Standing By Your Sex-Hobbyist -Man; Because It's Your Fault Too?

'WHIPS', 'CHAINS' and AGUNOT

Josh over at ParshaBlog has a great post today about agunahs; commenting on an article in today's Wall Street Journal. I carried the article in full over on my abuse victims & survivors blog. Sultan Knish gave a wonderful comment and I hope you all take a minute to go check it out as well as read the whole article. I am grateful to him for his post.

While I am not technically an agunah there are aspects of my agreement with my childrens' father that keep me "chained" and which he exploits and 'beats me over the head' (figuratively) with. I endure for the well-being of my children. I consider my comfort of little consequence when it comes to my children. Besides I am the adult. But, I do have empathy for these women. Making an Orthodox woman an agunah is, in my opinion, a blatantly disrespectful form of misogyny and yes, ABUSE.

AGUNAH INTERNATIONAL has this to say about the agunah problem:

It is time that rabbis stopped endangering Orthodox Jewish women and children and degrading Jewish marriage by maintaining that halachah decrees that women must remain married to such unbalanced and destructive men.

Halachah is just and compassionate. For centuries, beginning with the Talmud and continuing with the Geonim, Maimonides, the Or Zarua, the Rashba, Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, rabbis have found halachic means including annulment to free women from abusive marriages.

There is a failure of leadership by the Orthodox rabbinate with regard to this issue. The lay people of the community must take a stand in support of Rabbi Rackman and his colleagues and thus infuse their local rabbis with the courage to do the same.

Some of these women are mothers... and most of all they are HUMAN BEINGS.

Read some of the cases HERE O.R.A. and the INTERNATIONAL JEWISH WOMEN'S HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH are other organizations working to end this problem.

Please do what you can to support this issue, whether its writing letters or making this problem known in your community. This is a form of imprisonment and abuse.

STOP IT.

Period.


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