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.
Uncategorized
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.”
—
The post Yeshiva University is left in mourning after a beloved gay alum dies by suicide appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Continue Reading
Uncategorized
NYPD chief pledges to protect Jews at Central Synagogue one week after Shabbat attack
(JTA) — New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said she felt a “deeply personal” commitment to protect Jews in a speech at Central Synagogue, where she is a member, in the aftermath of an attack during Shabbat services there.
Tisch addressed the Reform synagogue in Midtown Manhattan during its Friday evening prayers a week after a man disrupted the service by shouting obscenities, punched a congregant in the face and spat on and headbutted a Black security guard while calling him a racial slur. Suspect Larry Montes, who was arrested at the scene, has been charged with hate crimes in federal and state court.
Tisch said there were no serious injuries. She called the attack “a message written in violence,” intended to tell “everyone who shares the victim’s identity that they do not belong, that they are vulnerable, and that they should be afraid.”
She also noted that roughly half of confirmed hate crimes in New York City have for years targeted Jews, who make up about 10% of the population.
“As a proud Jew and a lifelong member of this congregation, you have my word that I stand with you in these uncertain and precarious times,” said Tisch, adding that her commitment at Central Synagogue was “deeply personal.”
Tisch spoke after an interfaith group of seven Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders gave remarks about solidarity between their communities.
“Might our presence here be a testament to the ties, the durable ties that bind each of us together,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
“We are here tonight to affirm that you do not walk through this city alone, but you are held in a covenant between our communities,” added Rev. Adriene Thorne of The Riverside Church. “What affects one of us touches all of us.”
Montes told NYPD officers after his arrest that he felt disrespected at the Central Synagogue service and described the incident as “a racial thing” and “all religious motivated,” according to a federal criminal complaint. He also said that he identified as Jewish.
His aunt, Myriam Montes, told The New York Post that he was “mentally traumatized because of his desire to belong to that religion [Judaism].” The New York Times reported that Montes had a history of mental health issues documented by the NYPD.
A Facebook page that appears to belong to Montes is littered with posts about Israel and Judaism. They include an image of a map of Israel with the text, “Keep Israel in your heart,” a video of Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi discussing why evangelical Christians support Israel and a video comparing Mayor Zohran Mamdani with Iran’s former supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post NYPD chief pledges to protect Jews at Central Synagogue one week after Shabbat attack appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israel slammed for closing probe into killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia jointly condemned Israel for declining to open a criminal probe into the April 2024 killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers in Deir al-Balah.
The three countries, whose citizens were among the dead, called the decision “shameful,” adding that “the victims of this incident and their families deserve justice and accountability, and we will continue to seek answers on their behalf.”
Poland, who also lost a citizen in the strike, also sharply criticized Israel and summoned its ambassador to the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw last week. Australia also summoned Israel’s ambassador.
The seven aid workers were killed by an Israeli airstrike after they had just dropped off food supplies at a warehouse. The army mistook them for Hamas operatives, according to the IDF.
In a statement released last week, the IDF said its prosecutors found that despite serious failures in its assessment that Hamas had seized the aid convoy, commanders’ decisions raised no “reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.”
The World Central Kitchen (WCK) had hired armed guards and had not coordinated the route with the IDF, leading the army to conclude Hamas had seized the supplies and that its operatives were in the vehicles that left the warehouse, according to the army.
José Andrés, the Spanish-American chef who founded World Central Kitchen, said at the time that the convoy had been targeted “systematically, car by car.”
The WCK denounced the IDF’s decision, writing in a statement last week, “There has never been any excuse or justification for the attacks, and there is nothing in this account that does so. The decision is inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive.”
It called for an independent investigation into the strikes on the convoy, “because the IDF cannot credibly investigate its own conduct.”
The WCK incident was one of five cases out of Gaza about which the IDF on Wednesday gave an update regarding its investigations, including the death of Hind Rajab, age 5, on January 29, 2024.
She had been traveling in a vehicle in Gaza with six members of the Hamada family, which included her aunt, uncle and five cousins. In its statement Wednesday, the IDF admitted for the first time that it fired at the vehicle, killing five members of the Hamada family. Hind and her 15-year old cousin Layan Hamada initially survived, but were trapped in a combat zone and killed within hours.
The IDF said it is opening an investigation into the events in the hours that followed the initial shooting of the five members of the Hamada family, including Hind’s death.
Hind’s killing resonated globally, galvanizing students 5,700 miles away who seized Hamilton Hall during the Columbia University protests, renaming it “Hind’s Hall” after her.
The film “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” built around recordings of her phone calls with the Red Crescent begging for help, was nominated for an Academy Award this year.
The IDF had initially said its forces were not within firing range of the vehicle. The army’s announcement Wednesday was a reversal of that position.
“Troops fired at a vehicle that was approaching them,” even though the army had issued a notice to Gaza residents to stay away from the area, the military explained.
“According to the reports published, this vehicle belonged to the Hamada family. As a result of the fire, five of the vehicle’s passengers were killed, and two survived: Hind Rajab and her cousin Layan Hamada,” the IDF stated.
The experience of the two girls caught in an active combat zone was documented by the Red Crescent after Layan called its operators. Once she was killed by gunfire, Hind continued to talk to the dispatchers until she too was killed.
The Israeli army described how it tried to coordinate with the Red Crescent to allow for an ambulance to evacuate the girls.
“Upon the ambulance’s arrival at the scene of the incident, a shell was fired toward it,” resulting in the deaths of the two paramedics travelling in it,” the IDF said. “Several days later, the bodies of the seven members of the Hamada family, including the bodies of Hind and Layan, were recovered from the vehicle. In addition, the bodies of the two paramedics were recovered from the ambulance.”
The statement does not say how Hind and Layan died.
The IDF said it was ordering the investigation because of failures in coordinating the ambulance’s movement, but that it could not release further details while the probe is ongoing.
In a statement to JTA, the Palestinian Red Crescent said it “demands an independent international committee of inquiry into this incident, as well as the protection of medical personnel wherever they may be.” It added, “There is no communication with the Israeli occupation regarding this matter or any other. The Palestinian Red Crescent will cooperate with the investigation once it is international and independent.”
The IDF said last week it was also opening a criminal probe into the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers, including a U.N. employee, in March 2025.
In its statement last week, the IDF on that day said its forces had set an ambush for Hamas vehicles in Tel al-Sultan. “Approximately one hour later, the troops received a report regarding five vehicles moving toward them at high speed,” the military said.
“The vehicles stopped in very close proximity to the troops, and their occupants rapidly disembarked. A decision was then made to open fire toward them. Approximately fifteen minutes later, the troops fired at an additional vehicle that arrived at the scene,” the military explained. Only later, the army said, did its forces understand that they had struck ambulances, a fire truck, and a U.N. vehicle. The army said that six of the emergency workers were also Hamas members.
The earlier IDF review led to the dismissal of a deputy commander after professional failures were found. At first, the military said that the vehicles approached without their emergency signals activated, an account contradicted by cellphone video recovered from one of the dead paramedics. On Wednesday, the military said that there was reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct.
The IDF declined to investigate two other incidents involving the deaths of four employees of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, two of whom were killed in the Khan Younis area in February 2024, and another two who were killed in Gaza City in 2023.
In a statement on its website, Doctors Without Borders rebuked the IDF’s decision to close the cases. “This is not justice,” the group said. “Two years of silence, followed by closures that raise more questions than they answer. However, it is the predictable output of a military apparatus investigating itself.”
B’Tselem, the left-wing Israeli human rights organization, went further, telling the JTA that Israel’s military law enforcement system, “is not a genuine mechanism for uncovering the truth and ensuring accountability, but a whitewashing mechanism designed to create the appearance of an investigation.”
Yair Dvir, the spokesperson, added that such investigations focus on low-ranking soldiers while “the policies, orders, and senior military and political officials behind them remain outside the scope of investigation.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel slammed for closing probe into killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
When does criticizing Israel become antisemitism? Ask Mark Ruffalo
American actor Mark Ruffalo on Saturday denied that he is antisemitic, one day after Paramount accused the actor of invoking antisemitic tropes in his campaign against the studio’s $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
The clash lands as Paramount is trying to clear the last major obstacle to closing the Warner Bros. Discovery deal: a lawsuit filed by California and 11 other state attorneys general seeking to block it on antitrust grounds.
“The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest,” Ruffalo said on Saturday. “Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people.”
Now, what started as a celebrity spat has turned into a stand-in for a much bigger fight: When does criticizing Israel’s government turn into hating Jews?
Ruffalo and his defenders say targeting a defense contractor’s technology and a media family’s wealth is ordinary corporate criticism. Paramount and its allies say invoking Israel in a business dispute imports old tropes about Jewish power and money into a fight that has nothing to do with Jews. The same argument has played out over campus protests, in Congress and across the globe since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.
The dispute began Friday, when Ruffalo posted a 2024 clip of former Oracle CEO Safra Catz reportedly discussing “profoundly scary technologies” the company built for the Israeli military after Oct. 7. Along with the clip, Ruffalo wrote that the war in Gaza was “a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
Larry Ellison, who co-founded Oracle and has an estimated net worth of around $200 billion, has personally backstopped $40.4 billion in equity financing for his son David Ellison’s Paramount to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
Ruffalo called the elder Ellison a “classic Oligarch” and warned that the “most destructive and inhuman forces in the world” would soon sit inside an important media company if the merger succeeds. The deal would give the family control of CNN. It already owns CBS News.
Paramount fired back. “We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute,” a company spokesperson told The Wrap, a Hollywood trade publication. “Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe.” The company added that the episode “exposes the true motivation of some who have advocated opposition to this transaction.”
It’s not the first time Paramount has made that argument. Axios reported in June that company executives believed antisemitism was fueling opposition to the merger more broadly, pointing to the Ellisons’ Jewish identity and Larry Ellison’s friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ruffalo pushed back on social media Saturday refuting the accusation that he is antisemitic and adding: “Everything I know about acting, activism, and humanism has been profoundly shaped by the Jewish friends, colleagues, and loved ones who have been integral and family throughout every point of my life.”
An advocate and activist
Ruffalo, 58, is best known for playing the Hulk in the Marvel cinematic universe and has been nominated for four Academy Awards, for his performances in The Kids Are All Right, Foxcatcher, Spotlight and Poor Things.
He has also built a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most consistent activists, campaigning for environmental causes and protesting against the Trump administration. This fight is the latest flashpoint in the actor’s history of pro-Palestinian activism.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel, he has frequently called out Israel’s military action in Gaza, notably wearing an Artists4Ceasefire pin to the 2024 Oscars. In September 2024, he was among more than 700 SAG-AFTRA members who signed a letter demanding the actors’ union publicly call for a Gaza ceasefire and protect pro-Palestinian members from what they described as industry blacklisting.
In September 2025, he said he supported efforts to “boycott, divest, sanction, and prosecute” Israel. And just 10 days before the Oracle post, he joined Javier Bardem, Susan Sarandon and other artists in a statement arguing that despite the U.S.-brokered truce in place since October 2025, “there is no ceasefire in Gaza.”
That history is why three prominent voices in the fight against antisemitism sided with Paramount over the weekend.
“Words matter, and so does the willingness to draw a line when legitimate debate gives way to antisemitic tropes,” wrote Jim Berk, CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, praising the studio for “refusing to allow prejudice to masquerade as political or corporate criticism.”
He went on: “Invoking Israel in an issue where it is completely irrelevant is a textbook case of obsession and demonization.”
Creative Community for Peace, a Hollywood group that pushes back on boycotts of Israel, went further, with executive director Ari Ingel accusing Ruffalo of fusing “hostility toward Israel and Zionism with Jewish-associated wealth, media ownership, oligarchic power and ominous warnings about concentrated control into a single narrative.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, called Ruffalo’s posts “cynical and sickening.”
Antisemitism vs. anti-Zionism
The fight lands amid the worst stretch of global antisemitism in decades. Researchers at Tel Aviv University found that 20 Jews were murdered in antisemitic attacks worldwide last year, the highest toll in more than 30 years — a count that includes a gunmen who killed more than a dozen people at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in December.
As incidents rise, and amidst Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza and its war with Iran, the country’s standing in the world has cratered.
A Pew Research Center survey of 36 countries this spring found a median of 67% hold unfavorable views of Israel, with opinion growing more negative since 2025 in most countries where Pew has trend data. Even in the U.S., Israel’s staunchest ally, Americans no longer clearly side with Israelis over Palestinians for the first time since Gallup began asking in 2001 — a reversal driven largely by independents and voters under 35.
Where the merger stands
Representatives for Paramount and California are expected to meet Monday for preliminary talks, at Paramount’s request, though people briefed on the discussions cautioned there’s no guarantee they will lead anywhere. The Writers Guild has also sued to block the deal.
The stakes of delay are real: if the deal doesn’t close by October, Paramount would owe Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars in fees. If there is no resolution, a trial is set for March.
The post When does criticizing Israel become antisemitism? Ask Mark Ruffalo appeared first on The Forward.
