Donation, which will allow group to work in new areas and hold more events, comes amid both a surge in interest and pushback
Ely Winkler, director of advancement at Eshel, Mendel Weintraub, a program director, and Sophia Nachmanoff, campus fellowship coordinator, attend the 2026 New York City Pride parade on June 28, 2026.
Once a strictly taboo topic, the inclusion of LGBTQ Jews in the Orthodox world has become a far more commonplace concept in the 16 years since Miryam Kabakov co-founded Eshel. But there is still more work to be done, Kabakov, the group’s executive director, told eJewishPhilanthropy.
A new $1 million grant from the Aviv Foundation, shared exclusively with eJP on Monday, will allow Eshel to expand its work supporting traditionally observant Jewish communities in cultivating welcoming spaces for LGBTQ Jews and their families.
“I feel it,” she told eJewishPhilanthropy. “There’s been a real turning point within Orthodox spaces that now this conversation is happening more and more. It’s no longer a taboo conversation, per se. We’ve seeded a lot of opportunities for people to actually talk about this without any stigma.”
Yet alongside this growing acceptance, there remain some in the Orthodox community who are pushing back on this trend, Kabakov said. She added that these tensions come at a time when many queer Jews feel rejected by non-Jewish LGBTQ spaces — many of which have adopted staunch anti-Israel positions in response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Eshel serves LGBTQ individuals, family members and allies in the United States and Canada and is the only English-speaking support system in Israel for parents of LGBTQ people within Orthodoxy. From the organization’s inception, Kabakov knew “we couldn’t just confront the issue head-on,” she said. “We would knock on doors of Orthodox synagogues, and they wouldn’t open. Now, this past Pride month, we’ve sponsored at least 10 Pride Shabbats in Orthodox spaces. That’s an amazing thing that we’ve been able to catalyze and help Orthodox communities celebrate their LGBTQ members.”
As more institutions and individuals turn to Eshel for help, communities grow more welcoming, therefore creating increased interest in the organization. “The growth has just been leading to more and more growth,” Kabakov said.
Read the rest of the article at https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/aviv-foundation-grants-1-million-to-expand-operations-of-orthodox-lgbtq-inclusion-group-eshel/