One of the peculiarities of Jewish jurisprudence is that only a man can request a divorce.
This has led to Agunot (literally, "Chained women) who cannot remarry, as a result of their husband's spite.
Because of the biblical definition of adultery, a married woman having relations with someone not her husband, this means that her children with a future partner are mamzerim (bastards, but with far greater religious consequences), while his are not.
This has been recognized as unfair and unjust by many scholars, and many of the sages thought that it was appropriate to physically beat a man in order to make him grant a get.
Women activists in the Brooklyn Orthodox Jewish community are now threatening a sex strike over the indifference shown by male members of the community over the plight of the agunot.
About f%$#ing time:
It’s a movement to stop the schtup.
In a rare display of public protest, women in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community are railing against a traditional practice that makes it hard for married women to get a divorce– by going on a sex strike.
The collective action was sparked by the plight of Malky Berkowitz, an Orthodox woman in upstate New York whose husband has for years reportedly refused to grant her the religious document that would allow her to officially separate from him and remarry, according to organizer and influencer Adina Sash.
“It's been four years and they've been trying to help free Malky from the clutches of a very toxic relationship that has multiple levels of coercive control,” Sash said in an interview. And they approached me and they said, ‘We need you to come out loudly and we need you to raise awareness,’”
Sash is a self-proclaimed Orthodox feminist and activist based in Brooklyn who often speaks out on her Instagram account, Flatbushgirl. She said this is not the first time the community has rallied around an “agunah” — a woman “chained to a dead marriage” — with a public pressure campaign.
………
Sash says Orthodox women can protest sex just by refusing to go to the mikvah – a religious bathhouse where women cleanse themselves after menstruation. If they don’t go, their husbands cannot be intimate with them.
She said this particular form of protest is a very effective way to get attention from men in the community, who primarily control the religious court that issues gets.
“They're saying, ‘You want me as your wife to partake in our physical intimacy union, then what are you doing to protect me from being the next agunah?” Sash said. “What are you doing to protect my sister?’”
While Sash noted that she can’t exactly “go into people’s bedrooms” to verify how many women have joined in the strike, she estimates that hundreds of women from Brooklyn to Kiryas Joel in Orange County are participating based on messages she’s received.
“I was speaking to a mikvah attendant who told me that she was actually shocked that she is seeing a decline in the number of women who are coming to her local mikvah, which is in a prominent Brooklyn neighborhood,” Sash said. “And I've been hearing from a lot of men who are very irritated about the fact that their wives are taking their sexual agency into their own hands.”
………
Rabbi Hershel Schachter, a prominent community leader affiliated with Yeshiva University, even issued a statement on the subject, where he condoned “demonstrations in front of the home or place of employment” to pressure an unwilling husband to give his wife a get, but stopped short of approving the sex strike.
“To suggest such a tactic on a mass scale involving women and men who have no social relationship with the recalcitrant husband, is a recipe for disaster,” Schachter wrote in a letter viewed by Gothamist.
The statement by Schachter, about public shaming of husbands who refuse to grant a get is in fact the normative position of Judaism, with a lot of discussion about this in various tractates:
If the law requires a man to divorce his wife but he doesn’t want to, the court can have him beaten until he agrees to do so, at which point they have a get written. Such a get is valid in all times and places (as opposed to requiring a Sanhedrin). Similarly, if non-Jews beat the recalcitrant husband, telling him to yield to the court order, and the court has the non-Jews pressure him until he agrees, the divorce is valid. However, if non-Jews of their own volition compel a man to divorce his wife, the get is invalid. The difference in these cases is that in the former scenario, it is the law that requires the man to divorce his wife. One might think that even the former get should be void because the man is being coerced. However, the idea of being coerced only applies when a person is being forced to do something that the Torah doesn’t require of him, such as if one is beaten until he agreed to sell something, or to give it away (i.e., such a transfer of ownership is not binding). However, if a man’s yeitzer hara (evil inclination) keeps him from performing a mitzvah or drives him to violate a prohibition, and he was beaten until he did the thing that was required of him, or he ceased the prohibited activity, this is not considered being coerced. Rather, it was the person himself who was causing this scenario. Accordingly, this man who refuses to divorce his wife ultimately wants to be a Jew in good standing, performing mitzvos and avoiding sin. He is only refusing because he is being compelled by his yeitzer hara. Therefore, when he is beaten until his urge to disobey diminishes and he agrees to give the get, he is considered to have done so willingly. Let’s say, however, that the law doesn’t require a man to divorce his wife but he is nevertheless compelled to do so by the court or by lay people. In such a case, the get is invalid but since he was compelled by Jews, he should complete the divorce. If non-Jews compel a man to divorce his wife when not required by law, divorce is not effected. Even if he told the non-Jews that he agreed and instructed Jews to write and sign a get, the get is meaningless because the law didn’t require divorce of him and he was coerced by non-Jews.
Jewish marital law, except for the issues of divorce, are actually fairly forward looking, despite having been formalized over 1,000 years ago.
For example, the obligation of sex in marriage is from the husband to the wife, and if a woman refuses to have sex and husband coerces here, it is viewed unequivocally as rape, something that occurred in US civil law around 1975.
Even more surprising, women in Kiryas Joel, arguably the most orthodox community in the United states has seen protests on behalf of Mrs. Berkowitz.
Here is hoping that the local rabbinates become more responsive to this issue.
0 comments :
Post a Comment