Yeshiva University recognizes LGBTQ+ student group in landmark settlement
The settlement with the YU Pride Alliance — now called ‘Hareni’ under the settlement — ends litigation that lasted nearly four years
Signage on the campus of Yeshiva University in New York City, August 30, 2022 (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
By Louis Keene March 21, 2025
Yeshiva University agreed to recognize an LGBTQ+ student group Thursday, settling a lawsuit that once seemed destined for the Supreme Court and delivering a landmark victory to queer Jews at the school and in the Orthodox community beyond.
The agreement with the YU Pride Alliance established a new club for LGBTQ+ called “Hareni” — a Hebrew word that roughly translates to “I hereby” — which will be eligible for school funding and otherwise treated as any other official student organization at the flagship Orthodox university, according to a joint statement from the parties.
While the exact terms of the settlement were not made public, an attorney representing the Pride Alliance said the agreement allows the group to use the term “LGBTQ” in promotional material and appoint its own advisor.
“Establishing an official club by queer students for queer students really sends a message of inclusion,” said Schneur Friedman, a YU senior who is co-president of the Pride Alliance, which had been operating unofficially for well over a decade. “It shows it’s not something at the margins of the YU community — it’s at the heart of YU. Hopefully that will translate to queer people being fully included within the heart of Jewish Orthodoxy.”
Since four current and former YU students sued the university for discrimination in April 2021, the case has served as a reminder of the tenuous position occupied by queer Jews in Orthodoxy, whose tenets forbid same-sex intimacy. YU maintained that the First Amendment protected its right to deny the group recognition, and the Becket Fund, a group that specializes in religious freedom cases, took up the school’s cause.
After a state judge sided with the Pride Alliance in 2022, the school made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to hear the case. That appeal was denied with the court directing the school to exhaust its appeals in New York courts before seeking federal intervention. But Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the dissent, said that were the case did eventually reach the Supreme Court, the school would likely win.
Rather than recognize the club at that point, YU announced it was suspending all student clubs effective immediately. The Pride Alliance quickly volunteered to a temporary stay on the ruling to allow other activities to resume. In October 2022, the school created a sanctioned LGBTQ+ group called Kol Yisrael Arevim that would be under the supervision of Rabbi Hershel Schachter, its foremost rabbinical authority who had signed a treatise in 2010 calling homosexuality “aberrant behavior.”
The outcry grew within the YU community as the case attracted national media attention.
More than 1,600 current and former students and faculty signed a letter to the university demanding it recognize the club. Several high-ranking faculty members also wrote a separate letter to YU students that appeared in the student newspaper, warning them that the school’s actions reflected poorly on them as students and prospective job applicants. And a few YU-ordained rabbis wrote to their congregations condemning the school’s course of action.
Since college campuses erupted in anti-Israel protests following the October 7 attacks, YU has positioned itself as a refuge for Zionist college students, and its overtures to non-Orthodox Jewish students long predates that. It has also taken a more visible position on the national stage, with school president Rabbi Ari Berman delivering the invocation at President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
But recent incidents at the school showed that inclusivity lagged for queer students — which make up nearly one in five undergraduates in America according to a 2020 study. The YU Commentator, an independent student publication, reported earlier this month that a student was assaulted while tabling for the YU Pride Alliance by a peer who also berated him with epithets. The school did not condemn the incident, according to Friedman, the Pride Alliance president.
In the glow of the settlement, however, Friedman acknowledged that conditions had improved overall for queer students at YU in recent years. People are more openly willing to discuss queer issues,” he said. “It’s more comfortable as a queer student.”
The broader Orthodox community has also taken steps toward greater inclusion in recent years. In 2023, a rabbi serving in the clergy of an Orthodox congregation in Oakland — a YU alumnus named Shua Brick — came out as gay in the Forward, making him the first out member of the Rabbinical Council of America, the umbrella organization for Orthodox rabbis.
And the organization Eshel, which supports queer Orthodox Jews, says there are hundreds of Orthodox rabbis across the country whose congregation allows openly gay Orthodox members to join and participate in services.
Hareni is the first word of a phrase that is recited prior to certain prayers, according to the group’s founders, which translates to “I hereby undertake to fulfill the positive commandment to love thy neighbor as thyself.”
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