BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

JUDAISM & ABUSE: EXPECTING BETTER This was written a few years back. Despite strides in educating leading rabbinic authorities it seems that nothing much has changed… not yet. Some are truly working on the problem and I beg them to keep working on it. Sometimes preserving a marriage AT ALL COSTS or allowing a manipulative man to make a woman an AGUNAH and then looking the other way - is NOT the way to go. Allowing the verbal & emotional abuse of children in the name of Torah and keeping it hush-hush for appearances is enabling the abuse! Loshen Hara can be a mitzvah if it stops an abuser from taking advantage of his family, his friends and the world at large. If You Beat Him He Will Not Die by Richard Silverstein A personal and theological meditation on child abuse As spiritual communities, it is enormously important that we provide grief work as part of the process of healing [from the effects of abuse]. At the same time, we have to take that lesson of choosing to...

I know that some of my Orthodox friends are going to call or write me now and tell me I don't understand. Maybe I don't. But I do know what abuse is. So was the husband mentioned below abusing his wife because of her infertility? Abuse and marital problems are big issues when there's infertility. Infertility can cause severe depression, acting out and other serious problems in the woman. So because she wasn't breeding it was o.k. to treat her poorly? And not giving a woman a Get. Making an Agunah out of a woman. Talk about misogyny and control. These are things I don't think I want to understand. By ANDREA PEYSER AND you thought you had trouble committing. Thirty years after divorce became all the rage in America, the pastime is catching on like wildfire in the kid-rich, ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where getting a "get" is the new black. So says psychologist Daniel Schonbuch, who thinks divorces (known in the community as "gets") are th...

THE AGUNAH AND A SUMMARY OF POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Breitowitz The problem of the agunah -- the "chained" or "anchored" wife -- is a serious one, though it is not as prevalent as many Jewish feminists maintain. The term "agunah" appears in the Talmud primarily in connection with a husband who disappeared or was missing in action. While such agunot (plural of agunah) certainly exist in this day and age as well (consider the Holocaust or the Israeli soldiers who are MIA's), the primary use of the term today refers to a woman who cannot obtain a religious divorce (a "get") even after her marriage has been civilly terminated and hence is prohibited from marrying others. Husbands sometimes withhold such a divorce out of malice or spite or an attempt to extort money or concessions in the areas of child support, custody, visitation, or marital property. Whatever the reason, the withholding of a "get" can be a source of great ...

By Wency Leung An ex-husband is challenging a Canadian Supreme Court judgment that has been heralded as a major boost in the global cause for Jewish women's stronger religious divorce rights. The woman in the case doesn't think he has a chance. After nearly two decades of legal battles over her right to a religious divorce, Stephanie Bruker, 59, thought she'd finally settled a case that has been heralded as a breakthrough for other observant Jewish women who have become "agunah," or "chained," and unable to remarry after seeking a divorce. In December, in a landmark ruling for the intersection of civil and religious law, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered Bruker's ex-husband to pay $47,500 in damages for the years he denied giving her a religious divorce, called a "get," after swearing to do so as part of a civil divorce agreement. But in a last-ditch effort, Bruker's ex-husband is asking the Supreme Court to rehear the case, according...

"GRIEVOUS WRONG" AMENDED AGAINST AGUNOT Knesset Committee: Division of property before divorce by Neta Sela Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approves bill preventing husbands from extorting wives seeking divorce. MK Melchior: There are no halachic issues here Could it be the end of divorce extortion? The Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approved this week an amendment to Israeli law that would prevent ‘divorce-refusing’ husbands from financially extorting their wives. According to the Property Relations Law (1973) currently in effect in Israel, property division rulings can only take place once a divorce has officially been granted, unless otherwise decreed by the Family Court. This law has thus given ‘divorce- refusing’ husbands the opportunity to extort their wives financially, forcing them to cave in on property matters in return for an official divorce (which, by Jewish law, necessitates the husband’s consent). The new bill, proposed by Knesset Mem...

WOMEN REFUSE? Why do I have a feeling this is a skewed poll. Only 69 aguhnot? What about the ones who are silenced? Hushed up, shamed or verbally, emotionally, financially and or physical threatened? Sorry - my b.s. radar is going off on this one. Poll: More women refuse divorce than men Rabbinical Court combats claims that thousands of Jewish women are refused divorce; poll reveals there are only 69 agunot currently living in Israel Neta Sela More Jewish women refuse to give divorce then men, a poll released by the rabbinical courts' management titled: "Why is the couple not yet divorced?" revealed on Tuesday. According to the poll, there are 190 Jewish men refused divorce in Israel, which make up 20 percent of the open divorce files; as opposed to 180 women who are refused divorce, and constitute 19 percent of the open files. There are currently 942 open divorce files in Israel's rabbinical courts, and the survey was conducted among a sample of 346 of these files, ...

'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 tim...

Women protest plan to expand power of rabbinical courts During a recent trip to one of the conferences held across the U.S. and Canada recently on tackling domestic violence, I had an interesting dialogue with some Jewish women about the problem of Agunah - or "a chained woman." It came down to some feeling that the male-dominated religious leaders in Judaism were furthering the abuse by invalidating the women asking to leave the marriage. Almost all said rabbis they knew would minimize the man's abuse or cheating and tell the women they had to stay & "work it out." Of course it only got worse. The answer to this problem lies in our leadership taking a hard, long and honest look at the needs of these women. Keeping the family together is good - but not when one member puts their needs above the family or has a personality disorder that is making that impossible. Indeed, it hurts the family more when a civil break would help heal wounds and restore sanit...