A ‘Huge Step’ for Yeshiva University’s LGBTQ+ Students

Yeshiva University’s protracted legal battle with its LGBTQ+ club has come to an end. The Modern Orthodox Jewish institution will recognize the group under a new name and guidelines.

The university previously refused to formally approve the student club on religious grounds, sparking a discrimination lawsuit by students four years ago. The club, formerly known as the YU Pride Alliance, and the university have been mired in a contentious legal fight ever since. In the meantime, the student group has operated unofficially, without university funding or access to campus facilities.

But in a joint statement on Thursday, the university and the club announced they’d reached a settlement “and the litigation is ending.”

“Current students will be implementing a club, to be known as Hareni, that will seek to support LGBTQ students and their allies and will operate in accordance with the approved guidelines of Yeshiva University’s senior rabbis,” the statement read. “The club will be run like other clubs on campus, all in the spirit of a collaborative and mutually supportive campus culture.”

The name “Hareni” comes from a Hebrew phrase traditionally recited before prayers, which means roughly, “I hereby take upon myself to fulfill the positive commandment, ‘love your fellow as yourself,’” referencing a quote from Leviticus.

LGBTQ+ students and alumni are celebrating the settlement as a hard-won victory.

“This agreement was a huge step in terms of normalizing being queer at YU,” said Schneur Friedman, co-president of Hareni and a senior at Yeshiva. He told Inside Higher Ed he didn’t have an LGBTQ+ support network in high school, so the community offered by the YU Pride Alliance, now Hareni, has been a “novelty” for him. He’s hopeful its official recognition will allow the club to reach more students in need of support.

Haley Goldberg, co-president of Hareni and a junior at Stern College for Women, Yeshiva’s women’s campus, believes the settlement will help queer students feel more at home on campus going forward.

“Now that we have this space within Yeshiva University, I’m hoping that other people will be able to feel safe and feel pride for themselves within the community,” Goldberg said.

A Lengthy Legal Fight

The birth of Hareni concludes a thorny legal saga.

The YU Pride Alliance sued the university in April 2021, arguing that Yeshiva was required to recognize the club under New York City human rights law, which bars discrimination based on sexual orientation. The university pushed back, asserting that as a religious institution, it was exempt from such laws.

After a New York trial court judge ruled in favor of the YU Pride Alliance the following year, the university appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency stay so it wouldn’t have to recognize the club during the legal proceedings. But the Supreme Court said in September 2022 that it wouldn’t consider the case until the university exhausted its options in the state courts. In the meantime, Yeshiva would have to recognize the LGBTQ+ club, the justices concluded.

More twists and turns followed. Shortly after the Supreme Court decision, Yeshiva administrators emailed students to say they were going to “hold off on” all club activity during the High Holiday season while the university made efforts to “follow the roadmap provided by the US Supreme Court to protect YU’s religious freedom.” Then, in a move students met with mixed reactions, the university announced it would create its own LGBTQ+ club, called Kol Yisrael Areivim, a Hebrew phrase meaning “all Jews are responsible for one another.” Students in the YU Pride Alliance were surprised by the news; they were not involved in the creation of the new club and said it had no members and held no events.

Hanan Eisenman, a spokesperson for Yeshiva University, said in a statement that Hareni is no different from the club proposed earlier by administrators.

“Our students’ well-being is always our primary concern,” Eisenman said. “We are pleased that our current undergraduate students will be leading the club announced today which is the same club approved by our senior rabbis two and a half years ago.”

In a university FAQ from 2022, officials described the proposed Kol Yisrael Areivim club as one that “respects the unique and irreplaceable value of each individual, assists our LGBTQ students in their journey in living an authentic Torah life, and is built upon a foundation of uncompromising Halacha [Jewish law].” They also emphasized that the club couldn’t be called the “Pride Alliance” because that name reflects a “recognized movement in colleges throughout the country that not only fights anti-LGBTQ discrimination, a cause which we fully support, but also promotes activities that conflict with Torah laws and values.”

But students and their advocates say the settlement is a win far beyond what the university first offered, because Hareni will be a student-led group rather than an initiative by the administration.

“Now it’s going to be run by us,” Goldberg said, with events driven by “what the students at YU want from a club, how we can build a community together, as opposed to how the administration thinks that we should build a community.”

The club still has to operate within “the approved guidelines of Yeshiva University’s senior rabbis,” according to the joint statement, though the statement didn’t specify what those guidelines are. (Yeshiva didn’t respond to questions from Inside Higher Ed seeking clarification.)

The specifics aren’t “entirely clear” to students, either, Friedman said, but as far as he knows, it’s “the same guidelines that apply to every other student club.”

What the Settlement Means

Up until now, the YU Pride Alliance has organized events and stayed connected through a WhatsApp group that’s grown to 189 alumni and students. Since the unofficial club couldn’t use campus facilities, members held gatherings of 20 to 40 people in students’ cramped New York apartments. The group also conducted its own fundraising.

All that is about to change.

Hareni can now receive funds from the university, like any other student group. It can participate in student fairs, hold events on campus and advertise on university online platforms, email Listservs and bulletin boards. The club has also been promised that it can use the term “LGBTQ+” in its materials.

Friedman said in the past it was hard to reach some students who might have benefited from the club’s resources.

Some students didn’t “necessarily feel comfortable” joining the WhatsApp chat, because it felt like “making a statement, and you would kind of be opening yourself up to social criticism since you were being part of this kind of marginal student group,” he said.

But he’s hopeful some of those students will consider getting involved now that the group has the administration’s blessing.

“Now it’s an official club like any other, and hopefully that will make it more comfortable for people to participate,” he said, “especially those people who could benefit the most … who don’t necessarily have a social support network.”

Rachael Fried, executive director of Jewish Queer Youth, a support organization, said LGBTQ+ young people in Orthodox communities have been closely following the lawsuit, and that it has taken a toll on their mental health. Seeing the university sanction the club at long last “can be healing for people who have been really disheartened by this whole process.”

Recognition of the club also feels critical to her at a time when prospective Orthodox Jewish students, including queer students, may be increasingly drawn to YU. Enrollment spiked at Yeshiva this past academic year after protests over the Israel-Hamas war roiled campuses last year.

“Being a Jewish student on a secular campus has become increasingly fraught,” she said. “It’s super important for there to be a space at Jewish schools and in Jewish communities for queer Jewish students to live as their whole selves.”

A ‘Historic Moment’

Students’ advocates also believe the settlement could have implications beyond the university.

Fried said Yeshiva’s official recognition of Hareni could have important ripple effects on Modern Orthodox communities more broadly. She believes some Orthodox high schools that have “been hesitant or maybe afraid” to allow queer student groups could follow Yeshiva’s lead.

“This is a big deal in the Modern Orthodox world, in general,” Fried said. “YU is a flagship institution in Orthodoxy. And this sets an example for all the other institutions that look to YU that it is possible to be committed to Jewish law and Torah and to affirm LGBTQ identities … It’s really quite a historic moment for queer Jews and for the Orthodox community.”

Erin Green, executive director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, a group that advocates for equality for LGBTQ+ students at religiously affiliated institutions, said she hopes LGBTQ+ student groups at other religious colleges can achieve similar gains.

By forming these groups, students are “trying to say, ‘Hey, I’m a human being with a beating heart, and I’m queer, that’s a part of who I am, and I’m also a person of faith,’” she said. “Everybody deserves safe and equitable learning environments, regardless of who they are and how they identify.”