Published April 15, 2012, in the Star-Ledger
By Fraidy Reiss
Where I come from, girls are married off as teenagers to men they barely know and are expected to spend their lives caring for their husband and children. They are required to cover their hair and nearly every inch of their skin, and to remain behind a curtain at parties and religious events.
Where I come from, if a woman wants to feel her hair blow in the wind or wear jeans or attend college, the courts have the authority to take her children away from her.
Where I come from, you might be surprised to learn, is the United States. Specifically, New York and then New Jersey, in the Orthodox Jewish community.
Recently, two women have brought national attention to the fact that Orthodox Jewish women who leave that insular community risk losing custody of their children: Deborah Feldman of New York, whose memoir about her escape from the Satmar Hasidic sect hit the New York Times best-seller list, and Perry Reich of New Jersey, whose custody battle — which includes accusations from her husband that she sometimes wears pants — earned her an appearance last month on the “Dr. Phil” television show.
My story is similar to theirs. When I was 19, my family arranged for me to marry a man who turned out to be violent. With no education and no job, and a family that refused to help me, I was stuck. By age 20, I was a trapped, abused, stay-at-home mother.
Ten years later, still trapped and unhappy, I finally took what became one of my first steps away from Orthodox Judaism: I stopped wearing a head covering.
The consequences were swift and severe. My family cut off contact with me; one of my five siblings kept in touch long enough to inform me the others were contemplating sitting shiva for me, or mourning as if I had died.
Also, perhaps most shockingly, several rabbis informed me I should say goodbye to my children because I was going to lose custody of them during my looming divorce
proceeding.
They were not bluffing. Numerous family attorneys unaffiliated with any religion advised me to stop publicly flouting Orthodox laws and customs.
As the attorneys noted, and as illustrated by Feldman’s and Reich’s experiences, judges look at religion as one factor in a custody dispute and generally view stability to be in children’s best interests. They have been known to award custody to the parent who will continue to raise the children in the same religion as before the family breakup.
Where I come from, that means here in the United States, in 2012, women fear, legitimately, that they might lose their children if they lose their religion.
Feldman and I each managed to settle and avoid divorce trials, and each of us retained custody of our children. Others have not been as lucky. Reich, for example, remains mired in her custody battle.
Fear in the religious community therefore persists. I recently started a nonprofit organization, Unchained At Last, to help women leave arranged marriages, and the most common inquiry I receive is from Orthodox Jewish women who want to leave the religion and are willing to accept ostracism from their family and friends, but are terrified that a judge might remove their children.
For many, their situation seems especially hopeless because they, like Reich, felt pressured to allow an Orthodox Jewish court, a bet din, arbitrate their divorce. The bet dins’ binding decisions and agreements routinely include a provision that the children will be raised within Orthodox Judaism. Secular courts generally enforce those decisions and agreements, even if a mother later realizes she does not want to raise her children in a religion where men bless God every morning for not making them a non-Jew, a slave or a woman.
Where I come from — the United States — the First Amendment is supposed to empower people to choose whether and how to practice religion, without interference from secular courts. What went wrong?
Fraidy Reiss is the founder/executive director of Unchained At Last.
Published April 15, 2012, in the Star-Ledger
By Elana Knopp
It was the holiday of Simchat Torah, and as I sat behind the thick, heavy curtain on the women’s side of the synagogue, a friend turned to tell me that her 17-year-old daughter was engaged. As I watched women and girls trying to catch a glimpse of the dancing men through a crack in the partition, I commented on the young age of the bride.
“That’s the way we do it,” my friend said, smiling. “Marry them off when they’re young and dumb.” She then launched into the usual: The couple would grow up together. They would get to know each other. They would eventually love each other.
Right.
I know all about young and dumb. At 19, I was set up with a boy and we were engaged six dates later, the usual time frame in the ultra-orthodox community. Girls are sent off into marriages without even the most rudimentary knowledge of their own bodies, reproduction or sex.
Girls are taught to marry, have children and serve their husbands, and the indoctrination starts early. College and career are frowned upon — for obvious reasons. College is a way out. Career is a way out. And no one wants us getting out.
Those of us who do wake up are simultaneously horrified and liberated; while we cannot believe we could be so duped, we are incredibly grateful for realizing it.
I was typical in my former community. I was married at 19 and had my first baby at 20. By 29, I had six children, one miscarriage, three sets of dishes and no college degree. It took me years to get up the courage to file for divorce. I was so afraid for so many reasons. There were the usual concerns, such as how I would manage to support my kids, put air in my tires and mow my lawn.
But it was the fear unique to ultra-orthodox women who leave the faith that haunted me: I was afraid of losing my children.
In Lakewood, as in any ultra-orthodox community, there is a rabbinic hierarchy, a hierarchy committed to a radical religious doctrine that controls every aspect of life — from politics and marriage to female modesty, birth control and sex. It is this same hierarchy that condones the kidnapping of children from women who have left the fold.
It took me years to get up the courage to take off my head covering and even longer to leave my house in a pair of pants. And, when I did, my closest friends and neighbors turned against me. I was systematically shut out, ostracized and vilified. In addition, because of my decision to live a truthful, genuine life, my community set out on a witch hunt, spreading rumors, fabricating lies and portraying me as something resembling a she-devil.
There is no place for anyone who deviates from what the ultra-orthodox community believes to be the norm, the correct and the righteous. There is no room if you are irreligious, intermarried, gay, transsexual. There is no room for questions, doubts, opinions or alternatives. There is no room to question authority. And I questioned authority.
As I continued my journey toward freedom, my best friend told me that I confused her — her way of saying that my newfound liberation forced her to question her fundamentalist lifestyle and that the repercussions of addressing those questions would leave her unable to stay in the life she was living. She chose not to question by ending our 18-year friendship.
I think often of a friend who loved to write, who once dreamed of becoming a published author. Her husband disapproved, however, forbidding her to write and deeming it immodest. She called me, frustrated, but determined to obey her husband. “Don’t listen to him,” I told her. “Write!” It was then that she called me her “evil inclination.” Apparently, I reminded her that she had a soul.
I am proud to act as evil inclination. After all, I have some souls to save.
Elana Knopp teaches English and Language Arts in Plainfield and Edison. She is a member of Garden State Equality and director of Unchained At Last.
Unchained At Last is featured in a Star-Ledger package April 15, 2012, including an op-ed by Unchained At Last founder/executive director about child-custody fears preventing women from leaving the Orthodox-Jewish community.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2012/04/among_nj_orthodox_jewish_women.html
Features Deborah Feldman, author of Unorthodox.
Unchained At Last now is recognized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, as of February 21, 2012 – so people can get a tax deduction when they donate to help women leave arranged marriages.
This op-ed, written by Unchained At Last’s executive director, was published August 3, 2011, in The Jewish Daily Forward:
By Fraidy Reiss
A Lakewood, N.J., rabbi and his wife are facing life in prison. They were brought up on kidnapping charges July 18 for their alleged roles in the abduction and beating of an Israeli man who refused to give his wife a Jewish divorce, otherwise known as a get.
Shocking, right? Not really. Under Jewish law, only a husband can grant a get. A wife has no such right.
Men in the Orthodox Jewish community have used this power against their wives for generations: You want a get? First give me full custody of the children. Absolve me of all alimony and child-support obligation. Have your parents write me a check for half a million dollars.
If a woman does not receive a get, she becomes an agunah, or a chained woman. Even if she receives her civil divorce, she cannot move on with her life. She is unmarriageable, undateable. Forever single in a community that abhors singlehood.
When I was a child, I saw my mother endure the loneliness and shame of the agunah’s life after she left my abusive father. I heard her sobbing late at night, when she thought my siblings and I were asleep.
Jewish law does not permit forcing a man to give his wife a get. But it does, according to many rabbis, leave room for beating the stuffing out of a man until he wants to give his wife a divorce.
The alleged actions of the Lakewood rabbi and his wife, ostensibly to help an agunah in Israel, were not shocking to people in the Orthodox community. Such beatings have become almost a standard last resort for the growing number of desperate “chained” women.
This would seem like a hopeless situation, with power firmly on the man’s side and no options available to a woman who wants to emerge from a broken marriage on her terms.
Well, let me tell you, then, how I handled my recent divorce.
I did not ask for a get. I never mentioned it. And when my ex-husband brought it up, I did something most Orthodox Jewish women would never even consider: I refused to accept one.
While Jewish law provides no recourse for a woman whose husband denies her a get, it does provide recourse for a man whose wife refuses to accept one. The man can get a hetter meah rabbanim, or the permission of 100 rabbis to remarry anyway.
Getting the permission of 100 rabbis usually is not a man’s first choice. It is time-consuming, obviously, and it can be expensive, because not all the rabbis will sign on the dotted line for free.
And so I became the first woman I know to sit on the receiving end of get-related begging. I had rabbis calling me on my cell phone, pleading with me to accept a get.
You want me to accept one? I gleefully told the rabbis what they should do: Give me $25 million. Cash. And then I’ll consider it.
The desperate phone calls from confused rabbis have stopped, by the way, so I assume that my ex managed to find his 100 rabbis.
I know my decision to refuse a get was easier than it would be for other women, because I have left the Orthodox community and what I perceived as its unfair treatment of women. The men I date have never even heard of a get, nor could care less whether I got one.
Still, when I read about the Lakewood rabbi and his wife, I could not help thinking that the solution to the agunah problem is for more women, even those who remain committed to Orthodox Judaism, to stop begging for a get. The solution is them to refuse to accept one.
If women stopped begging for a get, they would take its power away from men. They would force the men who wanted to remarry to seek permission from 100 rabbis — a victory not only because of its symbolism, but also because, legally, a man can obtain the 100 rabbis’ permission only after he deposits with the court a get that his ex-wife can retrieve if she chooses.
No check for half a million dollars. No need to have anyone beaten up. No need to suffer the humiliation of powerlessness. Just a get.
Of course, some men will choose not to go the way of 100 rabbis. Others might manipulate the law, as has been done before, to get the permission of 100 rabbis without leaving a get that their ex-wife can retrieve.
Still, women would benefit from refusing a get. If enough women refused, they would force the all-male Orthodox rabbinical leadership to change the system and make it fairer to women, or risk seeing the system become irrelevant.
Fraidy Reiss is founding a not-for-profit organization, Unchained at Last, to help women leave arranged marriages. For more information, visit www.unchainedatlast.org.
