Yeshiva University has revoked its recognition of a campus LGBTQ+ club just two months after approving it.
The Modern Orthodox flagship is alleging that the club, Hareni, breached the terms of the settlement agreement that allowed for its formation. Hareni’s lawyers claim that the school may be the one breaching the settlement and say statements by school leaders “threaten” LGBTQ students’ safety. The club has vowed to keep operating.
YU’s decision to recognize Hareni in March, and settle related legal battles, marked a sharp pivot. For years, the school had fought in court to avoid recognition of the Pride Alliance, an LGBTQ support group that was unofficially launched in 2009 but never received formal recognition from the university’s administration.
At issue was Orthodox Judaism’s prohibition against homosexual relations. YU seeks to inculcate in its students the idea that they can live fully committed Orthodox Jewish lives while participating in modern society, and the question of welcoming LGBTQ students has strained that mission for years.
Both the school and the leaders of Hareni, who had previously led the Pride Alliance, depicted the March announcement as a resolution of the conflict. But within days of announcing recognition of the LGBTQ group, Yeshiva University president Rabbi Ari Berman said the values espoused by a typical “Pride” club are “antithetical” to the school. Rabbi Hershel Schachter, who leads YU’s rabbinical school, stated in March that he “emphatically rejects the ideology, lifestyle and behaviors which the LGBTQ term represents.”
This week, the conflict appeared to heat up again. Lawyers for the school and the club had exchanged dueling letters, and the decision to officially disband Hareni was announced Friday in an email to students from the dean of undergraduate Torah studies, Rabbi Yosef Kalinsky.
In the email, Kalinsky echoed Berman’s previous language, saying a pride club is “antithetical to the Torah values” of the university.
'No place in yeshiva for such a club'
“There is no place for such a club in yeshiva,” the email said. “As such, we are directing the Office of Student Life to discontinue this club.”
The decision to disband was made the day after a law firm representing Hareni sent a letter to the university expressing “deep concern about recent public statements by Yeshiva University’s senior leaders that display animus and hostility toward the University’s LGBTQ students,” according to the YU Observer, a Yeshiva University student newspaper. The letter accused the school of potentially violating its March settlement.
The letter claimed such statements “threaten the safety and well-being of LGBTQ students on campus.” The letter also cites an April 10 letter sent to YU alumni saying that the university required Hareni to include a “‘sexual morality’ disclaimer on all of its materials, communications, and publications.”
YU says the club ran counter to the school’s outlook in word and deed.
In a written statement to the New York Jewish Week, the school alleged, “since the moment the club was announced, Hareni members, their legal counsel and public relations firm, have continuously made false and misleading statements that have sowed confusion regarding religious beliefs, and that are contrary to the goals that the approved guidelines set out for Hareni.”
In addition, YU’s lawyers sent a letter to Hareni’s lawyers claiming the club “violated” university rules, including posting Pride flags on its Instagram account, organizing social events and using YU’s name when hosting off-campus, unofficial events.
The school’s lawyers said the club “failed to include in their advertisements the notice that the Roshei Yeshiva required any time the Hareni name was used—i.e., referring to helping ‘students who seek to fully maintain traditional halachic standards of sexual morality …’”
The co-presidents of Hareni, Hayley Goldberg and Schneur Friedman, co-wrote an op-ed in the YU Observer Tuesday, explaining the aims of the club. They added, “What we will not be doing as a club is writing the egregious statement, ‘This club is for students who seek to fully maintain traditional halachic standards of sexual morality as defined by the Shulchan Aruch’ on our posters and communications.” The Shulchan Aruch is a widely followed code of Jewish law.
“Equating an identity with sexual immorality looks past us as a people,” wrote Goldberg and Friedman, who did not respond to a request for comment. “This statement sexualizes students and forgets every other aspect of them as a person. It reduces complex individuals to a single dimension, stripping them of their intellect, character, contributions to our community, and their spiritual journey.”
In a statement Friday, Hareni reiterated that the club has always operated “in accordance with the guidelines agreed upon and with deep respect for Halacha,” or Jewish law.
”We remain committed to that path,” the statement said. “No attempt to silence or erase our existence will change that. If OSL [the Office of Student Life] 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.”
Rachael Fried, a YU alum and executive director of Jewish Queer Youth, a nonprofit that has provided support to LGBTQ Jews at YU, lamented the approach the school’s leadership has taken toward the students.
“I’m incredibly proud of the students and their resilience that has brought us to where we are today, that we’re even having these conversations out loud,” she said.
“It’s really disappointing to me that the leaders of Modern Orthodoxy feel so strongly to speak out against their very vulnerable and at-risk students in this way,” she added. “This notion that Pride and halacha, or Jewish law or Torah, are mutually exclusive is just not true.”