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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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Jewish Student Leader Targeted in Two Antisemitic Incidents in Berlin
Graffiti reading “Kill all Jews” was discovered on a residential building in Berlin-Pankow on April 26, 2026, part of a wave of antisemitic vandalism reported across the German capital over the past week, including swastikas and other hate-filled slogans scrawled on multiple sites. Photo: Screenshot
Amid a relentless wave of hostility toward Jews across Germany, the president of the Union of Jewish Students revealed he was targeted in two antisemitic incidents in Berlin within a single week, intensifying alarm within an increasingly embattled community.
In an interview with the German Jewish newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, Ron Dekel described a string of confrontations that began last Thursday after he left a discussion on antisemitism at the Bundestag, Germany’s federal parliament, marking the start of a troubling sequence of incidents.
While walking near Berlin’s government district, he and another union member were allegedly followed by a car blasting loud music. Inside the vehicle, the driver and two female passengers reportedly shouted “Free Palestine” and “To hell with Israel,” while also making obscene gestures.
After Dekel shared a video he recorded of the incident online, it quickly drew hundreds of thousands of views before being taken down, with him also facing a barrage of insults and threats demanding its removal.
At the time, Dekel said one of his friends filed a police complaint in connection with the incident, but authorities have yet to identify any suspects.
A few days later, Dekel recounted encountering the same group of people again outside a synagogue following an event at a Jewish community center, where they approached him and demanded he delete the video.
According to his testimony, the group remained in a car outside the synagogue, while one of the women sat at a nearby café appearing to monitor those entering and leaving the building.
Dekel said the woman even attempted to enter the synagogue, trying to persuade security guards to let her inside before a rabbi intervened and asked her to leave.
“I still do not know how she knew where I was,” Dekel told Jüdische Allgemeine. “It makes me uncomfortable.”
Even after reporting the second incident to police, Dekel said he no longer feels safe, describing what he sees as a broader pattern of harassment since he began openly wearing a kippah earlier this year.
Despite the intimidation, Dekel said he would continue visibly wearing Jewish symbols, underscoring the growing sense of unease surrounding Jewish life in Germany.
“It has religious meaning for me,” he said. “But it also hurts my sense of justice that Jews in Germany in 2026 are being advised not to appear visibly Jewish. I do not want to hide, and more young Jews today feel the same way.”
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to recently released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in Berlin reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials warn that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
In one of the latest antisemitic incidents in the country, a synagogue in Cottbus, a city in eastern Germany, was defaced on Monday with a swastika painted on its facade, marking the second time in just four days that the Jewish house of worship had been vandalized.
Separately, authorities also discovered antisemitic graffiti on Sunday across several apartment buildings in Berlin-Pankow, including messages reading “Kill all Jews,” a swastika, and the statement “Only a dead Jew is a good Jew,” in a series of disturbing incidents over the week.
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Duke University Lifts Suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine Despite Acknowledging Group’s Antisemitic Post
April 22, 2026: The entrance to Duke University campus, located in Durham, North Carolina. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect.
Duke University’s Office for Institutional Equity (OIE) has reversed an earlier decision to suspend Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for sharing an antisemitic political cartoon on Instagram, arguing that the action fell short of violating the school’s code of conduct despite acknowledging that it “alludes to antisemitic tropes.”
The puzzling move was first reported on Monday by The Duke Chronicle, the official campus newspaper. In correspondence between the office and SJP shared by the outlet, OIE official Sharon Gooding told the group that “the post, while offensive, in that it alludes to antisemitic tropes, does not violate the Policy on Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment, and Related Misconduct because there was insufficient evidence to support the existence of a hostile educational environment.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the illustration depicts a pig labeled “Zionism” hoisting a Star of David as its arm interlocks with another pig, labeled “US Imperialism,” hoisting the Torch of Liberty. It is the work of political cartoonist Emory Douglas, a Black Panther party official who harbored hostility toward the US and Israel.
Word of the social media post spread across the Duke Jewish community, the Chronicle said, prompting no fewer than 10 Jewish students to file formal complaints with the university on the grounds that its evocation of anti-Jewish hatred is obvious. Historically, depicting Jews as pigs has been done to reduce them to the status of animals and mock the fact that dietary restrictions forbid Jews to eat pork. The Nazis notoriously did so, but the practice reaches back further back into time, when medieval Germans proliferated the Judensau drawings which portrayed Jews drinking pig’s milk and excrement.
However, despite the context of the image, as well as SJP’s history of harassing and intimidating Jews on campuses across the US, Duke University has told the group it is closing its investigation into the matter and returning the organization to “full status.” The decision unfreezes thousands of dollars in funding and allows SJP to operate unfettered for the remainder of the academic year.
Speaking to the Chronicle, SJP argued that the group is a victim of censorship and expressed doubt that the university even has the authority to sanction it for breaking the rules.
“It took over a month of written correspondence, legal counsel, and public advocacy for our organization to access the basic procedural rights Duke’s own policies guarantee to every student organization,” the group said. “The fact that we had to fight at all is the problem.”
Meanwhile, Jewish advocacy groups and students told The Algemeiner on Tuesday that Duke University has missed an opportunity to send a clear anti-hate message.
“Since ancient times, Jews have been compared in derogatory terms to barnyard and wild animals,” the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law said in a statement. “Such disturbing discourse has long been markers for antisemitism and there should be no tolerance for it at Duke. It is essential that university administrators, faculty, and students on campus understand the types of tropes that characterize antisemitic discourse.”
Said Shira Shasha, a third year Duke University student and co-president of the school’s Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter, “They [SJP] used imagery rooted in Nazi-dehumanization. Regardless of the purpose behind it, it causes real harm and unequivocal hostility to Jewish students on this campus. And that harm does not disappear because an intent was disclaimed.”
Carly Gammill of StandWithUs Saidoff Law, a legal nonprofit based in California, told The Algemeiner, “Universities must be clear-eyed about contemporary attacks against Jewish peoplehood, which merely repackage historic forms of antisemitism, and how this misinformation fuels anti-Jewish bigotry.”
While Duke University has not seen the most extreme examples of campus antisemitism that became a near daily occurrence in higher education after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, it has been accused of selectively practicing its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion before. In May 2021, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict of that year, the Duke Student Government (DSG) refused to grant recognition to Students Supporting Israel, a status which qualifies student clubs for funding and reserving space in which to hold events.
DSG had originally voted to confer recognition to SSI, however, but then-DSG president Christina Wang vetoed the decision after an SSI member responded publicly to criticism that its presence on campus represented “settler-colonialism.” No hateful statements were uttered by SSI, but Wang cited the exchange as cause for preventing the establishment of a pro-Israel club on campus. Throughout the conflict, the university refused to intervene even as Jewish advocacy groups maintained that Wang had confected a false pretext to justify discriminating against a Jewish group.
Five years later, Duke Jewish students are seeing that same double standard again, SSI National president Ilan Sinelnikov told The Algemeiner.
“It just shows the reality we’re in,” he explained. “They’re just going to get a little tap on wrist.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Iran Has Executed At Least 21 People, Arrested Over 4,000 Since Start of War With US and Israel, UN Reports
A February 2023 protest in Washington, DC calling for an end to executions and human rights violations in Iran. Photo: Reuters/ Bryan Olin Dozier
The Islamic regime in Iran has intensified efforts to oppress the civilian population through arrests and executions since the beginning of the conflict with the US and Israel, according to the United Nations.
On Wednesday, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) revealed that Iran had executed at least 21 people and arrested more than 4,000 over the last two months, following the launch of joint US-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28.
Allegations which resulted in death sentences included espionage (two), opposition group membership (10), and involvement with protests (nine).
“In times of war, threats to human rights increase exponentially,” said Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Türk called for regime officials to “halt all further executions, establish a moratorium on the use of capital punishment, fully ensure due process and fair trial guarantees, and immediately release those arbitrarily detained.”
Iranian courts have reportedly fast-tracked convictions and sentencing in recent months, citing the war as justification.
According to the OHCHR, those detained face brutal conditions, overcrowding, and even torture to coerce confessions. The bodies of some detainees who have died in custody appear to show possible torture. Those detained also experience weaponized medical neglect, a human rights violation which has reportedly led to the deteriorating health of imprisoned Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi.
In addition to forced confessions, Iranian judges can also resort to the principle of elm‑e‑qazi, a concept in Iran’s Islamic Penal Code which allows a guilty sentence based solely on circumstantial evidence.
Last week, Maryam Rajavi, president‑elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), spoke about the regime’s executions at the European Parliament in Brussels.
“The mullahs are exploiting wartime conditions to resort to relentless executions to block the path of popular uprisings. Today, political prisoners face the threat of mass killing,” Rajavi said. “The silence of European Union leaders and member states is unjustifiable. And today, I wish to once again raise my voice in protest against this silence in the face of these executions.”
Rajavi added that “a number of young people have been arrested in recent weeks on charges of alleged contact with or support for the Mojahedin Organization,” referring to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), an Iranian opposition group.
“The names of a group of them have been submitted to and communicated to international bodies,” she said. “By order of the regime’s judiciary chief, pressure and torture on political prisoners have intensified, and their sham trials and the issuance of criminal sentences have been expedited.”
Stating that 11 political prisoners alleged to be members of the MEK face execution, Rajavi implored that “urgent action must be taken to save their lives. Our position is that a halt to executions in Iran, as a demand of the entire Iranian people, must be included in any international agreement.”
Last month, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), an independent group monitoring, released a report documenting that from March 2025 to March 2026, police had arrested 78,907 people on ideological or political grounds.
Executions in the last Iranian year (covering much of calendar year 2025) reached at least 2,488, according to HRANA, with 63 of them women and two children. Drug offenses accounted for 955 executions, approximately three killings per day on average.
The Islamic regime chose to conduct 13 of the executions in public.
Earlier this month, the European groups Iran Human Rights (IHR) in Norway and Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) in France released a separate joint report finding that Iran executed at least 1,639 people in 2025, a 68 percent leap from the 975 killed in 2024 and the highest seen since tracking began in 2008. All known executions were reportedly conducted by hanging.
Differences in methodology partially explain the discrepancy in tallies. IHR warned in its report that the full body count is likely much higher, as the group requires two sources to confirm an execution.
Iran’s penal code offers a variety of options for killing a human being, including hanging, firing squads, and even crucifixion or stoning. Hanging was the only method used from 2008 until the firing squad execution of Kurdish political prisoner Hedayat Abdullahpour on May 11, 2020.
In executions for murder under a sentence known as qisas, the Islamic regime encourages the family members of the victim to carry out the killing themselves. IHR has received reports of family members taking advantage of what is regarded as a “right” to do so.
In cases of public executions, prison officials use cranes. This brutal method leaves the condemned suffocating and strangling, lifted above the crowds for as much as 20 minutes before their suffering can conclude.
Photographs have documented children in attendance at public executions in Iran to watch the violence and cruelty. A 2006 study found that 52 percent of 200 children who witnessed public executions in Iran later showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with “88 suffering re-experiences, 24 avoidance and 62 hyperarousal.”
IHR has not found any executions by stoning since 2010, following the international outcry of the sentencing of Sakineh Ashtiani whose sentence was commuted, allowing her 2014 release.
Given the historical impact of the global community’s condemnations, Iranian officials have sought to hide human rights abuses from the world, imposing an internet blackout for 61 days since the war with the US and Israel began.
“This is denying people across the country access to vital information, silencing independent voices, and inflicting enormous social and economic harm,” Türk said. “It is exacerbating an already precarious humanitarian and economic situation and must be lifted immediately.”
Concluding her address to the European congress in Brussels, Rajavi called on the gathered representatives to implement a new policy toward Iran.
Rajavi advocated an approach that “provides the necessary technical means to ensure the Iranian people’s access to a free internet. Conditions relations with the clerical regime on an end to the execution of political prisoners and the killing of protesters. Brings the regime’s leaders to justice for crimes against humanity and genocide.”