From a weekly column by Elliot Resnick (as sent to me). I assume permission to reprint.
On Thursday, Yeshiva University folded. It will now officially permit an LGBT club operate on campus. I am not surprised — nor should anyone else be who has followed developments at YU over the years.
After all:
* From 2008-2021, YU employed a transgender professor.
* It currently employs a Bible(!) professor who has publicly advocated that we ignore Judaism’s stance on homosexual “marriage.”
* Its academic departments have zero rabbinic oversight. That includes the art department — and the Bible department.
* In 2022, its social work graduate school held a pro-abortion event and an event featuring a female Reform rabbi.
* Also in 2022, YU President Ari Berman wrote in an e-mail to YU alumni, “[O]ur commitment to and love for our LGBTQ students are unshakable.”
In short, either YU lacks principles or, to borrow a line from President Theodore Roosevelt, it has the backbone of a chocolate eclair. Most likely, a combination of both.
But YU is not entirely spineless. When it comes to the “far right,” it suddenly forgets its fealty to tolerance and the free exchange of ideas. For years now, it has refused to allow me to sell any books by Rabbi Meir Kahane, even religious ones, at its annual Seforim Sale. You would think that October 7 might have softened its stance. But you would be wrong. YU is so mad that I protested its decision to ban Rabbi Kahane’s books from the Seforim Sale in 2016 (the same year it sold books by Mordechai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism) that it won’t permit me to sell any books at the sale anymore.
If YU is going to ban books from the sale, you would think it would at least explain and permit an appeal of its decision. And surely, you would think, its decision-making process would be transparent since we all know that transparency is a hallmark of liberal institutions. But you would be wrong again. YU bans books without explanation, and the names of the people doing the banning are shrouded in mystery.
I have appealed YU’s decision in the most respectful of tones many times. I have gotten nowhere. And when I posted flyers on campus last year publicizing the university’s decision, YU reacted by… banning me from campus.
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I once liked Yeshiva University. I was frustrated by some of the close-mindedness I had experienced growing up in black-hat communities and found YU to be a breath of fresh air when I arrived on campus in 2002. But it turns out that YU is just as close-minded as the black-hat world. The only difference is that the black-hat world is intolerant of ideas it regards as kefirah. YU is intolerant of ideas that violate the post-modern liberal ethos.
So Kahane? Absolutely forbidden. An LGBT club? Come right on in.
