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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 freelance journalist Emily Wilder is detained as Israeli military intercepts Gaza aid flotilla
(JTA) — Jewish freelance journalist Emily Wilder, reporting for Jewish Currents, a progressive Jewish publication, was detained by the Israeli military on Monday while covering an aid flotilla bound for Gaza.
Wilder set sail from Italy last week aboard The Conscious, one of dozens of boats that aimed to reach Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave.
But that effort was cut short when Wilder, along with the other journalists and aid workers on her voyage, was intercepted by the Israeli military and detained. The military has intercepted, detained and deported activists sailing to Gaza multiple times in recent weeks.
Jewish Currents has been staunchly against the war in Gaza, calling Israel’s campaign there a genocide and advocating for the Palestinian cause. In an email to subscribers, publisher Daniel May said the publication sent Wilder on a flotilla because of the value of the reporting she could produce.
“Jewish Currents commissioned Emily’s reporting because we know that Israel’s unprecedented restrictions on journalists have facilitated the war crimes perpetrated in Gaza,” May wrote. “We also know that the flotillas are an important story in themselves.”
Wilder was a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, both anti-Zionist groups, as a student at Stanford University, from which she graduated in 2020. The next year, she was fired from the Associated Press in 2021 due to her social media posts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since then, according to her LinkedIn, she has worked as a freelancer and a human rights researcher.
Wilder was also documenting the voyage on her Instagram account, which has not posted an update since she and her crew were detained.
“Today, the @gazafreedomflotilla’s Conscience sets sail from the boot of Italy, with hopes of bringing ~70 media and medical workers across the Mediterranean to Gaza’s shores amid Israel’s blockade on international press and killing of doctors and journalists,” wrote Wilder last week in a post.
Israel’s foreign ministry blasted the flotilla participants in a post on X Tuesday.
“Another futile attempt to breach the legal naval blockade and enter a combat zone ended in nothing,” the post read. “The vessels and the passengers are transferred to an Israeli port. All the passengers are safe and in good health. The passengers are expected to be deported promptly.’
In the email, May directed readers to sign a Change.org petition calling for her release and to urge the California native’s representatives, including Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, to advocate for her.
Last week, dozens of other boats that were part of the Global Sumud Flotilla were also intercepted, and hundreds of participants were detained and later deported, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg who alleged that she had been “kidnapped and tortured” by the Israeli military. (Another flotilla effort including Thunberg was intercepted by the Israeli military in June.)
“My office has now confirmed that a second flotilla carrying vital humanitarian aid … has been intercepted, and nearly 145 passengers and crew detained,” wrote California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Comez in a statement. “Among the detained is my constituent Emily Wilder, a member of the press, who was reporting on the flotilla’s attempt to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.”
The post Jewish freelance journalist Emily Wilder is detained as Israeli military intercepts Gaza aid flotilla appeared first on The Forward.
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Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square is transformed by cautious optimism — and gratitude for Trump
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — The mood at Tel Aviv’s upscale Gindi Fashion Mall was divided between anticipation and disbelief on Thursday afternoon, in the wake of news of a hostage deal that could end the Gaza war and bring the remaining hostages home.
At a kiosk across from a Chanel boutique, fruit vendor Amit Bonen said she had learned not to trust good news too quickly. “I have optimism, but it’s filled to the brim with pessimism,” she said. “I won’t believe anything until I see it with my own eyes.”
Her colleague, Rinat, nodded in agreement. “You can’t trust those terrorists,” she said. “Who knows what trick they have up their sleeve?”
But Or, en route to a cosplay event, dismissed the caution. “Why not celebrate?” he said. “The hostages will come home. They’ll leave people in Gaza alone. What’s not to love?”
A few blocks away, Hostages Square looked transformed. For nearly two years it had been a gathering place for families of hostages and their supporters and for vigils marked by grief. On Thursday it was filled with songs that had become the soundtrack of wartime resilience — “Am Yisrael Chai,” “Machshavot Tovot,” “Ve’od Yoter Tov.” Impromptu circles of dance formed. American flags fluttered beside effigies of Donald Trump and handmade posters thanking the American president, who helped broker the agreement. Children leaned over folding tables, coloring “welcome home” notes for returning hostages.
Ariel Vinter, from Jerusalem, led the crowd in singing. The past two years had strengthened her faith, she said, which she leaned on to cope with the loss of her cousins, Ofir Tzarfati check sp and Tchelet Fishbein, who were killed on Oct. 7 at the Nova festival and Be’eri, respectively.
“I haven’t digested what happened to them. I don’t think I ever will,” she said. “But I know the families will only be able to heal when Eviatar and Guy are back,” referring to Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa Dalal, who were with Tzarfati when he was killed and who were taken hostage to Gaza.
Michel Illouz, whose son Guy was abducted from the Nova festival and later confirmed killed in Gaza, harbored no doubts about the news.
“I 100% know we are ending this war,” he said. “Everyone must understand that the only option is by peace and not war. For the Israeli side and Palestinian side.”
He would only find peace, he said, once he saw his son’s body. “I want to touch him. I want to make this closure.”
He added: “From this trauma, from this holocaust, we will have a great future for all our nation,” he added.
“We would never be here right now without him,” referring to Trump.
Nearby, well-wishers lined up to embrace relatives of the hostages. A woman who asked to hug Meirav Gonen, mother of freed hostage Romi Gonen, told her, “All along you were the source of strength for all of us to fight for you.”
Afterward, she told JTA: “They’re so strong. Why shouldn’t we be? It’s a matter of hours now. Nothing else matters. We can finally return to life.”
Gonen said the families were united by a shared determination. “Of course we’re holding our breath,” she said. “But this time it’s different. Everyone is together on this. You can feel it. Everything is aligned for this to happen.”
Her daughter’s release during a January ceasefire had not ended her own sense of obligation for the hostages.
“It’s a hole that hasn’t been filled,” she said. Like others, she credited Trump: “We couldn’t have done this without him.”
Among those taking part in the celebrations was Anat, a founding member of Bo’u, a volunteer movement formed in late 2024 to push for a hostage-release deal.
“For the first time, I feel I can breathe,” she said. “But it was all down to us — the Israeli people. We made Trump understand that most Israelis wanted the war to end — that our values, unlike the government’s, are about responsibility to one another. We were all partners in bringing them home.”
Some people came to the square for the first time. Doron Katz, who was freed from captivity with her daughters in the first hostage deal in November 2023, said she had stayed away until now. “It was too hard before,” she said. “But now, seeing people smiling and dancing — it’s very moving.”
Nechamit, who traveled from Netanya with nine friends, called it “a historic day.” Her friend, Ariella, described the atmosphere simply as “celebratory.”
“We’re ready to give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize for this,” she said.
Nearby, Tova Gohar waved a giant American flag. She said she came to “thank Trump for forcing Israel and the Arab countries into signing the deal. He’s a businessman, he knows how to do deals.”
Activists planned to sustain activities in the square in the coming days, as Israeli lawmakers sign off on the deal and the public awaits the hostages’ return. Prayers will be held in the square on Shabbat, and the public is invited to bring their Friday night dinners to create a communal experience.
Fourteen-year-old Noam Salame, from Karnei Shomron, said he was thinking about what the hostages would experience when they returned.
“I’m just imagining Bar Kupershtein seeing his father speak for the first time,” he said. Bar’s father, Tal, was left unable to speak after a stroke five years ago and has since regained his voice — a recovery he said came from determination to bring his son home, after Bar was abducted from the Nova festival.
“And of Ziv and Gali Berman watching Maccabi Tel Aviv’s ascent in the [Euroleague],” he added, referring to the 27-year-old twins, both avid soccer fans, who were kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
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Jewish groups welcome ceasefire plan as a step toward a ‘lasting regional peace’
(JTA) — Jewish organizations across the ideological spectrum offered cautious optimism following the announcement of the first phase of a Gaza peace agreement, expressing profound relief at the planned return of hostages living and dead and tentative hopes that the plan might lead toward lasting regional peace.
As for what such a last peace might look like, only groups that have consistently advocated for a two-state solution offered a specific vision, putting their hopes in a solution that is implicit in the Trump administration’s 20-point peace plan, but which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects adamantly.
Nearly all the organizations noted that the war began with Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and urged “vigilance” that Hamas would uphold its side of any agreement.
“This development represents a hopeful step toward resolving the conflict, securing the release of all hostages, and establishing the conditions for lasting peace and security in the region,” read a statement by Betsy Berns Korn and William C. Daroff, the chair and CEO, respectively, of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “This moment demands unity, resolve, and the moral clarity to ensure that peace and security endure and every hostage returns home.”
Federations similarly welcomed the deal for its humanitarian implications, with the Jewish Federations of North America saying “our prayers are answered — not completely, for the pain of loss remains — but with the long-awaited promise of healing, renewal, and hope.”
Groups also thanked the Trump administration for brokering the deal. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in its statement that it “applauds President Trump and his negotiating team for this tremendous achievement and for working together with Israel to broker this peace plan.”
AIPAC also framed the last two years as an affirmation of the “enduring partnership between the United States and our ally Israel,” despite cracks that showed during the Biden administration and to a lesser extent under Trump.
A lobbying group that tends to reflect the policies of the sitting Israeli government, AIPAC also spoke in brief of what some are calling “the day after,” saying that the peace deal “creates a tremendous opportunity to forge a better future for Israelis, Palestinians, and people across the Middle East.”
J Street — the advocacy group often described as the progressive counterpart to AIPAC — did not mention the two-state solution in a statement by its president, Jeremy Ben-Ami. But Ben-Ami did urge the parties to take steps toward realizing the “full US-backed 20-point plan — one that ensures Israel’s security, ends Hamas’s reign of terror, delivers a massive surge of humanitarian aid and sets the region on a path toward a comprehensive and permanent peace.”
In the 19th point of its 20-point plan, the White House suggested without making any pledges that “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognise as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.” And while a number of key European allies recently recognized a Palestinian state, the idea has been effectively stalled and faces formidable obstacles on the ground, including strong opposition by both the current Israeli government and key segments of the Israeli and Palestinian publics.
Other groups were more explicit in reiterating the two-state solution. The Israel Policy Forum, founded to advance the idea of two states, said it hoped the agreement might pave the way for “rekindled Israel-Arab diplomacy, a reformed Palestinian Authority with new, empowered, and legitimate leadership, an eventual expansion of the Abraham Accords that advances Israel’s integration in the Middle East, and the pursuit of a viable political horizon to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on two states.”
The Reform movement, in a statement signed by the leaders of its rabbinical, congregational and seminary arms, also hoped the ceasefire would create the conditions for renewing a solution which the statement acknowledged “feels remote at this point.” Nevertheless, according to the statement, “a two-state solution in some configuration must remain the worthy, long-term goal for Israelis and Palestinians as they contemplate a future with safety, dignity, and hope for all.”
Further to the left, Jewish groups welcomed the return of the hostages but also reiterated their criticism of Israel’s prosecution of a war whose death toll, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry, surpassed 67,000.
Partners for Progressive Israel called the agreement “a victory for the hostage families in Israel and their supporters” as well as “the many international bodies who have sought to hold Hamas and this Israeli government accountable for the war crimes perpetrated in the last two years.”
While few right-leaning groups commented on the deal in the hours after its announcement, which also coincided with the end of the first two days of Sukkot, Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi welcomed the news, calling it “a potentially hopeful step toward restoring calm and securing the release of Israeli hostages.”
RZA-Mizrachi’s president, Steven M. Flatow, whose daughter Alisa Flatow was killed in a suicide bombing near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip in 1995, also warned that “Hamas’s word is worth little.” He cautioned that any plan’s success “depends entirely on whether Hamas and its supporters can be trusted to abide by their commitments—a lesson history teaches us to approach with clear eyes.”
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