Rabbis revolt over LGBTQ+ club, exposing fight over queer acceptance at Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University’s approval of a campus LGBTQ+ club in a landmark settlement seemed to herald a new era of acceptance for queer students at the flagship Orthodox Jewish university. But amid uproar in the wider Orthodox community, the school’s rabbinic leaders have tried to make clear in the days since that nothing could be further from the truth.
In a series of public statements since the March 21 settlement, senior rabbis at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, YU’s rabbinical school, have repeatedly asserted that the only LGBTQ+ club they would tolerate at the school — and the one they say was approved — is one that encourages celibacy.
Were the school forced to recognize a club that espoused pride in queer identity, one RIETS rosh yeshiva (head rabbi) indicated he would quit.
“It would be akin to the Yeshiva being asked to teach the New Testament,” said Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz, RIETS’ director of ordination, in a March 28 episode of Halacha Headlines, a podcast about Orthodox community issues. “You would sooner shut down the Yeshiva than teach the New Testament.”
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