Jewfem Blog

When a 95-year old woman tells you to get your tush down to a government office to fill out some papers, you just do it. That was my first encounter with Leah Ain Globe, z"l, a feisty, active, doesn't-hear-no bulldozer sort of old lady. At 95, she directed a bunch of us "girls" to open up the amuta Mavoi Satum, lit. "The Dead End," an organization trying to free agunot, women chained in marriage. Mavoi Satum, which has since helped hundreds of women achieve freedom, was her vision and her legacy, and she constantly inspired us with her unfailing commitment and unparalleled perseverance.

In anticipation of Wednesday evening's Leah Globe Memorial evening, I have translated into English an interview I had the privilege of conducting with Prof Naomi Cohen, an astounding religious feminist scholar, who is one of this year's honorees. It is posted on the Kolech English website, and you can read it here. 

It gives me great pleasure to announce the opening of an English blog page on the Kolech website, "Jewish Woman's Voice". Kolech, lit, "Her Voice", is the leading Orthodox feminist organization in Israel, founded ten years ago by Dr. Hana Kehat. The work of Kolech is extraordinary, and the Kolech website has been rated by Ynet as one of the top portals in Israel. Now, I'm thrilled to report that the conversation about religion and gender in Israel is going to be continuing in English, thus bringing Kolech into the worldwide conversation about gender and Jewish life. The blog will cover issues such as education, society, halakha, marriage,divorce, lifecyle, tanach, text, and religious life. So from now on, if you're looking for my essays on Orthodoxy and feminism, you will find them at the new Kolech English blog page, "Jewish Woman's Voice". Please visit the blog, comment, send in links, and of course if you have an essay to contribute, by all means send it in. We will always be looking for original content that pertains to gender in Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Israel. And if you have fresh ideas for how to use this blog -- such as creating lists of feminist resources, useful links or interesting articles (all on the todo list), please send them in. I will continue to announce on these pageswhenever a new article is posted there, so you can stay tuned here and still get all the info. See you around the blogosphere!

All it takes is one bully to make a room unsafe for everyone. Teachers know this, kids undoubtedly know this, and parents of kids who have been bullied know this. It's a fact that perhaps defies logic -- after all, in this world of multi-culturalism, pluralism, postmodernism and every other expression of interpersonal laissez-faire, we would assume that one person's disposition makes little difference. We supposedly don't care. Right? Wrong. All the live-and-let-live stuff gets destroyed when there is one bully in the room. One. That's all it takes to destroy a community. All it takes is one person in a group, workplace, or synagogue, to undermine other people's emotional and physical safety. One bully, or what psychologists scientifically refer to as a "bad apple", and a lot of hard work can be ruined.

Here's a fantastic anecdote from my friend Reuven Lerner about how kids do prayer:I used to take my daughter, Atara, to children's services every Shabbat, which I led. But somewhere around her fifth birthday, she lost all interest. But recently, she came back from camp and said she loved the prayers there. I asked her, 'What can I do to make the children's services on Shabbat better?' She laughed at me and said, 'Abba, you can't! You don't know how to play guitar!' It reminds me of the famous story from Camp Ramah lore: A child comes home from camp, and on the first Saturday night at home, the parents say, 'Let's say havdallah.' The kids replies, 'You can't - we don't have a lake!'

This is printed in today's Jerusalem Post. There is a running joke among parents this time of year: The kids' vacation is over on August 31, and the parents' starts on September 1. Well, not for me. I really do not see the start of school as a vacation. For me,as a parent, school is a lot of hard work. It's the morning routine, the afternoon routine, the homework, the meetings, the endless notes, the forms to sign, the messages from teachers, the arrangements, the special events and extra instructions, the packing lunches and constantly buying rolls and on and on and on. I always manage to miss something, despite all my efforts, and someone always ends up upset. Honestly, I hate school.

It doesn’t happen all that often, but today I received a phone call that filled me with hope and optimism. My friend Sara, who had been an agunah for over six years, whose story is saturated with some of the most painful and trying aspects of human manipulation and abuse, called to tell me she has remarried and has a baby. I must admit, there were times when I never thought that she would reach this point. “You see,” she said, “miracles do happen.” Read more

It doesn’t happen all that often, but today I received a phone call that filled me with hope and optimism. My friend Sara, who had been an agunah for over six years, whose story is saturated with some of the most painful and trying aspects of human manipulation and abuse, called to tell me she has remarried and has a baby. I must admit, there were times when I never thought she would reach this point. “You see,” she said, “miracles do happen.” Sara was married for 12 years to a man who is publicly revered in the religious community of Jerusalem. He can be charming, charismatic and eloquent. Yet these same qualities are the very ones that turn him into a monster behind closed doors. Sara was trapped for years in his patterns of emotional abuse, and it took her that long to understand what was happening to her. The now-ex-husband would systematically put her down, insult her, and demean her. He would toss the dinner she made into the rubbish, he would tell her how terrible she looked, he would isolate her from friends and family and would make her feel like she was worthless. He was also a control freak, so that even when it seemed like he was being “nice,” he was putting her down. “Don’t you worry about the shopping, the banking, the driving,” he would say, “I’ll take care of it all.” He demonstrated distrust, controlled her money, her time and her friends, and robbed her of her sense of self-worth. “It doesn’t matter how intelligent or educated you are,” Sara says. “It happens gradually and slyly. You internalize it all and before you know it you have no self-confidence left and you self-esteem is at an all time low.” What changed the trajectory of her life, significantly, was the help of a friend. “One day, my friend said to me, ‘You know, Sara, this is abuse,’” Sara recalled. “That changed my life. That’s when I started to see, and started the process of getting out.” Sara is not alone. She is in fact just one of tens of thousands of abused women in Israel and around the world who are stuck trying to figure their way out of abusive relationships. According to Haifa University, one in seven Israeli women are abused. In the United States, it’s one in six. In Australia, studies show that one out of every four women will be in an abusive relationship at some point in her life. Abuse takes many forms – physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, financial. Sara said she “only” suffered physical attacks twice in her marriage. But the emotional and verbal abuse takes its own toll, and is in some ways harder to heal, as well as to recognize. The Crisis Center for Religious Women has a checklist of twenty-three signs of an abusive partner. Jewish Women International has a very useful chart of signs of emotional abuse. Mavoi Satum, the organization helping agunot that Sara cites...

I would like to take a moment and question the obvious: why is 8:01 the hour of crime? Why is it that what is acceptable at 7:59 becomes the cause of all kinds of punishments and consequences a mere two minutes later?

Eran Rosenberg had a great career. A project manager at a large human resources firm, he traveled the world, met interesting people and lived a grandiose life. Among other things, he went to Uganda to recruit combat pilots for the Ugandan army, spent a week in Iceland working with air traffic controllers, and was responsible for flight attendant recruitment at El Al. But with all that, he was not happy. “I asked myself, what are the things that are fun for you in life?” Read more