly cunning Israeli leader.”
“Suggestions to the contrary … are deeply insulting to the president and patently antisemitic,” he added.
Still, anti-Israel commentators such as Carlson have repeatedly claimed that Israel “dragged” the US into the war with Iran.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Trump administration was providing daily updates to him about the war, noting that, the prior day, US Vice President JD Vance provided “in detail” the latest information on peace talks with Tehran. Critics of Israel immediately framed Netanyahu’s statement as evidence that the US government operates in a position of subservience to Israel, despite the fact that allies regularly maintain consistent lines of communication during wartime.
In his newsletter, Carlson said the White House “deployed JD Vance to present Iranian negotiators with peace demands everyone knows they would never accept.”
The White House has outlined a wide-ranging set of priorities in negotiations with Iran in exchange for winding down military operations, including that Tehran cease uranium enrichment efforts, reopen the Strait of Hormuz without installing any toll booths, implement restrictions on its ballistic missiles program, and end support for terrorist proxy organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
Carlson’s comments came after Trump described the podcaster, one of his longtime supporters turned outspoken critic, as unintelligent.
“Tucker’s a low-IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” Trump said last Tuesday in an interview with New York Post national security reporter Caitlin Doornbos when asked about Carlson’s condemnations of his Easter message promising massive destruction on Iran.
“He calls me all the time; I don’t respond to his calls. I don’t deal with him,” Trump said of Carlson. “I like dealing with smart people, not fools.”
Two days later, Trump lambasted Carlson as well as other far-right podcasters critical of his support for Israel and tough stance on Iran as “stupid” people who support the regime in Tehran.
Carlson’s comments also came after a Newsmax interview in which he also called Trump a “slave” to Israel.
“I’ve always liked Trump and still feel sorry for him, as I do for all slaves,” the former Fox News host said during the Friday interview, adding that Trump “can’t make his own decisions” and that he is “hemmed in by other forces.”
During an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Carlson seemingly doubled down on his suggestion that Trump is operating at the behest of the Jewish state, saying, “I don’t think it is as simple as ‘he is under the control of Netanyahu,’ but you could certainly summarize it that way and you wouldn’t be totally inaccurate.”
Following 21 hours of negotiations in Islamabad, Pakistan, last week, Vance announced that ceasefire discussions broke down after Iran refused to agree to Washington’s set of demands.
Carlson, one of the most popular conservative pundits in the US, has reinvented himself as a preeminent critic of Israel in the years following his unceremonious firing from Fox News.
Since launching his podcast, Carlson has relentlessly condemned Israel, issuing a series of blistering and false accusations that the country oppresses Christians, exerts immense influence over US politicians, and has committed “genocide” in Gaza. The provocateur has accused Israel of killing tens of thousands of children in Gaza “on purpose” without providing any evidence.
Carlson has also hosted a seemingly unremitting parade of anti-Israel figures on his podcast while rejecting offers by pro-Israel figures to appear as guests. He especially drew backlash for conducting a friendly interview with fellow podcaster Nick Fuentes, an avowed antisemite and Holocaust denier.
Carlson’s anti-Israel career pivot has drawn the ire of many of his former fans, including US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). In public remarks, Cruz accused Carlson of spearheading efforts to normalize antisemitism within the Republican Party and has called on fellow Republicans to distance themselves from the podcaster.
Further, Carlson has seen his once-chummy relationship with Trump publicly deteriorate.
The president issued sharp condemnation of Carlson, along with other Israel-critical personalities Candace Owens, Alex Jones, and Megyn Kelly, in comments made on Truth Social.
Trump called Carlson a “broken man,” adding that he has “never been the same” since his 2023 firing from Fox News.
“These so-called ‘pundits’ are LOSERS, and they always will be!” Trump added.
The public fallout between Trump and Carlson comes as the pundit has sharpened his criticisms of the president. Last week, Carlson rebuked Trump for purportedly offending Muslims, suggesting that his conduct was unbecoming for a world leader.
Although Carlson’s podcast remains highly popular, his ideological shift seems to have come at the cost of his reputation in the Republican Party. A recent YouGov poll revealed that Carlson’s approval rating within the GOP has cratered, falling from +54 favorability in March 2024 to only +7. This timeline aligns with Carlson’s intensifying attacks on Israel and Republican lawmakers.
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My father was in the Hungarian resistance. Orbán’s defeat reminds us why it mattered
My father resisted the Nazis in Hungary. I thought of him — and how he would have rejoiced — when the Hungarian people voted out Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Sunday, after 16 years of authoritarian rule.
Only a week before Hungarian voters made their choice, the outcome of the elections seemed far from certain. I remember watching in dismay last Tuesday, when Vice President JD Vance flew to Budapest to try to help prop Orbán up. There, he spread the same kind of blood-and-soil nationalism that has haunted the history of Hungary, and helped enable the horrors through which my father lived.
In his campaign rally with Orbán, Vance decried “far-left ideology” as “a shared threat from within that both of our nations face,” adding that its followers “view the very foundations of our shared civilization as illegitimate.” He also said that Orbán had kept Hungary from being “invaded” by immigrants.
The second-highest elected official in the United States, the country that gave so many Jews refuge after the Holocaust, embraced an ethno-nationalist leader who has suggested that Hungary’s “enemy” is a group who “does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.”
What would my dad have made of that blatantly antisemitic moment?
In 1943 and 1944, my father operated underground in Budapest and Bucharest. As part of an illegal religious Zionist youth movement, he helped organize rescue efforts for Jews under Nazi rule. He traveled to Hungarian villages, warning Jews of advancing German forces, and helped smuggle Jews from Hungary to Romania and onward to Mandatory Palestine.
My father lived in a time when ideas and rhetoric like those advanced by Orbán and Vance had existential consequences. He resisted a regime that hunted Jews and other minorities, stripped them of rights, and sent them to their deaths. For him, resistance meant survival.
My father risked everything — his safety, his freedom, his life. With Hungary’s model in front of us, all who live under the threat of authoritarianism today must ask: What will we risk?
While our reality is different from my father’s, we are nevertheless on a dangerous path — one we ignore at our peril. Across the globe, antisemitism is on the rise. Democracy, which has safeguarded vulnerable communities from fascism, is under assault.
Hungarians pushed back against rising authoritarianism on Sunday, ousting Orbán in a true feat of resistance. In doing so, they dealt a blow to the network of European far-right leaders who trade in antisemitic tropes and beliefs. And they rebuffed Vance and President Donald Trump — who dispatched Vance to campaign in Hungary, having closely allied himself with Orbán — and an increasingly influential circle of American intellectuals who promote antisemitism-tinged arguments about civilizational decline and hidden elite influence.
How should we respond to this normalization of antisemitic language and imagery?
My father’s story taught me not to take the easy route. It’s tempting to retreat, at least temporarily, into private life, focusing only on our families and communities. We may want to minimize what we see, to convince ourselves it isn’t as bad as it seems. We may grow insular or fatalistic.
But disengagement will only postpone the danger to a later date, leaving us exposed and unprepared. It is the opposite of resistance. My father understood this, and bet on the power of resistance and perseverance.
Real resistance — to authoritarianism, to antisemitism, to the forces that feed both — means using the tools of democracy that are still available to us: voting, organizing, and speaking out to hold leaders accountable. It means using our power as citizens to stand behind our values — just as the citizens of Hungary did yesterday.
Real resistance means rejecting dangerous ideas carried by far-right movements into positions of power, amplified by the highest offices in the land. Those same movements are simultaneously assaulting the very democratic institutions that have made America one of the safest places Jews have ever lived.
Real resistance means standing up when democratic norms are eroded; when Jews and other minority communities are cast as threats; and when governmental institutions employ rhetoric with unmistakable antisemitic resonance — all phenomena that unfolded in Hungary under Orbán, and are unfolding in the U.S. under Trump. It means standing in the way of unchecked power and opposing legislation and policies that limit constitutional liberties and academic freedom. It means strengthening the ties that bind us together — building alliances against all forms of hatred, between communities targeted for their religion, ethnicity, identity or beliefs. It means staying in coalition to fight for a strong democratic future, even when doing so can be uncomfortable.
Orbán, Trump, Vance and their fellow proto-authoritarians have bet that we will ultimately comply. With Orbán’s defeat, they have new reasons to fear that we won’t. That’s as it should be, and my father would be proud.
My father had every chance to escape the Nazis. But after each mission, he came back to rescue more. He never stopped fighting for a better future for his fellow Jews. Neither should we.
The post My father was in the Hungarian resistance. Orbán’s defeat reminds us why it mattered appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel Reprimands Spain Over Blowing Up of Netanyahu Effigy
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks during a press conference after attending a special summit of European Union leaders to discuss transatlantic relations, in Brussels, Belgium, Jan. 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel said on Saturday it had reprimanded Spain‘s most senior diplomat in Tel Aviv over the blowing up of a giant effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Spanish town this week.
The seven-meter (23-foot) figure was packed with 14 kilograms (31 lbs.) of gunpowder in El Burgo, a small town near the southern city of Malaga, in a decades-old ceremony on April 5, its Mayor Maria Dolores Narvaez told local television.
“The appalling antisemitic hatred on display here is a direct result of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government’s systemic incitement,” Israel‘s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on X which highlighted a video clip.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify the video.
“The Spanish government is committed to fighting against antisemitism and any form of hate or discrimination. As such we totally reject any insidious allegation which suggests the contrary,” a Spanish Foreign Ministry source said in response.
El Burgo’s Mayor Narvaez said the town has previously used effigies of US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the annual event.
Spain has been an outspoken critic of the US and Israeli military campaigns in Iran and Lebanon, despite US threats to punish uncooperative NATO allies.
Spain and Israel have been embroiled in a long-running diplomatic row which began over the Gaza war. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said a Spanish ban on aircraft and ships carrying weapons to Israel from its ports or airspace due to Israel‘s military offensive was antisemitic.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares accused Israel of violating international law and the two-week ceasefire after a massive wave of airstrikes across Lebanon this week. Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire and Israel‘s military was continuing to strike Hezbollah with force.
Sanchez, who has emerged as a leading opponent of the Iran war, has closed Spanish airspace to any aircraft involved in a confrontation he has described as reckless and illegal.
Iran has repeatedly praised Spain in recent weeks for its hostile posture toward the US and Israel.