Jeanette Friedman

The Ressurection of the Agunah Girls: Techiyas HaMeysim for the Sake of Tikkun

Dec 31

Jeanette Friedmanagunot/chained women 1 Comment

Techiyas HaMeysim: The Agunah Girls resurrected for the sake of Tikkun
Posted by Zuta on December 31, 2006 * Comments(1) Edit
To my friends over the years who have watched my battles with the Jewish community:
Some of you know that I have always been an activist because I was a former agunah, who paid a very high price, spiritually, emotionally, financially, and physically, for my freedom–and because I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors. These experiences so destroyed me, I had to rebuild my life and my ways so that I could make it up to my own children and become a decent human being.
The Agunah Girls mailbox on AOL was begun eleven years ago, when the Borough Park rabbi, Auschwitz survivor Menashe HaKaton Klein, aka the Ungvar Rebbe (Elie Wiesel’s revered rabbi), married off an 11-year-old girl via proxy so that she could be a pawn in an agunah case out of Montreal (Goldstein). Klein, who is regarded as “THE posek” for many of the chassidishe rebbes around the world, also started an organization called Shalom Bayis that declared a 10-year moratorium on gets, and established a concubine hotline in NY. This was reported to District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and the organization was subsequently either closed or forced underground.
When “Our Dirty Little Secret is No More” was written for Shma, the journal of the Center for Learning and Leadership, and was followed by the activism of JOFA, EDAH, and Jewish Women’s International focus on Domestic Violence, and the agunah organizations were established etc. Holocaust Education and getting justice (and money) for impoverished Holocaust survivors around the world was back on the front burner.
That was foolish. It was a waste of time. Head and heart and soul suffered from those battles, and in the interim, the people the Agunah Girls was supposed to help are still suffering, now worse than ever. The problem has increased with the exploding population and the distortion of halacha to benefit the powerful. The use of extortion to get gets and the abuse of children, allowed to run unchecked by the law of the land, under false claims of separation of church and state are weapons of destruction. When a haredi leader says “Sweep it under the rug,” all Jews, everywhere, need to start taking a good hard look at their “roots,” at the community that says that they are the only authentic Judaism.
While I may still care about Holocaust issues, my work for the last 30 years is but a mere drop of water flying in the wind–overwhelmed by the exploiters of the Holocaust–from American Jews who use it to raise funds that have nothing to do with survivors, Jewish education or anything related to the Holocaust, to the political exploitation of the Holocaust by the same people didn’t want the crazy survivors coming to Israel (and expropriated their property and never gave it back), to the Netueri Karta, who spit on Judaism and Jews and the Satmar and the Haredim who blame Jews (enlightened and Zionistic) for the Holocaust–instead of the evil perpetrators like Hitler and the rest of the antisemites who suffered from a chillul Hashem, or absence of Godliness…the sinas chinom thus bred in our people since the Holocaust is now in full swing, and playing out in our own families.
I personally believe God doesn’t take vicious murderers and idiots as partners to punish anyone…which is a whole other view of the Jewish religion than the view that was literally pounded into my head as a kid, and is also the view of those who play around with halacha to threaten women, men and children’s lives.
Innocents are being “punished” for the sins of not wanting to shave their heads, not knowing their place in chumash, turning on a radio, eating too much food, talking to a girl or boy, not standing at attention during kiddush–you name it…in 1/3 of Jewish families, lives are at risk, across the board, in every denomination, in some more than others. But in denominations and sects where there is no public information available, where communicating with the outside world is considered a crime punishable by a beating or worse, thousands of innocents, children, women and men, are trapped, and no one outside cares–and each victim believes that he or she is alone in the world, that no one has ever gone through what they went through.
It is heart-breaking.
This epiphany brought me back to my roots as a battered child, wife and agunah.
That women and children in the community I come from still have no right to report violent and felonious behavior to those who would protect them (911-even with all its problems), that they have no informed consent about how they have no protection and take their lives and the lives of their future children in their hands when they step underneath the chuppah, seems to be against everything God, the Torah and Judaism stand for.
Some of you may dismiss these things as irrelevant, because you never heard of it, they are in a minority, they are stupid for staying in, etc. etc. etc.– forgetting, conveniently that “For evil to succeed, good people need do nothing.” A poet during the Holocaust wrote: The town is burning and you stand there with idle hands.” “Der Shtetl Brent, und mir shteyen mit leymeneh hent.” As Hannah Arendt noted: Evil is banal.
Apathy and self-delusion about Judaism is worse. The Halacha says Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By Your Brother’s (Sister’s?) Blood.
The increasing incidences of horror stories prove that these issues are truly life-threatening. Agunot, wife battering, sexual child abuse, no mandatory reporting in Jewish schools, threats against women, men and children who are in danger of their very lives for standing up to that corrupt attitude, these things can no longer remain unchallenged.
Pikuach Nefesh trumps the rules– other than idolatry, incest and murder–yet the well-known people the community turns to for solutions to these problems, particularly in the agunah situation, say that a business contract, a bill of sale (namely the Ketubah), trumps Pikuach nefesh…though the Torah, the Mishna, both Talmuds, the Rambam and the Brisker Rov all say otherwise.
Let’s see if it’s really true that the bill of sale known as a Ketubah is more important than the lives or souls of men, women and children at risk.
Join this conversation and let’s see if we can do some tikkun.