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<\/a><\/p>\nA group from a delegation organized by Hebro and Birthright Israel pose after clearing out an apartment damaged by an Iranian ballistic missile in Ramat Aviv, Israel, in August 2025. (Photo by Gali Gordon)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Organized by the Jewish Federations of North America, the trip included 15 first-time visitors to Israel and came amid a broader sense of alienation many had been feeling in their LGBTQ communities back home. Tessler, originally from Potomac, Maryland but living on Manhattan\u2019s Upper West Side for the past 15 years, compared being in Israel to Fire Island \u201cas a place where gay people can breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel, he said, offered the same attraction, but doubly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael also feels like a place where I can breathe, but as a Jew,\u201d he said. \u201cSeeing Israeli flags everywhere and Jewish stars and knowing the people around me don\u2019t hate me.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the initial strikes, flights were suspended. In the ensuing days, most of the delegation fled the country by other means \u2014 including by boat or through Jordan \u2014 where they were told to hide their Jewish symbols. For those who had come seeking the safety of being visibly Jewish, the reversal was hard to ignore.<\/p>\n
The trip was intended to be bookended by the Jerusalem Pride parade at the beginning and Tel Aviv\u2019s storied counterpart on June 13, but with the war breaking out the night before, that parade was called off.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nNate Looney, JFNA’s director of community safety and belonging, organized an LGBTQ mission to Israel in nine weeks in early 2025. (Deborah Danan)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Still, the group pressed on with their itinerary. Ultimately, several members took advantage of flight interruptions to extend their stay, while others returned this month on a second major delegation of LGBTQ Jews, drawn by the massive reorientation in their identities induced by the fallout from Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of our folks identified as gay first, and then as American or Jewish, but now the Jewish part of our identity has kind of moved to the top, because we\u2019ve been forced to,\u201d said Jayson Littman, who helms Hebro, a group for gay Jews in New York that worked with Birthright Israel on the second trip. He said interviews with trip applicants revealed that many described themselves as \u201ccloseted again\u201d as Jews in their gay communities.<\/p>\n
Nate Looney, JFNA\u2019s director of community safety and belonging who organized the June mission in just nine weeks, said interest had surged after a year marked by antisemitic hostility at Pride events across the United States. Looney, who lives in Washington, D.C., and identifies as trans, recalled a glass bottle being thrown at his group during last year\u2019s Pride parade and described growing efforts by organizers in multiple cities to exclude Jewish or pro-Israel contingents entirely.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought there would be violence coming from within, directed at me only for being a Jew. You could show up and be fully queer, but just don\u2019t show up and be fully Jewish,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cJews were being forced back into the closet.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nParticipants in the Internationalist Queer Pride demonstration hold banners reading “No Pride in Israel Apartheid” before the Berlin Pride parade in 2024.(Carsten Koall\/picture alliance via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In the months since, Pride events around the world have been marred by clashes over Israel, including when organizers have sought to exclude Jewish LGBTQ groups. In Ottawa, Canada, the parade was canceled after pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the route. Montreal\u2019s parade banned two Jewish groups from participating before reinstating them under pressure. Jewish groups pulled out of the events in San Diego, citing safety concerns and an anti-Israel headlining act.<\/p>\n
In Rome, the Jewish LGBTQ group Keshet Europe hired private security in anticipation of possible disruptions, after skipping the parade last year entirely out of safety concerns. The parade was a distressing experience for those who participated, Ruben Piperno, one of the organizers, told JTA at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were subjected to insults, jeers, and serious accusations, with some individuals following us throughout the entire parade, challenging our queer identity, and accusing us of \u2018pinkwashing\u2019 on behalf of the Israeli government,\u201d said Piperno, who is 31 and lives in Turin.<\/p>\n
On the JFNA trip, many of the delegates said the rupture with their communities had been sudden and isolating. Eshel, an Orthodox LGBTQ nonprofit, and A Wider Bridge, a pro-Israel LGBTQ group, surveyed hundreds of LGBTQ Jews. Among those who \u201cstrongly present as Jewish\u201d \u2014 with visible Jewish clothing or symbols, 67% reported experiencing antisemitism since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. A majority of respondents also said they were withdrawing from queer spaces or concealing their Jewish identity in order to remain in them.<\/p>\n
Ashley Kravetsky, a nurse and drag performer from Edmonton, Canada, said the backlash she encountered pushed her out of a community she had long seen as a refuge.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nJeremy Nagel and Roni Tessler recreated a photo taken just before the Israel-Iran war started two weeks later, after the concert they had been attended resumed, June 2025 in Tel Aviv. (Courtesy Tessler)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI was very surprised that people were not able to recognize that what they were saying was harmful to me as a Jewish person,\u201d she said. \u201cI was seeing people post about inclusion and equity and how we have to love and hold space for marginalized communities and in the same breath saying \u2018free Palestine\u2019 and \u2018Jews are colonizers\u2019 and \u2018no Zionists allowed,\u2019 without even conversations allowed to take place. I can count on one hand how many people were willing to have a conversation with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was no longer safe for me to be in the queer community \u2014 and that included threats of physical violence,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
For Orthodox LGBTQ Jews, there were even fewer options. Eshel co-founder and director Miryam Kabakov, who joined the delegation, said her community was being forced out of one space without being able to enter another.<\/p>\n
\u201cA very large percentage are leaving LGBT spaces to be in Jewish spaces. But in our case, they\u2019re also Orthodox, and that\u2019s not an alternative \u2014 they can\u2019t really go to Orthodox spaces. So where do they go?\u201d Her organization has since received funding from UJA to begin building what she called a \u201cthird space.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Bobby Apperson, who relocated from San Francisco to New York in search of a larger LGBTQ Jewish community, the trip to Israel was his first. Before leaving, he had watched a social space he had frequented in San Francisco come under repeated attack. Manny\u2019s, a Mission District caf\u00e9 owned by civic advocate and queer Zionist Manny Yekutiel, had its windows smashed and graffiti scrawled across the walls. Messages read: \u201cF* Manny,\u201d \u201cZionist F*s Gentrifyers,\u201d [sic] and \u201cThe only good settler is a dead 1.\u201d (Editor’s note: Language has been altered from the original.<\/em>)<\/p>\n \u201cIt was all very Kristallnacht,\u201d Apperson said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just queers but the progressive movement overall. They think they\u2019re fighting for Palestinians, when actually they\u2019re doing the complete opposite \u2014 embracing intifada and global jihad and undermining safety, including for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipal building is lit up for Pride month activities, June 28, 2020 (Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Israel, he said, the tone was different. \u201cNot one person we met was calling for violence of any kind against Palestinians. Here the queer community is fighting for peace \u2014 for the entire queer community, including Palestinians. It\u2019s not splintered.\u201d<\/p>\n Looney said the mission intentionally foregrounded complexity rather than presenting Israel as a sanitized success story, and some of the group\u2019s encounters challenged assumptions. A panel of LGBTQ IDF reservists included two trans soldiers and offered what one participant described as \u201cmore ideological diversity than I ever heard in the States.\u201d One trans reservist, Ma\u2019ayan Gross \u2014 who is currently serving with her original all-male combat unit in Gaza \u2014 told the group she supported continued military operations there, even at the risk of killing Israeli hostages \u2014 a position held by only a small minority of Israelis. Others still expressed unease or disapproval of the war.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve heard queer people here saying things that sound like what the far-left anti-Zionist movement says in the U.S., like wondering if the military has gone too far,\u201d Apperson said.<\/p>\n In Jerusalem, the group attended the Pride parade, which commemorated 10 years since the murder of 16-year-old marcher Shira Banki. Apperson described the heavy security presence \u2014 ostensibly to prevent anti-LGBTQ violence \u2014 as jarring.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was to protect Jews from other Jews. Even in Jerusalem, you have to choose between your queerness and your Judaism,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s an inversion. In America, queer people are looking at all Jews as suspicious \u2014 it\u2019s classic antisemitism,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd here, queer people are being looked at with suspicion by, you could say, the most Zionist people.\u201d<\/p>\n For Chaim Levin, a New Yorker and anti\u2013conversion therapy advocate who once studied in a Jerusalem yeshiva, the sight of communist flags at the march \u2014 likely from supporters of the far-left Israeli Communist Maki Party \u2014 was a reminder of how disorienting Israel can be. His grandparents fled Soviet Russia to Israel in 1948, he said, and seeing that symbol in the streets of Jerusalem was hard to stomach.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really shocking,\u201d he said. \u201cBut also, I take solace in the fact that there\u2019s free speech and they can do that here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n