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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‘Vote him out’: Israeli-Americans rally against Netanyahu, plan to return to Israel to vote against him
Gripping Israeli flags in Union Square, a crowd of roughly three dozen chanted “Vote him out,” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to speak before the United Nations on Thursday.
“It’s really an embarrassment that he’s even at the U.N.,” said Israeli-American protester Steve Lax, who is planning to fly to Israel to vote in the upcoming election.
UnXeptable, an organization founded by Israeli expats who say they are striving to save Israeli democracy, organized the demonstration. While those protesting opposed the Netanyahu government, the rally was intended more broadly to support change in Israel as the election looms. Roughly three dozen Israelis, Israeli-Americans and Jewish-Americans joined the protest.
Lax, who splits his time between Israel and America, said he supports Yair Golan and the Democrats. The main issues driving his vote are government corruption, settler violence in the West Bank and “the lack of hope for peace.”
“Jewish terrorism is creating more Arab terrorism,” said Lax, chairman of Naot Worldwide. “The settlers are totally out of control, and unfortunately some of the Israeli army, and certainly [Itamar] Ben-Gvir, have been supporting the settlers in what they’re doing.”
Israeli citizens living abroad may vote in the election if they are physically in the country to cast their ballots and have resident status. This is different from America, where citizens can vote by absentee ballot while outside the U.S.
Change, for those at the protest, means supporting one of the many opposition blocs. Offir Gutelzon, the Israeli-American co-founder of UnXeptable, is supporting the Gadi Eisenkot bloc. Critics of Eisenkot question what significant changes he will bring, as he aligns with Netanyahu on opposing Palestinian statehood. However, Gutelzon said Eisenkot’s stance on internal issues is what really matters to Israelis.
These include opposing judicial overhaul, setting term limits for prime ministers and drafting the Haredim into the military.
“I know that from the outside, everyone is looking at what will be different with Palestinians, what will be different in Gaza,” Gutelzon, who moved to America in 2011 for business reasons, said. “Most Israeli voters don’t think about that right now. They want to secure the country as a Jewish and democratic state, and then start talking about other things.”
But for Israeli-American Leora Agron, Gaza is one of the main reasons she is flying back to vote.
“Innocent people are dying,” she said. “Let them live. Give them support to do it, because everything is broken.”
Agron moved to Argentina in 1987 at age 30 to be with her husband. The couple considered moving back to Israel when they had children, but were discouraged by then opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, which inflamed tensions with Palestinians.
What’s at stake?
Gutelzon is confident Netanyahu won’t remain in power. Even so, he says the stakes couldn’t be higher, and that if the PM doesn’t change, the country will slip into a “messianic theocracy.” This is in part due to brain drain, the concept of highly educated citizens emigrating.
Nearly 300,000 Israelis have left the country for at least three months since 2023, suggesting a mass emigration trend, according to a study from Tel Aviv University. Professor Itai Ater, who led the study, said the country is currently able to sustain itself despite these numbers. However, if the trend continues, emigration will severely harm the nation’s security and economy.
“We see that it’s many, many physicians, engineers, tech people and academics,” Ater told i24 News. “This is the best of Israel in a sense. The Israeli economy depends on human capital.”
Citing Ater’s study, Gutelzon noted healthcare would be impacted by physicians leaving, along with education if academics emigrate. Additionally, this group of people is paying the highest taxes, he said. They also serve in the military, and are needed given the exemption for Haredim.
Yonatan Schwartz, 19, participated in the protest and said he is reconsidering immigration to Israel. Schwartz, an American with two Israeli parents, attended the UnXeptable protest and said he had been planning to join the Israel Defense Forces. But if Netanyahu is reelected – or a different “right-wing extremist” wins – he said he’ll likely stay in America and go to college instead.
Supporting Israel, not the government
UnXeptable was initially inspired by the 2020 Balfour protests when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to streets and bridges demanding Netanyahu resign after he was indicted on corruption charges.
“The Balfour protests started with a very simple statement that said that an indicted prime minister is unacceptable,” said Gutelzon, explaining how UnXeptable got its name.
The Bay Area-based organization wanted to show Israelis back home that those in the diaspora supported them. So they demonstrated at their own bridge, the Golden Gate.
Now, the protests have gone beyond showing solidarity with Israelis back home. As Gutelzon puts it, UnXeptable wants to show the world “the other Israel,” one that’s looking “for change.”
The post ‘Vote him out’: Israeli-Americans rally against Netanyahu, plan to return to Israel to vote against him appeared first on The Forward.
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A candy crisis has cast a pall on upcoming bar and bat mitzvahs
Ahead of my New Jersey synagogue’s first bar mitzvah this weekend, we learned that Sunkist Fruit Gems, the popular sacred confection lovingly lobbed at the end of many services to shower the b’nai mitzvah boy or girl with sweetness, had been discontinued by its candy maker.
I dreaded delivering this news to my son and daughter, Max and Rose, who are beginning to celebrate their classmates’ bar and bat mitzvahs and prepare for their own. For children, even those on the brink of adulthood, fruit-flavored gummies matter.
This also deals a blow to a silent protest that had already begun to percolate last spring when I celebrated my own bat mitzvah. When my classmates and I asked where we should take cover when our fans pelted us with the traditional fruit-flavored gummies, we were promptly informed that candy had been banned from the sanctuary.
A candy ban? I audibly gasped.
“This is unacceptable,” Rose declared when I told my kids the news. “We have to do something.”
The Los Angeles-based Ben Myerson Candy Company introduced Fruit Gems in 1955 after working with Sunkist on pectin candies, or natural fruit gels. Sunkist began putting its name on the label in 1966.
To focus more attention on wine and spirits, the Myerson family sold the candy business in 2006 to Jelly Belly Candy Co., which 17 years later was acquired by The Ferrara Candy Company. Apparently, Fruit Gems could not compete with Ferrara’s other products, which include Atomic Fire Balls, Fun Dip, Nerds, Pixy Stix and Lemonheads. And so, in May, Ferrara retired the Gems.
But an Atomic Fire Ball to the head is no way to celebrate a job well done. And lightweight Pixy Stix can not be lobbed hard enough to clear 10 rows of pews and hit their target. In fact, none of those confections can truly replace the sugar-coated, cellophane-wrapped Fruit Gem, which by the way, is also kosher.
While tossing sweets isn’t a sacred ritual, it does add a dose of cathartic joy for children at the end of a two-hour religious service and for the bar or bat mitzvah and their family at the end of a stressful occasion. Scholars trace the practice back to a passage in the Talmud, which mentions throwing grains and nuts at a couple during wedding celebrations.
As other milestones have taken on greater importance, a similar custom has spread to bar and bat mitzvahs in which jelly candy is used to bestow joy and sweetness on the teen as they transition into maturity.
I asked Kenneth Feibush, our temple’s former cantor, how the tradition there started. Now the cantor of Congregation Beth Israel in Houston where no one throws sweets, Feibush said it’s actually more common in Conservative and Orthodox congregations than Reform temples. But a handful of families at Temple Sholom introduced it on their own and it caught on. He had seen it before at a temple in Alaska where he had interned. There, the bar or bat mitzvah would don a helmet or open a parasol to shield themselves from the projectiles.
When I asked our spiritual leader, Rabbi Laurence Groffman, how the tradition ended, he said Temple Sholom prides itself on being an inclusive congregation but there are limits. “Unfortunately, ants don’t make the cut,” he said.
Turns out ants had infested the piano ahead of our Purim spiel last year. And as our temple readied for a costly renovation to our sanctuary, the powers-that-be said no more food fights.
So now that Sunkist Fruit Gems are no longer an option, is the protest against the candy ban a moot point? Is there a way to do a symbolic Gatorade dump to salute the sweat that went into the proverbial win? That’s precisely what our religious school director Cara Moroze recommended.
“I like a good compromise,” she said. “How ‘bout Rose dumps all the candy at once over her brother’s head? Then the kids come up to get the candy. No errant Twizzlers buried in a piano.”
I warned her that she had just reignited the protest movement.
The post A candy crisis has cast a pall on upcoming bar and bat mitzvahs appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu attacks Mamdani in UN speech. ‘You tried to silence me. Well, you can’t.’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned the world’s biggest diplomatic stage into a platform for a blistering attack on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has repeatedly called the Israeli leader a war criminal and had called for his arrest while campaigning.
“Shame on you for distorting the facts,” Netanyahu said during a defiant, 40-minute address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. “Shame on you for spitting in the face of truth, Mr. Mamdani.”
Netanyahu addressed the mayor directly over his repeated accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and his calls for Netanyahu’s arrest under an International Criminal Court warrant. In July, Mamdani announced that his office acknowledged he lacks the power to arrest Netanyahu while visiting the city, a pledge he made during his mayoral election campaign.
“Mr. Mamdani, you tried to stop me from coming here,” Netanyahu said at the UN. “You tried to silence me. Well, you can’t silence me. You can’t silence the truth.”
Netanyahu also accused Mamdani of associating with people who have expressed support for Hamas or made inflammatory comments about Israel, describing him as the “antisemitic mayor” of New York and suggesting that his anti-Israel rhetoric has fueled antisemitism. The Israeli leader singled out Mamdani for his association with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and for refusing to rebuke his wife, Rama Duwaji, for liking social media posts praising the Oct. 7 attack and saying Tel Aviv should not exist.
In response, Mamdani said in a statement that Netanyahu used his speech to “repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians.” The mayor added: “Yet no lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Many diplomats staged a walkout as Netanyahu rose to speak, while some of his supporters chanted, “The people of Israel live!”
Watching them from the podium, Netanyahu asked, “If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall, please do so now, thank you very much.” He almost seemed to be smiling as he surveyed the men and women streaming out the door.
Netanyahu flew to New York on Thursday for a brief visit that also included a number of meetings with heads of state, but absent from his itinerary was President Donald Trump. The US leader spoke at the UN on Tuesday and was in Washington when Netanyahu arrived, though he made time to meet with Mamdani while in New York.
Outside UN headquarters in Manhattan, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets to rally against Netanyahu and his policies.
A familiar stage for a close campaign
For Netanyahu, the annual U.N. speech has long been about more than diplomacy. It is one of his favorite political stages, using it as an opportunity to speak in fluent English to the world while also projecting strength to voters back home as the Israeli leader willing to stand before an often-hostile international audience and defend his country.
Over the years, Netanyahu has turned those speeches into carefully produced performances. In 2012, he famously held up a cartoon drawing of a bomb and drew a red line to warn about Iran’s nuclear program. In 2014, he displayed a photograph of Palestinian children playing near what he said was a Hamas rocket launcher. Four years later, he presented aerial photographs he said showed a secret Iranian nuclear site. In 2023, he held up a map of what he called “The New Middle East.”
Last year, Netanyahu arrived with another prop: a QR code pinned to his suit jacket. The code directed viewers to a website showing graphic images from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. This year, he waved a beeper, reminding viewers of the attack against Hezbollah terrorists and left on the podium a Starlink device for the Iranian delegation to watch the protests in their country.
Thursday marked Netanyahu’s 15th General Assembly address since 1998. This one came at a particularly important political moment.
Netanyahu is campaigning for a seventh term by asking Israelis to judge him not only on the failures surrounding the Oct. 7 attack, but on what came afterward: Israel’s military campaign that killed Hamas leadership and dealt major blows to Iran and its regional network. At the same time, Netanyahu portrayed himself as fighting a global political and public-relations battle against what he described as lies and efforts to isolate Israel.
Mamdani, who made Netanyahu a political target for nearly two years, has now become a useful face of Netanyahu’s campaign.
The Netanyahu-Mamdani UN connection
The Netanyahu-Mamdani confrontation also has an unusual connection to the UN stage.
When Netanyahu delivered his UN speech in 2024, Israeli warplanes were sent to strike Hezbollah’s underground headquarters in Beirut, killing its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah and much of the group’s senior command. A photograph released by Netanyahu’s office showed the prime minister on the phone approving the mission ahead of his address.
Mamdani later cited that episode while explaining his pledge to arrest Netanyahu if he returned to New York. “What troubles me greatly is that Benjamin Netanyahu has also issued military commands from this very city when visiting it,” Mamdani said at a UJA-Federation town hall during the Democratic primary. “I do not want our city to be party to those kinds of decisions.”
After becoming mayor, Mamdani ordered a legal review that concluded New York City did not have the authority to execute the ICC warrant. He conceded that point in July but continued to use his platform to call Netanyahu a war criminal and say he was not welcome in New York. Netanyahu has denied committing war crimes.
Mamdani has been more careful about Netanyahu’s actual visit this week. He said he would not participate in demonstrations against the prime minister and insisted that he had never encouraged New Yorkers to protest him, but defended their First Amendment right to do so.
Netanyahu’s visit was also designed to leave little opportunity for a confrontation.
In contrast to past weeklong visits, Netanyahu was scheduled to spend less than eight hours in the New York area — one of his shortest foreign trips as prime minister. Netanyahu left Israel early Thursday and flew to a military facility in upstate New Jersey rather than landing at a New York airport. Israeli officials have cited security concerns surrounding the trip, including protests and the threat of drone attacks. He was expected to return to Israel Thursday night, without spending the night in New York.
But the audience that may have mattered most was watching from television monitors back home in Israel.
Speaking to the Israeli audience
Netanyahu’s Likud is locked in a competitive election with opposition parties seeking to end his long tenure. Recent polling has shown the anti-Netanyahu bloc slightly ahead of his bloc, though the fragmented opposition could still face difficulty assembling a governing coalition.
Netanyahu has survived political obituaries before. His appearances at the United Nations have helped cultivate the image at the center of his political identity: the Israeli statesman who can speak directly to an American audience and confront Israel’s critics.
On Thursday, he got to play that role once again. Whether he gets another turn at the podium next September will be decided not in New York City, but by Israeli voters next month.
JTA contributed to this report.
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