Yeshiva University Shuts Down LGBTQ Club, Ending Tenuous Settlement
“There is no place for such a club in yeshiva.”
A tenuous settlement between Yeshiva University and a student LGBTQ group unraveled last week when the school revoked its approval of the newly formed club, JTA reports.
A YU spokesperson told The Commentator that the club had been officially shut down “because of numerous and blatant violations of club guidelines and the recent Settlement Agreement.”
Earlier this year, Yeshiva University agreed to settle with YU Pride Alliance, officially recognizing the LGBTQ student group with a new name, “Hareni.” The parties’ agreement, which we covered here, ended years of litigation that began when the flagship Modern Orthodox Jewish university refused to recognize the group on religious grounds.
We covered the long-running court battle between YU and the student Pride Alliance here:
- Yeshiva University Will Recognize LGBTQ Club, Ending Long Court Battle
- NYC Comptroller to Yeshiva University: Recognize LGBTQ Club or Risk Public Funding
- Yeshiva University Inches Its Way Back To SCOTUS By Appealing LGBTQ Club Ruling To NY’s Highest Court
- Yeshiva University Must Recognize LGBTQ Club, Appeals Court Rules
- Yeshiva University and ‘Pride Alliance’ Agree To Stay Of State Court Order That Forced School To Officially Recognize LGBT Group
- Pending Return to SCOTUS, Yeshiva University Freezes All Student Group Activities Rather Than Recognize LGBT Alliance
- Yeshiva University Must Recognize LGBTQ Student Group For Now, After SCOTUS Vacates Stay As Premature
- Justice Sotomayor Stays NY State Court Order Forcing Yeshiva University To Recognize “Pride Alliance” Club
- Yeshiva U Fight Against Order It Recognize Student Pride Alliance Suffers Blow When Denied “Leave To Appeal” to NY High Ct
The parties’ settlement now hangs in the balance. In a memorandum announcing YU’s decision, the university’s Roshei Yeshiva (rabbinic leaders) say the agreed-upon club “was designed to support students who are striving to live a fully committed, uncompromising authentic halachic life within our communities, under traditional Orthodox auspices.”
However, YU’s leaders say the new club has shown itself to be the same as the old one, rebranded: “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. There is no place for such a club in yeshiva.”
YU’s announcement came a day after Hareni’s lawyers wrote to the school expressing “deep concern” about statements by university leaders that made them feel “unwelcome and unsafe” and that violated the terms of the settlement agreement:
“Since the Settlement Agreement was signed on March 17, 2025, University leaders have stated that they ’emphatically reject’ the ‘ideology, lifestyle, and behaviors which the LGBTQ term represents’; that Hareni must include a ‘sexual morality’ disclaimer on all of its ‘materials, communications, and publications’; and that the ‘L.G.B.T.Q. acronym entails’ a ‘heretical, nihilistic philosophy that champions and celebrates all forms of sexual deviance.’”
They’re not wrong. However, YU’s lawyers say it’s the new club that’s in breach of the agreed-upon settlement, in which “they committed to be bound, like all student clubs, by Yeshiva’s religious authorities, the Roshei Yeshiva.”
“Yet, since the announcement of the club … your clients have misrepresented the club, ignored the guidance of the rabbis, violated the rules of the Office of Student Life, and have publicly stated that they will not follow the rabbis’ direction as to how to keep this club true to its core mission,” YU’s lawyers say.
The problem is that Hareni has held itself out to the community as the same “pride” club as before, only now, with YU’s imprimatur. “Although we entered into this agreement in good faith to create a space for our students that would assist them in their personal journeys, Hareni from the start misrepresented the club, claiming and acting from the beginning of its founding that it is simply the Pride Alliance under a new name,” YU’s lawyers say in the letter.
To take one example: “on the newly rebranded YU Pride Alliance Instagram account … the former co-presidents of YU Pride Alliance announced that ‘we [YU Pride Alliance] are now an official club at YU’ and ‘will go forward using the club name Hareni.’ They closed the post with a Pride flag emoji and the words ‘[w]ith pride.’”
For their part, Hareni’s student leaders were defiant. In an op-ed published in the school paper last week, they threw down the gauntlet:
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 [Jewish legal]standards of sexual morality as defined by the Shulchan Aruch [Code of Jewish Law]” on our posters and communications. Equating an identity with sexual immorality looks past us as a people. … To imply that an identity poses a threat to halachic morality … fosters a culture of exclusion, judgement [sic] and shame rather than building one of compassion, learning, and mutual respect.
Such statements, YU’s lawyers say, “are obviously inconsistent with [Hareni’s] commitment … to ‘run’ the Club ‘in accordance with the approved guidelines’ of the Roshei Yeshiva.”
For now, the parties are reportedly at an impasse, though they aren’t back in court—yet. In their respective letters, both agreed to a meeting in the coming days to reconcile their differences under the settlement agreement.
It’s hard to see how they will.
Because, no matter what new name they give it, the LGBTQ club is a “pride” club. And for YU, whether “pride” is allowed under Jewish law is “quintessentially a religious question, one that must be decided on an ongoing basis by the Roshei Yeshiva”—not by college undergrads.
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Comments
If you were an alphabet person why would you attend Yeshiva in the first place? You know it won’t be supportive. It would likely be neutral. To attend anyway is to demonstrate either your ignorance or your hubris or both, It certainly demonstrates a lack of intelligence,
BTW: There is something serious wrong about anyone who babbles about feeling unsafe while attempting to win an argument they are losing and losing badly. They need to automatically be put in an unsafe environment so they can learn what it actually means to feel unsafe.
Those are my thoughts.
Why would that type individual want to attend an orthodox school, and if they did, why would they want to raise awareness to their preferences
Infiltration? Similar to why such people go into seminary?
Similarly, why do homosexuals enter seminaries to become Catholic priests?
To be deliberately antagonistic. To force their views on the school and the religious people who attend. To try to force a lawsuit. Because the alphabet people are at their core intolerant and can’t stand that anyone disagree with them.
This.
Cake Bake 2.0
Yeah I’m going to go into debt by 250k just to show them. I don’t think so.
Politics isn’t the reason you or I get up every morning. To the left, there is no higher meaning than to shove tyranny down everyone’s throat. We avoid this type of conflict because we have a life. Meanwhile, the struggle is their life. They’re like GD zombies and will never quit until the West has been torn down and rebuilt in their image.
This is why were are so divided in this country, because we let these idiots run rampant for too long. They have sunk their claws into everything in American society, making it very hard to yank them out. They know they aren’t going to get any serious blowback. Yeshiva said – you can’t do this. And they said – oh, ok we promise (tee hee) we won’t EVER do that again.
What do they do? Keep doing it.
Would be nice if our side understood and, more importantly, adopted their tenacity.
I see no reason an alphabet person cannot attend Yeshiva. I am one, with the letter G involved. I mention this for context.
I am a G that does not prance around being fabulous; I don’t view my surroundings through a prism of G; and pride events offend me. I fly no rainbow flags, and no “bear community” flags. (Those are a flag with various shades of brown for stripes, and a paw print.)
I am just… me. Most of us are just… us.
But there are so many who are defiant. I don’t care about your sexuality and don’t ask you to change it, because it’s private and it has nothing to do with me. I think most people have about the same views on it. But why is there such a critical mass among LBGTQ that we keep hearing demands for acquiescence, from people who have nothing to do with their sexuality?
As for YU, it’s a religious school and it’s incredibly obvious that they’re asking the rabbis there to tolerate something unacceptable to their religious beliefs. What chutzpah.
I think of a lot of the noise that you are referring to is generated by the media. It’s because a few people and I do mean a few people can run in front of the camera and make all kinds of excitement, they do so. If they weren’t getting this kind of coverage. We wouldn’t even be hearing about this kind of thing. And I don’t even think it would be happening.
Some folks, regardless of their skin, color, sexual orientation, or view points on women’s rights are just plain troublemaker. I don’t like them.
I’m also gay, something I mention only when relevant, such as now. I don’t think there’s the “critical mass” that you think there is. What there is, is a group of well-funded (for now) organizations that did great work for quite a while, and then faced a very tough question after the Obergefell decision of 2015: “What now?”
That decision was really the holy grail. Our LG tribe (face it, the B only matters because the L or G is involved) was given a clear answer: “Yes.” But you still had these organizations with their money and their big staffs, suddenly with not much to do. Aha! The T. Didn’t matter that the T really doesn’t share anything essential with the LGB. In fact, most Ts are straight guys with a kink about imagining themselves as women: look up the word “autogynephelia,” and prepare for intellectual vertigo.
So what you think of as a “critical mass” is actually a relative handful of activists with sinecures to protect, linked to lazy, liberal “reporters” in pursuit of easy stories in a mediasphere increasingly characterized by understaffing and heavy production pressures. Yep, it’s June. I’ll call the Human Rights Campaign and we’ll do some stories about Pride.
Meanwhile, the “critical mass” is actually those of us who will never be interviewed, and whose lives are not even thought about, much less fairly represented. There ARE some gay conservative organizations, but gee, the media just can’t find them, can’t meaning won’t.
Grizzly is correct. We just want to live our lives. We took “yes” for an answer 10 years ago, and moved on.
The “pride” people, more than most, seem to be defiant. They have exactly the opposite opinion of “my sexuality is my own and is private and I don’t need anyone else to approve or even know about it.” I don’t know why there’s a desire to demand public acquiescence, but it’s too often there.
You are trying to logic and common sense – something the alphabet community lacks on both counts.
b/c the blmplo will use these groups to gain access
nice move on stopping THAT!
How so?
To put the most charitable interpretation on this, these are young people who are genuinely seeking the divine and feel called to Judaism, only to find that it directly conflicts with something else they believe strongly. That’s a tough thing to face, and it’s perfectly understandable that they’d want to get together with others dealing with the same struggle of which to give up.
That’s not what this group is doing, though. If that’s all they wanted, they could simply form their own social group and meet in coffee shops or one another’s living rooms. There’s no legitimate justification for their demands the yeshiva provide approval of or support for their ‘club.’
Change or go, kids. Stop demanding the millennia old faith change to suit you.
Also, by the time one has enough contact with orthodoxy in Judaism to decide to attend college at YU, one knows full well that it’s a difficult fit. One could at least ask during the admission process, or while a student there. This club apparently prevaricated with the rabbis rather than being forthright about it.
The school should win this one. It has a right to its religious beliefs and practices, which are not being changed in this instance.
The issue is that they believe their choice of lifestyle supersedes the requirements of Judaism.
Democrats believe that lifestyle trumps identity, and their courts so rule.
No, they don’t believe that. But they don’t accept that the requirements of Judaism include that they hide themselves in shame, deny their identities, and go through life with a feeling of being inferior to all other people. They agreed to a club that would abide by the rabbis’ rules, but would in return be treated equally with all other student clubs. Instead they seem to have got humiliating rules that applied only to them, which they believe violates the agreement.
One question. Are there any other clubs at Yeshiva whose common interest is something that inherently violates Jewish law, for example a club dedicated to the enjoyment of non-kosher food or to events that violate Shabbat? I doubt it. So then this situation is unique in that the admininstration required “disclaimers.” And I am not sure that the prevailing view is that it acceptable from the perspective of Jewish law to advertise one’s own violation of Jewish law, so that could for a basis for tamping down the “pride” label.
Being gay doesn’t violate any Jewish law. Knowing that someone is gay doesn’t tell you anything about what, if anything, he does in private.
I find the Jewish laws governing permissible speech a real challenge to comply with. But it would not occur to me to organize a Lashon Hara club
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lashon_hara at an orthodox institution and demand recognition from the school.
Bad speech is an activity, not an identity. You could start a club for all people who are inclined to say things they shouldn’t, but that would be the same as “all people”, so you could omit the rest of the descriptor. Just call it the “normal people” club.
You could also organize a study group to read Shemiras Haloshon together, and the university would be happy to give you all the support you wanted.
Off topic: am I allowed to agree 100% with David Hogg here? Listen to it, just one minute long. https://x.com/VigilantFox/status/1921037767414350195
People seem to be deliberately forgetting or ignoring what this case is all about. They sued under NYC’s human rights law, which explicitly exempts religious organizations. Were YU a religious organization the case wouldn’t begin. But the problem is that for over 50 years YU has loudly denied that it is a religious organization. It reorganized itself and rewrote its founding documents specifically to establish its non-religious nature. As the court correctly found, this precludes it from now claiming shelter in the religious exemption that the law provides.
All the club is demanding is to be treated exactly the same as all other student clubs. No student club is permitted to promote events or activities that violate Jewish law, and these students agree that their club should not do that either. But they refuse to be subjected to humiliating rules specifically made for them, that treat them as automatically suspect and inherently inferior to all other clubs, and their members as inferior to all other students. And the city’s law backs them up.
It is likely the rule was made for them because they are the only club whose purpose and operation is relevant to the rule. If they find it degrading they shouldn’t have agreed to it as part of the settlement.
They didn’t agree to be treated differently from other clubs. The whole point of the agreement is that the university agreed to treat them the same as all other clubs. It then turned around and violated that agreement.
“No student club is permitted to promote events or activities that violate Jewish law,”
By promoting same sex sex, that is exactly what they are doing. They committed to refocus their mission on living within Jewish law, but they are now objecting to that commitment.
The club is not promoting sex of any kind, just as other clubs do not promote sex.
Really? A club defined by the sexual preferences of members that does not promote sex? If you really believe that then you are way further down the rabbit hole than we thought. Of course if you can show us a club with membership defined by heterosexual preferences that does not promote sex, or one composed of Furrys devoted to pseudo bestiality that does not promote sex, then I’ll happily concede the point.