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RSSWhy I Didn’t Go to JOFA This Year
Mar 17
agunot/chained women No Comments
I happen to be the case behind NY’s Silver Get Law, and I can tell you stories, but you don’t want to hear them.
I didn’t go to the JOFA Conference this year, because, for me, it’s become a waste of time. Blu Greenberg’s statement, “if there is a halakhic will there is a halakhic way” is true. Unfortunately, the halakha is there, but there is no halakhic will. Solutions do exist, but rabbis have other fish to fry and they simply wore JOFA out. What are people supposed to think when the Israeli rabbinate shuts down an agunah conference where Orthodox rabbis were going to grapple with the issue?
Delude yourself all you want, but women still ARE second class citizens. The good guys have given up and settled for the pre-nup, which is hardly useful in cases of abuse. The best rabbis on this issue are Saul Berman in New York and Baruch Taub in Canada. (The late Rabbi Emmanuel Rackman was a saint if ever there was one—and he was excoriated by his peers for freeing women by using annulments.)
There is simmering rage among the women, a rage that is ignored. There are ugly cases that haven’t been resolved. And no one empowers the voices of the enraged women. JOFA certainly hasn’t done that. It seems that Women for Justice in Israel can cut your heart out by telling true stories on youtube, but men don’t take them seriously. And then what do you do with the anger those films generate?
Education is the key. Girls need to learn the truth before matchmakers come calling. They need to know they take their lives in their hands under the chuppah. They need to know what to do if and when they are trapped in emotionally abusive relationships and domestic violence. Halakha says if he abuses you, leave and do not go back. If you do, it means you are ok with the abuse–but abuse is never ok! Women need to understand that abuse and the agunah issue go hand in hand. And so do rabbis.
More: Mikvah ladies should check for bruises and report, not to the rabbi, but to a liaison to the local cops and social workers. The notion of separation of church and state has no place here, and mandatory reporting should be the rule in every single Jewish school–an abused child is a symptom of a serious disease!. Leaders and teachers have to talk to women during their Shabbat lessons (shiurim). Fliers in mikvot have to be available to let absued women know their options, and to teach them about the Silver Get Law and how to use the courts. The rabbis are not pleased with those ideas.
Another interesting tactic would be to try a test case under the RICO statutes at the Department of Justice A recalcitrant or vengeful husband demands everything from a wife for a get, up to and including her entire extended family’s assets and custody. Without the get, which belongs to her, a woman cannot get on with her life. She is a victim of criminal extortion and collusion, because the rabbis can grant him permission to remarry (heter meah rabbanim) after money changes hands, while she never can marry again. (In a case in Queens, the wife offered everything, but the husband is holding out until she can no longer bear children. She’s still trapped. Her husband is from a big shot Orthodox Zionist family and no one takes him on.)
Perhaps its time for a masked rally demanding Marriage Equality for everyone, not just gays! Handouts and eblasts should be ready, and women should call for a mikvah strike. Keep it going until the men realize they are hurting their mothers, daughters, sisters, nieces and aunts. Of course, women will have to be protected from their abusers when this is going on, which is probably why JOFA wouldn’t do it. No one said it was easy, but no one even talks out loud about such tactics either.
It seems no matter what, women can’t win because whatever method you try, the guys say, “It’s a forced get.” Unless, of course, you beat the bejesus out of the husband and break his knees until he wants to give it. That, by the way, halakhically, is NOT a forced get. But how many people do you know who want to risk getting busted for felony assault?
With the Silver Get Law, Reb Moishe Feinstein, z”l chose the civil, “goyish” court of law to act as the arbiter… unless you hand over the get there’s no custody, no community property. Who dares think they are smarter halakhists than he? Even the Satmar Rebbe used him as a posek (decider of Jewish law). And what about the law of the land being the law; Dina Di Malchutei Dina? When did that no longer matter?
It’s time to stop being polite and make some noise. As Rabbi Diana Gerson, Director of the Domestic Violence Initiative of the New York Board of Rabbis would say, “Dayenu! Enough!”
And I say, “Let’s get crackin’!”
