A tale of two marches: LGBTQ+ Jews face cheers and heckles at NYC Pride

JTA – Dillon Perez was both heckled and embraced for being Jewish as he waved a large rainbow flag with a Star of David on it at New York City’s Pride March on Sunday. 

Marching earlier in the day with the Jew York Pride contingent, Perez was greeted with cheers and cries of “Jewish pride” from spectators. But hours later, after joining a second Jewish contingent hosted by the liberal pro-Israel group Zioness, Perez endured booing and spectators shouting “free Palestine, fuck Israel.” 

“There’s a sensitivity over this word ‘Zionist’,” Perez, 30, said. “The way that it sparked something in the crowd was definitely different between the two, that’s just a fact.” 

While both groups waved Pride flags featuring the Star of David and aimed to celebrate the intersection of their identities, the split-screen experience reflected the complicated reality many LGBTQ+ Jews say they face at Pride events post-7 October, and in the LGBTQ+ community at large. 

Sheri Krell, 39, marched with the Zioness contingent, which carried a large banner featuring the name and slogan “unabashedly progressive, unapologetically Zionist”. She said that despite the heckles the group faced, the experience underscored the importance of showing up with outwardly Jewish symbols at Pride. 

“Yes, there was verbal harassment, but on the other hand, I think it was important to still be there and still take up space and to still represent queer Jews in the Pride parade,” Krell said. “Because as much hate as we received, we also received a lot of positivity.” 

Alex Kaufman, 33, a partner of Zioness who organised their contingent on Sunday, said that things had come to a “boiling point” in queer communities, with spaces becoming “largely inhospitable to Jews, often who are Zionist or who maintain some semblance of ties to Israel”. 

“The reason we came together today was to offer Jewish queer people a safe space to celebrate Pride, where they could bring their full identities in safely and be who they are without any reservation,” Kaufman said. 

But while the Zioness group was met with hostility on Sunday afternoon, the Jew York Pride group had experienced a very different reaction. 

A marcher in the Jew York Pride contingent, Rivka Schafer, had braced herself for the antisemitic heckling she had endured in past years at NYC Pride, but the boos never came. Instead, as Schafer and dozens of LGBTQ+ Jews made their way down the parade route under the blazing sun, they were met with cheers from spectators as they handed out hundreds of Pride flags featuring a Star of David. 

“Things definitely have cooled down a lot in the past few years,” Schafer, 21, said. “I think the Pride two years ago was pretty scary. I think this year, I was not afraid.” 

An estimated 75 000 marchers, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and two million spectators packed the streets for the 56th annual NYC Pride March, which was themed “For all of us”. 

But for many Jewish participants, the festivities unfolded against a backdrop of growing unease. 

“It’s been a lot harder to be Jewish in queer spaces, and often hard to be queer in Jewish spaces as well,” Schafer said. “And so I think that we’ve seen record numbers of people here needing to find community.” 

Last year, Ottawa’s Pride Parade was cancelled after pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the route, and in 2024, Jewish lesbians in New York began hosting their own Pride celebration, “Shalom, dykes”, after organisers of the Dyke March hosted their parade under the theme “Dykes against genocide”. 

On Saturday, Jewish California Senator Scott Wiener said in a post on X that he had been harassed “verbally and physically” while attending a trans march in San Francisco earlier in the week. 

Nate Shalev, the co-founder of the Shalom, Dykes community group, said that LGBTQ+ Jews had begun to “understand where they’re being excluded and where it’s okay to go”. 

“I think the distinction is when we’re talking about a connection to Israel, and that we’re talking about being inclusive of Zionists,” Shalev said. “When we’re talking about that side of things, there can become this dichotomy of what kind of Jews are welcome.” 

For many attendees on Sunday, the Jew York Pride contingent offered a rare opportunity to celebrate both their LGBTQ+ and Jewish identities without feeling forced to choose between them. 

Alec Burroughs, a 32-year-old Modern Orthodox paradegoer, said it was increasingly challenging to be deeply steeped in both a Jewish and an LGBTQ+ identity. 

“Marching with this group is a beautiful way of bringing those two things together in a way that feels open and accepting,” Burroughs said. 

For the Jew York Pride contingent, the day began at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, New York City’s pioneering LGBTQ+-oriented synagogue, where paradegoers and supporters schmoozed over rainbow bagels and rugelach. 

Paradegoers were warned of potential “hecklers” during the festivities, but the Jew York Pride contingent encountered little hostility along the route. 

Carrying signs reading “We’re here, queer, and Jewish!” and “Frum and proud” as well as Israeli and Jewish pride flags, the Jew York Pride contingent was flanked by four security guards trained in de-escalating potential confrontations with spectators. 

“It feels like such a bracha [blessing] to me that I’m able to even have a flag like this, to be able to wave it around, to be in a space where I can say, ‘Yes, I’m Jewish and I’m queer and I’m here and I’m not going to disappear’,” Schafer, who carried both Israeli and Jewish pride flags, said. 

Dancing and cheering behind a car adorned with Jewish pride flags and blaring music, the Jew York Pride marchers this year were split into two groups, a youth group hosted by the national LGBTQ+ Jewish advocacy group Keshet and Jewish Queer Youth, and an adult group led by Shalom, Dykes and Eshel, an organisation for LGBTQ+ Jews from traditional and Orthodox communities. 

For Rachael Fried, the executive director of Jewish Queer Youth, a nonprofit that supports young people from Orthodox, Chassidic, and Sephardic/Mizrahi homes, Sunday’s march was a reminder that some Jews can still have a place at Pride. 

“It might be easy to look at the broader scope of what’s going on in the country and the world, and assume that queer Jews are not welcome,” Fried said. “The concerns are real, and we should take them seriously, and also not let the fear of that get in the way of our Jewish queer joy.” 

Jaimie Krass, the president and chief executive of Keshet, said that rising antisemitism and anti-LGBTQ+ hate across the country has only reinforced the importance of showing up at Pride. 

“We need to model that we do belong, that we understand that belonging is sometimes something that we have to fight for, and that we’re not alone in that fight,” Krass said.