Jewish day school asks teacher to leave after she was outed as trans

In the days leading up to the start of the school year earlier this month, Talia Avrahami wrote a whiteboard message to her students at Brooklyn’s Magen David Yeshivah, where she would begin a new job as an eighth-grade social studies teacher: “Welcome to the classroom of Mrs. Avrahami.”

Just one week later, Avrahami was out of the job after a firestorm erupted about the fact that she is transgender.

The firestorm included harassment in school, at home and online, according to people close to Avrahami and to evidence circulating in Orthodox media, where the situation has been widely discussed, often in terms that are starkly disparaging of transgender people. Someone erased the “s” on her classroom whiteboard message to students, changing it to read “Mr. Avrahami.”

The situation at Magen David Yeshivah, an Orthodox school serving mostly children from the Syrian Jewish community, comes amid intense debate over the acceptance of LGBTQ individuals in Orthodoxy. Avrahami is one of more than 1,200 students and graduates of Yeshiva University to sign a petition this week supporting students there who want to form an LGBTQ club but are being blocked by the flagship Modern Orthodox institution, which says it cannot endorse a group that it sees as at odds with Orthodox values.

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SHANDA!