By Shloimy Lowy
After finishing up the final classes of the semester, a group of Yeshiva University students made a Thursday night trek up the six flights of stairs at 187th Street which separate YU from The Beis Community shul on Fort Washington Avenue. Walking into The Beis, students were met with a spirit of collaboration, empathy, acceptance and of course – pizza.
It was the very first (un)official event held by the newly-founded Hareni club: the first officially approved LGBTQ+ club at YU. The event was shifted off-campus last minute, after the Office of Student Life (OSL) refused to approve it, saying it did not meet the standards laid out for the club in the settlement with YU. The event was a community discussion with the leaders and board members of Hareni, with the goal being, to “create and foster open discussion regarding the needs of LGBTQ+ students on campus,” according to their flyer,
Sitting at the front were the panelists, including Co-Presidents Schneur Friedman (YC ‘25) and Hayley Goldberg (SCW ‘26), next year’s Co-President Tani Glaser (YC ‘26) and Board Member Dori Berman (SCW ‘26). The panel was moderated by Dr. Jenny Isaacs, Associate Professor of Psychology on the Wilf campus, and the questions were posed anonymously by curious students prior to the event.
After a short introduction by the moderator, the panelists briefly introduced themselves and spoke about their backgrounds and what motivated them to become involved with the club. They spoke about the need to foster a safe space for queer students at YU, and how each of their own stories led them to fight for just that. This prompted a conversation about why each of the panelists chose to attend YU, despite it being less-than-accepting of its queer students. “We are all just people, and we need a space to coexist,” Goldberg said, emphasizing the need for a queer community within Orthodoxy.
Expanding on the need for an “official” queer community at YU, Glaser pointed to the near 20 percent of Gen Z who identify as queer: “That’s a lot of people, a lot of them are going to come to YU,” Glaser said.
“This religion is very community-based,” he added. “By saying that we need to be ourselves and not being able to be part of a community, you’re basically taking us away from the Jewish community.”
Goldberg highlighted how inseparable her Jewish identity is from her queer identity. At YU, “I found my community,” she said. “I found my Jewish community, I found my queer community, I found my queer Jewish community.”
The question of a conflict between halacha and the club inevitably came up.
“Before anybody can ask those questions, they need to be safe walking into that space, they need to have the mental wellbeing to think about things, you know, and decide what they want to do, and, implicitly, they need to be alive to do it,” Friedman told the crowd, echoing the article released just two days prior to the event, in which he and Goldberg clarified Hareni’s goals.
Citing the over 100 queer Jewish youth who commit suicide yearly, he continued, “The halachic questions are valid, but before any of those questions are asked, people need a sense of wellbeing; that’s what the club is here to provide.”
Dov Pfeifer (YC ‘25), a Hareni board member in the audience added, “I don’t think any YU Rabbi has given a shiur on why the club cannot exist that is based on halachic merits, at least that’s publicly available. It’s based off of talking points, based off of feelings.”
The panel then morphed into a conversation, with some in the crowd, students and professors alike, opening up about their intensely personal experiences, asking challenging questions and adding valuable insight to the discussion. Professor Carrie Shanafelt from YU’s English department recommended family therapy for those struggling with coming out, and a doctoral student present raised issues facing the trans Jewish community.
Some YU undergraduates brought up other issues they are passionate about, from the social stigma of being associated with the queer community, to the offensive jokes that have become the norm at YU and even the intricate halachic issues that arise out of modern conceptions of gender. The conversation was a show of compassion mixed with curiosity, brought about by the diverse group of students and faculty present.
A bittersweet moment of the evening came when the panelists were asked, “If you could cease being queer at the snap of a finger, would you do it?” Friedman candidly recalled his experiences of self-hatred. “For much of my life, my answer might have been yes, it would have been yes. Beyond snapping my finger, if I could cut it off to become straight.” he said.
Answering the same question, Berman spoke about the homophobia she faced because of her queer identity, and yet, when asked whether she would change herself, she said, “I wouldn’t change any of it; the love, the family, the friends that I have made, I would have none of it.”
“I would be a completely different person,” she added. “I don’t want to be anyone else but me.”
The panelists then touched on how their Jewish identities have been complemented by their queer experiences, with Berman remarking, “We were taught ve’ahavta lereiacha kamocha (the Jewish commandment to love your fellow like yourself), and that taught me that it’s okay to be queer, that this world is better with love in it, and not hatred, especially the self-hate type.” Berman later said that this sentiment of love that she learned from engaging with her queer identity was what brought her back to Judaism.
Ending the conversation on a more hopeful note, the group discussed the steps everyone at YU can take to make it a more accepting place for the queer community. They spoke about engaging with students who may not know much about the queer community, and even with those who are in the know but still are not as accepting. The panelists lucidly discussed the issues facing the queer YU community, acknowledging the difficulty faced by those who want to be accepting, whether that be students or rebbeim, professors or roshei yeshiva, who for some reason find it hard to be, either from a social or halachic perspective.
Reflecting on the event, Professor Shanafelt of the English department told the YU Observer, “It was amazing to me, as a queer professor, to get to listen to students take such an important leadership role in this community, supporting one another. To hear that voice was so uplifting for me.”
This sentiment was shared among the students as well. “It’s really important that we are still getting people that are coming to hear the students talk about their experiences,” alumna Yaffa Goldkin (SCW ‘24) said. “It’s really important to continue doing things like this, and making sure we are getting audiences that are here to support people.”
The next morning, an email to the Undergraduate Torah Studies (UTS) student body on the Wilf campus informed students that the YU Roshei Yeshiva had directed the Office of Student Life (OSL) to suspend Hareni. The letter from the Roshei Yeshiva attached in the email said, “Recent actions and statements have indicated that Hareni is operating as a pride club under a different name and as such is antithetical to the Torah values of our yeshiva, as well as in violation of the approved guidelines and of the terms of the Settlement Agreement.”
It remains unclear whether this move was in direct response to the panel or a broader response to the various articles and stance clarifications by both parties involved. What will become of the official club is unknown, but, in a statement posted on the Hareni broadcast chat on WhatsApp, the co-presidents clarified that “if OSL responds to the call to ‘discontinue’ us, we will continue as though we were not. We will continue to hold events and safe spaces – albeit in an ‘unofficial’ manner.”
The co-presidents added, “Hareni exists because we exist. We are YU students. We are Torah Jews. And we are not going anywhere.”
Photo Caption: (from left to right) Friedman, Berman, Goldberg, Glaser
Photo Credit: Rivka Inger