Published: 17 February 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Prominent Orthodox Israeli journalist Yair Sherki came out this week in a bombshell social media post.
A well-known Orthodox journalist on Israel’s most-watched news network came out as gay this week, prompting widespread conversation in Israel.
Yair Sherki grew up in a national religious community in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Moshe neighbourhood where his father, Oury, is a community rabbi and a lecturer at the prominent Machon Meir yeshiva. He served in the military as a religious affairs reporter for Army Radio and was hired to fill the same role for Channel 12 shortly after his discharge in 2014.
In a social media post, which received thousands of shares and supportive comments, he wrote: “I write these words with trembling. How many times have I postponed this post. For tomorrow. For next week, for after the chagim. For after the next birthday, of this year, of last year and of the one before that. Maybe it's been ten years since I've been writing and erasing.
“Because of the sorrow of my good and very beloved father and mother, and because of the sorrow of the place where I grew up and which I love. But now I am 30-years-old. And I write not because I have the strength to write, but because I have no strength to remain silent. And for my child, who has not yet to come into the world.
“I love men. I love men and Kadosh Baruch Hu (God). And this is neither contradictory nor new. I am the same one exactly as I was, only now not only I know, but so do you.
“It was important for me to say this here in a place that is in the public domain even though it is a private matter. Simply to live neither in the shadows nor in hiding. And to one day build a family and a home and live truly as myself.
“I live the conflict between this sexual preference and faith all the time. There are those who have solved the conflict for themselves by saying that there is no God, others explain that there is no homosexuality. I know both exist. And I try to reconcile this contradiction within myself in all kinds of ways. These are things that remain between a person and God.”
Sherki emphasised that his sexuality did not alter his attachment to the Haredi community.
“My community is still the religious community. This is my tribe, this is my family and friends. These are my beliefs. They did not change, but they did take shape over the years alongside the doubt.”
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Orthodox Israeli reporter comes out of the closet (Jerusalem Post)
Sherki, 30, comes from a Religious Zionist background. His father is a well-known religious leader, Rabbi Oury Amos Sherki.
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Photo: Yair Sherki (Facebook)
