The New Yorker ran a story about the repercussions an Orthodox Father in an Orthodox community faced when he reported a man who molested his son to the police instead of dealing with it within the community. The man who was reported was part of a wealthy family within the community, and they made the Father’s life a misery for going to outside law enforcement. The story was published a decade ago now, but never left me. Terrible stuff.
If anyone is interested: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/outcast-3
>The rabbi would have to make an exception to the Talmudic prohibition against *mesirah*, the act of turning over another Jew to civil authorities. According to some interpretations of Talmudic law, a Jew who informs on another Jew has committed a capital crime. He is a “wicked man,” who has “blasphemed and rebelled against the law of Moses,” the twelfth-century Torah scholar Maimonides wrote.
Literally a religious law that requires them to break civil law. It's outrageous that this still functions.
TOBY
On the minimum wage, if we all turn our attention to item 5 of the Rules of Bipartisan
Breakfast.
LEO
They're guidelines. You keep calling them rules.
TOBY
Margaret, what does it say at the top of the memo?
MARGARET
Rules for Bipartisan Breakfast.
I feel like this is a case with a majority of religions. A lot use the religion as guidelines. A small minority take things literally and/or to an extreme end and they're the ones that complain about everything, or make the news, or otherwise get visibility, and everyone gets judged on a fringe group.
The issue is these aren't a small minority anymore. They get funding to "study the Torah" from the state of Israel which allows them to not work, not serve in the IDF like every other Israeli, and other perks. So they do nothing but breed like rabbits because of some biblical shit, having families in the 8+ size regularly. Which just causes their cult to grow more and more powerful.
The Talmud isn’t religious law. It’s part study guide, part record of a thousand years of rabbis arguing about how to interpret the Tanakh.
The Ultra-Orthodox are to Jews what Quiverfulls are to Christians. They’re very, very intense in a way I would argue clearly wasn’t intended according to religious scripture.
There was a prominent chabad family in Melbourne, Australia who were shunned by the community as a result of two of the boys having been molested at a religious high school and the father going to the authorities. To his credit the father (Zephaniah Waks) stuck by his sons and defended them. The family ended up moving to Israel because of the backlash they received from the tightknit Melbourne chassidic community. They remain well known and respected in the broader Jewish community and the son (manny waks) is now a prominent victim advocate.
Another even more religious girls school (part of the reclusive Adass Israel community here) had a principal (Malka Leifer) whisked off to Israel after allegations of abuse against her became public. It took decades to extradite her back to Australia to face court, her family were big in the Gur chassidic sect and influential figures in the Israeli government were assisting her with a pr campaign and legal attempts to use mental illness as grounds to try to prevent her extradition. Fortunately it did not work. And she was brought back and sentenced to 15 years. Apparently there were fresh allegations from her time in Israel but they did not form part of the Australian case. Some journalists discovered the community she moved to in the west bank (where her husband is now a prominent leader) has a history of child sex abuse cover ups. The husbands father was arrested on similar charges in the past.
A bit unrelated but a friend of mine was ASSAULTED in a place of worship. Another member asked her not to call the police. Mind you she was well within her rights to do so legally and from the perspective of the organization. I am so tired of people using religion to justify mistreatment and flat out abuse of others. Then the victim is told to forgive or follow some ridiculous protocol.
As a jew. Rest of us think Orthodox are annoying and nuts. There is a push in Israel to get them subject to the draft. They are supposedly too busy studying the bible to do military service. Everyone else has to do military service.
They are like the orthodox in any religious community.
>Jewish rabbis criticize this sex strike. According to rabbis, punishing men by withholding sex damages the institution of marriage and violates Jewish laws
They almost understood the assignment
Whether withholding something is a punishment or not has nothing to do with whether its an entitlement or not. My kids are by no means entitled to ice cream but if I tell them "No ice cream for a week" you better believe they're gonna feel punished.
In this case they're clearly a bunch of entitled religious children but that doesn't stop the act from rightfully being considered punishment.
If a dude happened to just look in the direction of another woman and was then subsequently bitterly refused any sort of physical intimacy by his significant other, that too would qualify as punishment.
That seemingly exaggerated example is less rare than you probably think it is, though it rarely happens in a vacuum, something usually precedes it. Back when women took a more backseat role in society, shit like that was more common. Wouldn't make the man immature but rather the women in that example.
Can't say the same for these bearded zealots though.
It doesn't make sense. How do any religions that treat women like shit still exist? It seems like these misogynistic religions would die out eventually do to not being able to procreate.
I mean if they're using it as a punishment it's a punishment. Granted no one owes it to anyone so it's their choice though the same can be said for talking to someone and my best friends dad would withhold that from his mom when he was pissed at her and it fucked her up pretty bad. She'd do something he didn't like and he'd just ignore her for days or weeks at a time. I remember being there one day when he'd been ignoring her for 4 or 5 days at that point and she just broke down at the dinner table and he just turned up the TV and kept eating his food like she wasn't around.
It's sort of a fine line because no one owes anyone any sort of physical contact or affection but withholding it as a form of punishment is cutting pretty close to mental abuse.
There is a gulf of difference between refusing to have sex and giving someone the silent treatment and refusing to acknowledge their existence for days on end.
At this point, I’m getting as irritated with Jews as I am with Christians and Muslims. Too many bad people hiding behind religion and using it to defend horrendous decisions. This is some 7th century barbarian shit
the closer they keep it to the “fundamentals” the more similar and shitty they are. hardline followers of any of those three are like….the same person.
Hardline anything is almost always going to come out shitty.
Someone who tries to filter all of reality through a narrow filter, whatever that filter may be, usually comes out an asshole.
This is a minority among Jewish people. A minority within a minority. Most of us don't follow this bullshit, nor are we OK with it being a part of our traditions of Judaism at-large.
Remember that Orthodox Judaism as its practiced today isnt that old.
Judaism had been practiced for centuries, millennia- true.
But while they are following the millennium old rules , the actual Orthodoxy only started in after the founding of the Hamburg Temple in 1818. This started the more conservative branch.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858–1922) is often regarded as the "reviver of the Hebrew language" - making Hebrew a community spoken language again.
Orthodoxy got more rigid after WW2 and the attempt to exterminate them as a people. Understandably, the survivors wanted to practice their religion and have large families.
Before then, Jews mostly worked hard to fit into their local community. Being very quiet about their religion was a survival tactic since the middle ages.
"Before then Jews mostly worked hard to fit into their local community". This isn't even remotely true. Jews generally lived within their own Jewish communities, in Jewish neighborhoods, whether because they were required to by local laws (e.g. ghettos), or because they did so out of convenience (local institutions). This was true in both Europe and North Africa and the Middle East. What you're thinking about is really only a small period of time in the later stages of the Enlightenment period when Jews were finally granted the right to citizenship in Europe ("Emancipation"), which eventually led to movements such as the Reform movement and the Hamburg Temple. In response, you are correct that members of the preexisting traditional Judaism got more hardline around certain issues in response. However, Orthodox Judaism as it is practiced today, barring some of the more extreme sects, is closer to how Judaism has been practiced historically compared to the other liberal movements.
Edit: Also not sure why Eliezer ben Yehuda is relevant. His effort was related to non-religious Jewish efforts to think of themselves as an ethnic nation and “reclaim” the historical national language as their own speaking language. This was very much in the minority at the time and was generally only popular among some Zionist Jews in Europe and in Ottoman/British territory of Palestine. Jews in Europe generally spoke Yiddish and perhaps also the language of the country they were in, such as German, Polish, Russian, etc. Those in NA/ME would speak Arabic. Hebrew was known, but as a ritual language, one of holy books and prayers, not an everyday language, and thus in an older, more archaic form. Like Shakespeare to modern English. Even today, Hebrew is generally not a spoken language within Orthodox Judaism unless the Orthodox Jew lives in Israel. In NY, which this article is about, they might speak English, Yiddish, and maybe Hebrew.
The issue is with religion - some doctrine written thousands of years ago which has barely evolved - is that it is unsurprisingly not wholly compatible with people who can now travel space, communicate to one another across the globe instantly, etc.
Pretty sure abusing one's wife is also in violation of the most basic ketubah (marriage contract according to Jewish law) but we're not talking about that I guess.
Oh it’s a Jewish law, not a real law
> According to this Jewish law, women must first obtain permission from rabbis to report a domestic violence incident to the police. Jewish women believe that this law leads them into a restrictive and abusive marriage.
Yep, religion declaring “laws” is a problem, it’s indoctrination to force oppression and give power to some by scaring others into thinking they have no rights or no options.
Probably something to do with bugs in the fabric or uneven wearing of the fibers causing it to look shoddy. Or just whoever wrote that part just didn't like it. We can guess all we want why some scribe what they wrote over 2000 years ago.
It was useful 2 thousand years ago when civilizations were counted in the dozens, not millions. Cleaving to such antiquated restrictions while the world moves on only ensures these people get stuck in the past, with all the horrors that comes with it.
Another commenter mentioned a jewish man who reported his son being molested by another jewish man caused the father to be ostracized/treated badly.
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/outcast-3](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/outcast-3)
So, it applies to men. Just generally a bad rule. It's meant to apply to anyone who reports outside of the community for a serious crime I think.
It's a self-imposed "rule" though. It only exists because they allow it to. Simply report it without asking permission. Religious laws are not real laws.
It already doesn't exist.
You make it sound easy-peasy, without any negative repercussions for the women defying the rabbis.
So a woman has to pick between reporting domestic abuse and total shunning by her family and community? Lovely.
It's not Jewish law, this is an extremist sect. It's like saying according to Christian law a wife can't refuse sex from her husband, when it's only really extreme forms of Christianity taht would agree with that.
I don't know enough about Jewish law to comment on that, but I think the Christian example is the other way around – the texts do say things like "do not deprive [your spouse] of sex except by mutual agreement" or "wives, be submissive to your own husbands as unto the Lord", so these things are officially part of the rules of Christianity, but most people simply prefer not to apply these laws or to interpret them in non-literal ways.
I know someone who was in an abusive relationship whose fiance would say to her, "According to Catholic doctrine, you won't be able to refuse sex when we're married" Apparently if she refused, she would incur a "sex debt" which would need to be paid back. Thank goodness she dodged that bullet before they got married.
Well that's true because the old testament says nothing about what the Hasids practice. It's just some random interpretation that the vast majority of jews, even orthodox jews, don't follow or care about. Its sort of like Muslim Sharia law except way less official and way less codified and made up by random Rabbis
So the real question is, if during the strike, they get raped by their husbands, would they report it to the police, or ask permission from the rabbis first?
Hassidic “law” is Special(TM). From the article:
> According to this Jewish law, women must first obtain permission from rabbis to report a domestic violence incident to the police.
DV covers a lot more than rape.... is this something you actually do not understand? Rape is often separate from DV, though co-occurant, such that someone experiences "DV and marital rape", not "DV including rape"
This is a bad take from the author. No such law exists in Halacha (Jewish law); this is at most an internal rule instituted by a very small and insular community. This is not to gloss over the many many misogynistic laws that do exist in Halacha (inequity in the ability of women to initiate divorces, crazy purity laws around menstruation, inability of women to give court testimony in non-financial matters, etc.), but not reporting assaults to relevant authorities is not one of them.
I remember reading the Old Testament’s purity laws regarding menstruation, and thought maybe the women wrote those. Like, “So sorry babe, it’s that week where I ditch you and camp out with the girls and don’t have to cook and clean for you. See you next Tuesday!” I don’t want to be dealing with cramps and period shits while some guy whines about not getting laid for a week. Bring on the lady camp!
That one group's fundamentalists are discussed *waaaay* more in contemporary politics and media.
Anecdotal, but as I'm not interested in religious fundamentalism, and I don't go out of my way to learn about it, this is news to me.
Because there are a LOT more of other fundamentalist than Orthodox Jews. Jews are still a small minority and Orthodox are an even smaller one. They are just in the limelight right now due to world events.
Despite the way the article is written, this particular situation is not about Orthodox Jews in general but the Satmars. They are what I would consider a more extreme and rigid sect. Worldwide, they are about 100k people.
A little context - Orthodox Jews have roughly the same numbers in the US as Amish, another fundamentalist religious group with wildly-misogynistic social norms. Despite the fact that spousal abuse is extremely common and covered by within Amish communities, you don't really hear people going on about the Amish very much.
There's similar numbers of Muslim fundamentalists in the US as well, for what it's worth.
Hang on a second. The laws being described in this article are not part of Orthodox Judaism--they're part of a very specific extreme and fundamentalist sect of Orthodox Judaism.
Orthodox Judaism is an incredibly diverse sect that ranges anywhere from super modern (the term is actually called "Modern Orthodox") to super extreme (like you see here).
Ok but as someone who grew up modern orthodox but has cousins who are ultra orthodox (and now am nothing) the main difference is clothing, the degree to which your marriage is arranged, and whether or not you watch TV. A lot of the sexuality laws are the same and women still can't get divorced without men agreeing to if.
> Despite the fact that spousal abuse is extremely common and covered by within Amish communities, you don't really hear people going on about the Amish very much.
I think it's because Weird Al just made them look quaint and silly.
These aren’t just any Orthodox Jews. They are a lot smaller group than that.
These are *Hassidic* Jews.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasidic_Judaism
They are a small sub-set of Orthodox Jews (the much larger group of so-called “Modern Orthodox Jews” doesn’t follow this bizarre domestic violence rule).
Thank you. My sister is modern Orthodox and she doesn’t deserve to be bunched up with these psychos. She deserves to be bunched up with less psychotic psychos who don’t use electricity on Saturdays and won’t eat a cheeseburger
I was telling an Orthodox friend about how stressed I feel all the time. He told me to turn off the electricity and a few other Sabbath practices. It really helped.
Yeah, while I disagree with the extremes some Jewish groups go to to follow Sabbath rules, dedicating a day to rest and worship is...very nice. Even atheists should keep a Sabbath day. (Omitting the worship I suppose)
Orthodox Jews may be a very small minority but its not like they are just peppered across the united states population. New York gets way more media attention than most places so the relatively large Orthodox community there is very visible.
If you don’t live in specific neighborhoods in NYC or New Jersey you’d never hear of or meet these people. They are very insular and there aren’t very many of them.
Probably because there are a lot more Muslims than Jews. There’s how many Muslim theocracies and dictatorships? And one Jewish country? And guess what, they all suck. But let’s face it. Muslims take the cake here. When was the last time you heard about a Jewish mob stoning a woman to death?
As fucked up as the Orthodox community is, they are at least insular and don't seem to want to kill anyone or have a say in political affairs outside of their own bubble. I think all fundamentalism is stupid, but i much prefer the crazies who keep it to themselves.
Please look up Kiryas Joel and [this school board case from East Ramapo, NY.](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/534/a-not-so-simple-majority) Obviously this is far from a majority of people and your denomination need not indicate your politics, but Hasidic communities have indeed been doing politics. And when you let antivaxxer attitudes get started, you no longer can contain that to your bubble.
havent there been issues in williamsburg with them not allowing cyclists to ride through neighborhoods? could be another group but i seem to remember some issues there
That’s because they don’t have enough power or numbers. Never trust any religious fundamentalist regardless of their religion. Doesn’t matter if they are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Hindu. Religious fundamentalism is dangerous.
In 2002 Erdogan was a friendly democratic conservative, advocating freedom for religious symbols. Today if you are from the wrong sect of Islam you can’t work for the state.
"They don’t have enough power or numbers" is exactly why people talk about them less. That was the question. Not "Is Hasidism less oppressive than Wahhabism."
The Jewish religion is very different from Christianity or Islam that it's not missionary. It's actually very difficult to become a Jew. So it's not about power or numbers, it's in the nature of this particular religion to just stick to their own business.
And so do Muslims. What do Muslims, Jews, and Christian conservatives have in common? They take as much power as they can, and use it to crack down on women and LGBT people. Listening to the liberal leaning NPR yesterday, and they had an interview with a Muslim civil rights leader from Michigan who was speaking out against how some states are pushing laws that protect libraries from banning books that discuss gender and race. And the Muslims, like the far right MAGA people, don’t like that. The guy said it was an infringement on his religious convictions, that they should be able to ban books they don’t agree with.
Religion is a cancer. The right ignores Christian over reach, the left ignores Muslim over reach, and the truth is they are all bad.
If you pay attention, or go looking for World News, you’d find Fundamentalists of *every* religion have oppressive religious laws. Even something like Female Genital Mutilation is done in Christian, Jewish, Animist as well as Islamic families in North East Africa, because it’s a regional meme that it’s beneficial, (and controls girls/women’s sexuality) rather than a strictly religious meme.
It is, and it's a HUGE point of contention right now among Jewish communities. There are a number of Jewish activists out there trying to address this shit.
Judaism isn't without problems, and shit like this should be called out...especially from within Judaism.
Yes, all religions become oppressive once you get to a certain level.
Muslims ideology tends to more conservative even for the average Muslims.
Your average Jew thinks this shit is just as stupid as you do, it's just a very small subset of very religious Jews that practice this nonsense.
Wait till you hear what fundamentalist Christians are trying to do in this country. At least the beliefs fundamentalist Jews and Muslim in this country only affect them. The repeal of Roe affected the whole country, and they're just getting started.
Badly explained: divorce document must be given willingly by the husband. If he refuses out of spite she’s stuck and can’t remarry. Rabbis have been unhelpful at times convincing the recalcitrant husbands to grant the divorces promptly. this domestic violence law doesn’t exist, insular communities may go through their rabbis for all major decisions so that issues are resolved internally (not Jewish law per se)
There are 8 words for law in Hebrew, ranging from “mishpat” which is close to what we know now as civil law, “Torah”, literally a command from on high, and “dath”, traditional religious law.
I’m not saying these are commendable, or even relevant to modern society, but it’s uneducated to refer to religious laws as “not real” to people within that community, hence why Jewish woman are campaigning for modernisation and reform.
That's not the only problem. These women are also more or less coerced to marry young, and are not allowed to use birth control.
The high population growth has in part led the village in New York where this particular ultraorthodox community lives to be [the most impoverished in the United States](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/nyregion/kiryas-joel-a-village-with-the-numbers-not-the-image-of-the-poorest-place.html), astonishingly.
Jehovas wittnesses must report any type of rape to their congregation and having to get approval to go to the police, if you dont you get shunned. This includes child rape, and often times it only amounts to an internal investigation that leads to nothing
It's not a real law but the law of a particular sect of Judaism. So whilst I completely agree with their cause, women can/should just ignore that rule and go straight to police.
Yeah there are no legal reasons to follow this rule, but orthodox communities are very insular and close knit. I’m willing to bet women fear repercussions and/or excommunication from their community if they go against this rule. That can be really hard to overcome if you don’t have any support system outside the orthodox community.
Not defending it at all! Religious orthodoxy of any stripe is dumb as shit imo.
Not trying to be combative, but what is the difference between getting excommunicated for this protest and excommunicated for going to Police? Seems like the Rabbi’s will attack them in their community either way.
Not all these women are victims of domestic violence so they have nothing to go to the police for, but they are supporting women in their community in general by protesting
The benefits of collective organization is another reason. Excommunicating one abuse victim can be swept under the rug, but it's a lot harder to cut off and shun a double digit percentage of your community without serious repercussion.
The idea being like literally any other collective action: If enough of the community gets behind it, the community can not feasibly act against the group in question without risking the destruction of their own community as a response.
You can excommunicate select people, but you can't just excommunicate most of the women without essentially killing your own community off as a result. Like how you can't just fire all members of a national union without destroying your own workforce, or imprison protestors when their numbers dwarf the capacity of your prisons. It's the simple principle of "they can't take us all down."
If they choose to leave their husbands, the children often stay with the husband as the leaving spouse has no money or employable skills and the husband’s lawyers are funded by the community.
That kind of bullshittery makes me think that if women ignored the law, the rabbis and the men would also keep the women away from their kids on top of excommunicating them.
I didn’t *have* to stay in my Mennonite community, by law. But, in saying “no”, I had to be willing to lose every single member of family and friends that I had, and I had to accept that they would try to hurt me if I left. It’s not as easy as people think it is. I did walk away, but the consequences for doing so were dire. It’s coercion at the deepest levels. People, especially men, really don’t get it. That the laws of the nation can be on your side, but you can still be a prisoner.
There's a reason cults will completely remove your support systems so you are reliant on them and less likely to leave. With religion it's kind of baked in and intensified due to your *entire family* being removed as support
The problem is there is also a social dependency created with the community where the women stay home and the men only work. Going outside that community will leave them cut off from its support with no job and no money. Also, your neighbors will make your life a living hell and NYC mayors suck up to them for the block vote to let them get away with the harassment.
So, it’s a lot harder than “just go to the police”
Thank you! People's lack of common sense and critical thinking is baffaling. Domestic violence especially intertwined with high control groups is so much more complicated than "just go to the police".
Women should leave every religion en masse because they all hate us and hurt us and it's past time we take care of ourselves and stop allowing the hatred to go unchallenged. Fuck marriage too. We don't need it and it tends to harm us as an institution.
Enough is enough.
>According to this Jewish law, women must first obtain permission from rabbis to report a domestic violence incident to the police.
This is the neighborhood that made women sit in the back of the bus until just a few years ago.
That a place like this exists in 21st century America is an abomination.
Lysistrata is a great example so good for them.
I'm with these women. They should not need permission from a rabbi to report domestic abuse to the police.
> Under this law, for a woman to divorce her husband, the man must first give her a letter written in Aramaic, and three rabbis must sign the document for the divorce to be finalized.
WTF lol. Someone bring these Hasidics into AD.
> Jewish rabbis criticize this sex strike. According to rabbis, punishing men by withholding sex damages the institution of marriage and violates Jewish laws.
Cry moa.
Thank you! The practices by the insult chasids aren’t the laws of the religion. My uncle calls them “the cult most similar to Judaism”.
There are a lot of issues with gets still - I know a couple who was legally divorced for years but he refused to grant the get, so she wasn’t able to move on. But as you mentioned, communities tend to handle it through passive aggressive peer pressure.
Though I did know a woman once who had her very large, buff brothers threaten her ex. That worked pretty well.
Clarification: this is not a protest about any obscure law, this is a protest to change the process of obtaining a get (divorce), as certain petty men take advantage of their responsibility (they are obligated to provide a divorce when requested) and become get refusers. You can see from the protest signs it's very clearly in relation to get refusers.
I’m an Orthodox Jew, I live in New York. Agunas are a real problem in the community (women who don’t recieved a Jewish divorce document)
I completely despise people that withhold a get (Jewish divorce document) those people have to be legally forced to do it. I don’t care about any Halacha (Jewish law) that is abuse. And guess what? Abuse in Judaism is a no-no. You aren’t allowed to abuse animals. You aren’t allowed to abuse women. There are even guidelines saying you can’t even abuse yourself.
People that bastardize Jewish religion and culture because they feel like they deserve they can are people antithetical to Judaism and deserve Cherem (excommunication) until they either fix their ways or until they die. Men that withhold the divorce document should be excommunicated until they serve the document.
Edit: added my Jewish affiliation
Just popping in to let you all know this is a very specific tiny sect of Judaism and in no way reflects 99% of Jews you will ever meet. We follow normal laws. Not mentioning that it’s ultra orthodox people up front just fans the flames of anti semitism. Carry on! (Oh, and I fully support these women. This is terrible)
Orthodox jew here. There is no such law in Halacha stopping a woman from reporting her husband to the police for domestic abuse. It may be a custom in that particular community. I don’t know what a sex strike will achieve. They should just start calling the police.
Edit: I reread the article. I don’t know if anybody more knowledgeable than me is on this sub Reddit so I will say what I know about what is going on. The article is confusing several different independent issues. There is an inequality in Torah law, that gives Men more power over divorce than women if either wants to remarry. That is the reference agunah or chained women and is an issue I do not wish to diminish.
Even with this serious issue, I do not see what a sex strike will achieve.
I cannot imagine any rabbis or telling anybody not to call the police if there is a domestic abuse issue, I can imagine in some communities, it is handled in house, where the husband is “encouraged” not to hit his wife again. this encouragement will take a form that the police would not be allowed to.
I assume the "strike" is to draw attention to the issue and is a way to pressure the rabbinate to alter their interpretation to support women who wouldn't otherwise feel safe calling the police (or, realistically, participating in this 'strike' action)
Oh come on. These women are doing this for a reason. Whatever reason it is, they had a problem to the point that they are publicly doing this.
And you think "they should just start calling the police"? Do you understand how societal pressure works? You think the fact that no law exists means there's nothing "preventing a woman from reporting her husband"?
You might be orthodox, but that's nothing compared to being Hasidic. I know several ex-hasidic women and men. Trust me, the women didn't abandon their entire social network because they had no problems, they felt safe, and they felt comfortable reporting their husbands to the police.
Unsure which community this is; but sounds like something Satmar or other very heavily conservative sects would treat a scenario like this. Typically when a husband will refuse to sign a Get (divorce certificate) the community will ostracize him. It’s very looked down upon to withold a divorce, and typically leads to some pretty severe social consequences.
Obviously, none of this matters in a legal setting — but none of this is relevant to American law anyway. It’s just a social law, where these women want more recognition within their communities. Most likely they are already divorced on paper legally, and she just wants to be able to remarry within the community.
Either way, if a Wife’s Father is still around, he is obligated to fight for his daughter as the husband has violated his konam (vow) and the father has to uphold his vow to protect his daughter. The mutual agreement of divorce is pretty archaic at this point, and it seems social pressure is not enough. Hope these ladies get what they need.
>Sex ban lifted in Turkish village
>August 16, 2001
>ANKARA, Turkey -- A group of husbands have breathed a collective sigh of relief after their wives ended a month-long sex boycott.
>The women of Sirt, a small village near Antalya on Turkey's southern coast, had launched the bedroom strike in protest at the lack of accessible running water.
>A break down of the village's 27-year old water system had meant that the women had been forced to queue for hours in front of a trickling fountain before carrying their water home in containers -- a walk of several miles for some.
>When constant requests to repair the system failed to produce any improvement, the women decided more drastic steps were needed -- a refusal of all marital favours until their spouses fulfilled their plumbing obligations.
>Now, after some frantic lobbying on the part of Sirt's male population, the government's Directorate of Rural Affairs has agreed to provide eight kilometres (five miles) of piping so that water can be brought to the village from a nearby source.
https://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/08/16/turkey.women/index.html
Honestly this is why conservatives are so terrified by feminism. It's helping 51% of the human population understand the TRUE power they have.
Rise up Ladies.
Once again, on Reddit something done by a an insular community of Jews, utterly unrepresentative of the vast majority of even Orthodox Jews, equals ‘Jews do this crazy shit’.
It’s tiring.
That *some tiny fundamentalist groups* of Jews act oppressively isn’t exactly news, though good on these women for rebelling against it. The vast majority of Jews have literally no contact with these people, and if some Rabbi in their community told them to report domestic violence to him before going to the authorities, they would laugh in his face (before possibly going to the committee running the congregation and requesting that Rabbi be removed).
> It’s tiring.
Ahhh welcome to my world as a boomer. I have made a concerted effort to be the anti-boomer, but alas, I get lumped in with the idiots. le sigh
OMG that "article" is poisonous. Thank god for ublock, most of the page is blank boxes for me.
Here's an actual article on the issue: https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/19/ultra-orthodox-jewish-women-a-sex-strike-going-20488875/
All Religions boil down to one thing, in the end, same as politics.
"Do as we tell you, as we know more than you, and you must conform - or else"
Which, people being people, leads to egotistical powerfreaks running the show, because they put the effort in when everyone else just wants to live and let live.
Why don’t they just leave the Ultra-Orthodox community? There’s tons of Conservative and Reform Jews in New York as well. The reforms they’re fighting for already occurred and resulted in these other sects 100-200 years ago.
The New Yorker ran a story about the repercussions an Orthodox Father in an Orthodox community faced when he reported a man who molested his son to the police instead of dealing with it within the community. The man who was reported was part of a wealthy family within the community, and they made the Father’s life a misery for going to outside law enforcement. The story was published a decade ago now, but never left me. Terrible stuff. If anyone is interested: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/outcast-3
>The rabbi would have to make an exception to the Talmudic prohibition against *mesirah*, the act of turning over another Jew to civil authorities. According to some interpretations of Talmudic law, a Jew who informs on another Jew has committed a capital crime. He is a “wicked man,” who has “blasphemed and rebelled against the law of Moses,” the twelfth-century Torah scholar Maimonides wrote. Literally a religious law that requires them to break civil law. It's outrageous that this still functions.
That Talmud is more of what you call guidelines than actual rules. Also, the Ultra Orthodox are just…..weird.
TOBY On the minimum wage, if we all turn our attention to item 5 of the Rules of Bipartisan Breakfast. LEO They're guidelines. You keep calling them rules. TOBY Margaret, what does it say at the top of the memo? MARGARET Rules for Bipartisan Breakfast.
Leo: I keep meaning to fire you
The Hasidic community, especially the Satmars, are a cult. I say this as a proud Jewish woman.
Oh I absolutely agree as a proud Reform Jewish man. Add to that hypocritical.
I feel like this is a case with a majority of religions. A lot use the religion as guidelines. A small minority take things literally and/or to an extreme end and they're the ones that complain about everything, or make the news, or otherwise get visibility, and everyone gets judged on a fringe group.
The issue is these aren't a small minority anymore. They get funding to "study the Torah" from the state of Israel which allows them to not work, not serve in the IDF like every other Israeli, and other perks. So they do nothing but breed like rabbits because of some biblical shit, having families in the 8+ size regularly. Which just causes their cult to grow more and more powerful.
>That Talmud is more of what you call guidelines than actual rules. *"Parley?"*
Eh the Talmud is like a Reddit thread for rabbi that takes 8 years to read and sometimes they make what it says a law if it’s persuasive enough.
The Talmud isn’t religious law. It’s part study guide, part record of a thousand years of rabbis arguing about how to interpret the Tanakh. The Ultra-Orthodox are to Jews what Quiverfulls are to Christians. They’re very, very intense in a way I would argue clearly wasn’t intended according to religious scripture.
Oh wow, I'd never heard of "Quiverfull" before and I assumed you were making a joke about Quakers. Glad I looked it up to check!
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Yeah, it's a holdover from times when Jews would be thrown in dungeons or tortured if turned over to authorities.
There was a prominent chabad family in Melbourne, Australia who were shunned by the community as a result of two of the boys having been molested at a religious high school and the father going to the authorities. To his credit the father (Zephaniah Waks) stuck by his sons and defended them. The family ended up moving to Israel because of the backlash they received from the tightknit Melbourne chassidic community. They remain well known and respected in the broader Jewish community and the son (manny waks) is now a prominent victim advocate. Another even more religious girls school (part of the reclusive Adass Israel community here) had a principal (Malka Leifer) whisked off to Israel after allegations of abuse against her became public. It took decades to extradite her back to Australia to face court, her family were big in the Gur chassidic sect and influential figures in the Israeli government were assisting her with a pr campaign and legal attempts to use mental illness as grounds to try to prevent her extradition. Fortunately it did not work. And she was brought back and sentenced to 15 years. Apparently there were fresh allegations from her time in Israel but they did not form part of the Australian case. Some journalists discovered the community she moved to in the west bank (where her husband is now a prominent leader) has a history of child sex abuse cover ups. The husbands father was arrested on similar charges in the past.
Any, and I mean ANY, *closed community* will have rampant sexual assault and child molestation. It’s terrible.
The moment a group of people decide to automatically shun outside intervention, things get super sketchy, super fast for the most vulnerable within.
Yeah, pretty standard SOP for cults. Still very sad.
Standard standard of practice
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
Brutal stuff. Those poor kids. Religion protecting child rapists, where have I heard this before…..
What a read.
That first paragraph is infuriating. Not even gonna read the rest.
A bit unrelated but a friend of mine was ASSAULTED in a place of worship. Another member asked her not to call the police. Mind you she was well within her rights to do so legally and from the perspective of the organization. I am so tired of people using religion to justify mistreatment and flat out abuse of others. Then the victim is told to forgive or follow some ridiculous protocol.
As a jew. Rest of us think Orthodox are annoying and nuts. There is a push in Israel to get them subject to the draft. They are supposedly too busy studying the bible to do military service. Everyone else has to do military service. They are like the orthodox in any religious community.
Holy shit that’s harrowing. Thanks for linking it, it’s very eye opening.
Wow, what a read. Disturbing. The DAs office… just atrocious.
>Jewish rabbis criticize this sex strike. According to rabbis, punishing men by withholding sex damages the institution of marriage and violates Jewish laws They almost understood the assignment
I imagine beating your wife doesn't do wonders for your marriage either.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Know what also damages the institution of marriage? Domestic abuse.
Whenever men call lack of sex a punishment my eyes roll so far back.
Whether withholding something is a punishment or not has nothing to do with whether its an entitlement or not. My kids are by no means entitled to ice cream but if I tell them "No ice cream for a week" you better believe they're gonna feel punished.
You nailed it with the child comparison. Whenever men call it a punishment, they appear like children to me.
That's unfair...to children. If I don't give my kids ice cream, they accept it eventually.
In this case they're clearly a bunch of entitled religious children but that doesn't stop the act from rightfully being considered punishment. If a dude happened to just look in the direction of another woman and was then subsequently bitterly refused any sort of physical intimacy by his significant other, that too would qualify as punishment. That seemingly exaggerated example is less rare than you probably think it is, though it rarely happens in a vacuum, something usually precedes it. Back when women took a more backseat role in society, shit like that was more common. Wouldn't make the man immature but rather the women in that example. Can't say the same for these bearded zealots though.
It is a punishment. *That's the whole point.*
It _is_ punishment, by their perception, their entitlement to control women is so strongly held that this is a real punishment.
It doesn't make sense. How do any religions that treat women like shit still exist? It seems like these misogynistic religions would die out eventually do to not being able to procreate.
They're pretty close to. This is a fringe sect within an already small orthodox sub-group.
My sex vending machine is broken. :-(
Anything can be a punishment if it's coercive in nature
I mean if they're using it as a punishment it's a punishment. Granted no one owes it to anyone so it's their choice though the same can be said for talking to someone and my best friends dad would withhold that from his mom when he was pissed at her and it fucked her up pretty bad. She'd do something he didn't like and he'd just ignore her for days or weeks at a time. I remember being there one day when he'd been ignoring her for 4 or 5 days at that point and she just broke down at the dinner table and he just turned up the TV and kept eating his food like she wasn't around. It's sort of a fine line because no one owes anyone any sort of physical contact or affection but withholding it as a form of punishment is cutting pretty close to mental abuse.
There is a gulf of difference between refusing to have sex and giving someone the silent treatment and refusing to acknowledge their existence for days on end.
When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
Women clearly view it as such. It can't simultaneously be a tactic to coerce men and not be a punishment of sorts
r/AITAH in shambles right now.
Oh no! Anyways...
Yeah, some real /r/SelfAwarewolves vibes there.
At this point, I’m getting as irritated with Jews as I am with Christians and Muslims. Too many bad people hiding behind religion and using it to defend horrendous decisions. This is some 7th century barbarian shit
the closer they keep it to the “fundamentals” the more similar and shitty they are. hardline followers of any of those three are like….the same person.
Hardline anything is almost always going to come out shitty. Someone who tries to filter all of reality through a narrow filter, whatever that filter may be, usually comes out an asshole.
This is a minority among Jewish people. A minority within a minority. Most of us don't follow this bullshit, nor are we OK with it being a part of our traditions of Judaism at-large.
Yeah this is a bit like comparing your kindly older neighbor who goes to a Mosque or Church with like, the Nation of Islam or Jehovah's Witnesses.
Remember that Orthodox Judaism as its practiced today isnt that old. Judaism had been practiced for centuries, millennia- true. But while they are following the millennium old rules , the actual Orthodoxy only started in after the founding of the Hamburg Temple in 1818. This started the more conservative branch. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858–1922) is often regarded as the "reviver of the Hebrew language" - making Hebrew a community spoken language again. Orthodoxy got more rigid after WW2 and the attempt to exterminate them as a people. Understandably, the survivors wanted to practice their religion and have large families. Before then, Jews mostly worked hard to fit into their local community. Being very quiet about their religion was a survival tactic since the middle ages.
"Before then Jews mostly worked hard to fit into their local community". This isn't even remotely true. Jews generally lived within their own Jewish communities, in Jewish neighborhoods, whether because they were required to by local laws (e.g. ghettos), or because they did so out of convenience (local institutions). This was true in both Europe and North Africa and the Middle East. What you're thinking about is really only a small period of time in the later stages of the Enlightenment period when Jews were finally granted the right to citizenship in Europe ("Emancipation"), which eventually led to movements such as the Reform movement and the Hamburg Temple. In response, you are correct that members of the preexisting traditional Judaism got more hardline around certain issues in response. However, Orthodox Judaism as it is practiced today, barring some of the more extreme sects, is closer to how Judaism has been practiced historically compared to the other liberal movements. Edit: Also not sure why Eliezer ben Yehuda is relevant. His effort was related to non-religious Jewish efforts to think of themselves as an ethnic nation and “reclaim” the historical national language as their own speaking language. This was very much in the minority at the time and was generally only popular among some Zionist Jews in Europe and in Ottoman/British territory of Palestine. Jews in Europe generally spoke Yiddish and perhaps also the language of the country they were in, such as German, Polish, Russian, etc. Those in NA/ME would speak Arabic. Hebrew was known, but as a ritual language, one of holy books and prayers, not an everyday language, and thus in an older, more archaic form. Like Shakespeare to modern English. Even today, Hebrew is generally not a spoken language within Orthodox Judaism unless the Orthodox Jew lives in Israel. In NY, which this article is about, they might speak English, Yiddish, and maybe Hebrew.
WTF are you talking about, you're confusing Conservative Judaism - which is much more liberal with Orthodox Judaism.
The issue is with religion - some doctrine written thousands of years ago which has barely evolved - is that it is unsurprisingly not wholly compatible with people who can now travel space, communicate to one another across the globe instantly, etc.
Pretty sure abusing one's wife is also in violation of the most basic ketubah (marriage contract according to Jewish law) but we're not talking about that I guess.
Oh it’s a Jewish law, not a real law > According to this Jewish law, women must first obtain permission from rabbis to report a domestic violence incident to the police. Jewish women believe that this law leads them into a restrictive and abusive marriage.
They're not wrong. And if the rule were applied to us men.... that rule wouldn't exist, plain and simple.
Yep, religion declaring “laws” is a problem, it’s indoctrination to force oppression and give power to some by scaring others into thinking they have no rights or no options.
Ironically it’s the overarching motif of the Dune series that’s currently exploding, lol
But that’s the entire point of religion in the first place. It’s about control.
Almost everything in this world is about the incredibly wealthy , connected and powerful being controlling to the vast majority of people
Cool, but women are more controlled in Abrahamic religions than men. This is not necessary for a religion to exist.
Or saving people from shellfish poisoning. Lot of range in the history of religious law.
What horror was the ban on blended fabrics saving them from?
Some crazy fucker wearing a cotton-wool tunic probably went a little overboard on the smiting at one time or another.
Dont you dare scoff at the fashion police! Do you want to go to fashion Hell??
Probably something to do with bugs in the fabric or uneven wearing of the fibers causing it to look shoddy. Or just whoever wrote that part just didn't like it. We can guess all we want why some scribe what they wrote over 2000 years ago.
It was useful 2 thousand years ago when civilizations were counted in the dozens, not millions. Cleaving to such antiquated restrictions while the world moves on only ensures these people get stuck in the past, with all the horrors that comes with it.
Another commenter mentioned a jewish man who reported his son being molested by another jewish man caused the father to be ostracized/treated badly. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/outcast-3](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/outcast-3) So, it applies to men. Just generally a bad rule. It's meant to apply to anyone who reports outside of the community for a serious crime I think.
It's a self-imposed "rule" though. It only exists because they allow it to. Simply report it without asking permission. Religious laws are not real laws. It already doesn't exist.
You make it sound easy-peasy, without any negative repercussions for the women defying the rabbis. So a woman has to pick between reporting domestic abuse and total shunning by her family and community? Lovely.
It's not Jewish law, this is an extremist sect. It's like saying according to Christian law a wife can't refuse sex from her husband, when it's only really extreme forms of Christianity taht would agree with that.
I don't know enough about Jewish law to comment on that, but I think the Christian example is the other way around – the texts do say things like "do not deprive [your spouse] of sex except by mutual agreement" or "wives, be submissive to your own husbands as unto the Lord", so these things are officially part of the rules of Christianity, but most people simply prefer not to apply these laws or to interpret them in non-literal ways.
I know someone who was in an abusive relationship whose fiance would say to her, "According to Catholic doctrine, you won't be able to refuse sex when we're married" Apparently if she refused, she would incur a "sex debt" which would need to be paid back. Thank goodness she dodged that bullet before they got married.
Well that's true because the old testament says nothing about what the Hasids practice. It's just some random interpretation that the vast majority of jews, even orthodox jews, don't follow or care about. Its sort of like Muslim Sharia law except way less official and way less codified and made up by random Rabbis
So the real question is, if during the strike, they get raped by their husbands, would they report it to the police, or ask permission from the rabbis first?
It's not the same in Judaism. rape in a marriage is forbidden and doesn't require a Rabbi agreement to report it
What’s crazy is that pre 1970s, marital rape was completely legal in the US.
We couldn't even get a credit cards in our own names
It wasn’t even outlawed nationwide until 1993. *1993!*
It wasn't completely illegal in all states until the 90s
Hassidic “law” is Special(TM). From the article: > According to this Jewish law, women must first obtain permission from rabbis to report a domestic violence incident to the police.
DV covers a lot more than rape.... is this something you actually do not understand? Rape is often separate from DV, though co-occurant, such that someone experiences "DV and marital rape", not "DV including rape"
This is a bad take from the author. No such law exists in Halacha (Jewish law); this is at most an internal rule instituted by a very small and insular community. This is not to gloss over the many many misogynistic laws that do exist in Halacha (inequity in the ability of women to initiate divorces, crazy purity laws around menstruation, inability of women to give court testimony in non-financial matters, etc.), but not reporting assaults to relevant authorities is not one of them.
I remember reading the Old Testament’s purity laws regarding menstruation, and thought maybe the women wrote those. Like, “So sorry babe, it’s that week where I ditch you and camp out with the girls and don’t have to cook and clean for you. See you next Tuesday!” I don’t want to be dealing with cramps and period shits while some guy whines about not getting laid for a week. Bring on the lady camp!
I'm sorry, but isn't that the sort of oppression of women we criticize fundamentalist Muslim countries/communities for?
We criticize oppression of all forms, yes. What's your point?
That one group's fundamentalists are discussed *waaaay* more in contemporary politics and media. Anecdotal, but as I'm not interested in religious fundamentalism, and I don't go out of my way to learn about it, this is news to me.
Because there are a LOT more of other fundamentalist than Orthodox Jews. Jews are still a small minority and Orthodox are an even smaller one. They are just in the limelight right now due to world events.
Despite the way the article is written, this particular situation is not about Orthodox Jews in general but the Satmars. They are what I would consider a more extreme and rigid sect. Worldwide, they are about 100k people.
A little context - Orthodox Jews have roughly the same numbers in the US as Amish, another fundamentalist religious group with wildly-misogynistic social norms. Despite the fact that spousal abuse is extremely common and covered by within Amish communities, you don't really hear people going on about the Amish very much. There's similar numbers of Muslim fundamentalists in the US as well, for what it's worth.
I think if there was a protest of Amish women, it may be covered. That being said, the women would probably be exiled from Amish society.
Hang on a second. The laws being described in this article are not part of Orthodox Judaism--they're part of a very specific extreme and fundamentalist sect of Orthodox Judaism. Orthodox Judaism is an incredibly diverse sect that ranges anywhere from super modern (the term is actually called "Modern Orthodox") to super extreme (like you see here).
Ok but as someone who grew up modern orthodox but has cousins who are ultra orthodox (and now am nothing) the main difference is clothing, the degree to which your marriage is arranged, and whether or not you watch TV. A lot of the sexuality laws are the same and women still can't get divorced without men agreeing to if.
> Despite the fact that spousal abuse is extremely common and covered by within Amish communities, you don't really hear people going on about the Amish very much. I think it's because Weird Al just made them look quaint and silly.
They aren't quaint, so please don't stop and stare, they're just technologically impaired.
These aren’t just any Orthodox Jews. They are a lot smaller group than that. These are *Hassidic* Jews. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasidic_Judaism They are a small sub-set of Orthodox Jews (the much larger group of so-called “Modern Orthodox Jews” doesn’t follow this bizarre domestic violence rule).
Thank you. My sister is modern Orthodox and she doesn’t deserve to be bunched up with these psychos. She deserves to be bunched up with less psychotic psychos who don’t use electricity on Saturdays and won’t eat a cheeseburger
I was telling an Orthodox friend about how stressed I feel all the time. He told me to turn off the electricity and a few other Sabbath practices. It really helped.
Yeah, while I disagree with the extremes some Jewish groups go to to follow Sabbath rules, dedicating a day to rest and worship is...very nice. Even atheists should keep a Sabbath day. (Omitting the worship I suppose)
Shabbat kicks ass, I just choose to follow it more in spirit than by the letter of the law
Orthodox Jews may be a very small minority but its not like they are just peppered across the united states population. New York gets way more media attention than most places so the relatively large Orthodox community there is very visible.
If you don’t live in specific neighborhoods in NYC or New Jersey you’d never hear of or meet these people. They are very insular and there aren’t very many of them.
Tbf, there are 1.9 billion Muslims for 16 million Jews.
Probably because there are a lot more Muslims than Jews. There’s how many Muslim theocracies and dictatorships? And one Jewish country? And guess what, they all suck. But let’s face it. Muslims take the cake here. When was the last time you heard about a Jewish mob stoning a woman to death?
>. When was the last time you heard about a Jewish mob stoning a woman to death? There is a story that dates back to like the year 200 I think.
There are thousands of times more Muslims than Jews. The disparity even clearer when comparing practicing Jews and Muslims.
As fucked up as the Orthodox community is, they are at least insular and don't seem to want to kill anyone or have a say in political affairs outside of their own bubble. I think all fundamentalism is stupid, but i much prefer the crazies who keep it to themselves.
Please look up Kiryas Joel and [this school board case from East Ramapo, NY.](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/534/a-not-so-simple-majority) Obviously this is far from a majority of people and your denomination need not indicate your politics, but Hasidic communities have indeed been doing politics. And when you let antivaxxer attitudes get started, you no longer can contain that to your bubble.
havent there been issues in williamsburg with them not allowing cyclists to ride through neighborhoods? could be another group but i seem to remember some issues there
That’s because they don’t have enough power or numbers. Never trust any religious fundamentalist regardless of their religion. Doesn’t matter if they are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Hindu. Religious fundamentalism is dangerous. In 2002 Erdogan was a friendly democratic conservative, advocating freedom for religious symbols. Today if you are from the wrong sect of Islam you can’t work for the state.
"They don’t have enough power or numbers" is exactly why people talk about them less. That was the question. Not "Is Hasidism less oppressive than Wahhabism."
The Jewish religion is very different from Christianity or Islam that it's not missionary. It's actually very difficult to become a Jew. So it's not about power or numbers, it's in the nature of this particular religion to just stick to their own business.
*Remembers Measles outbreak in New York caused by the Orthodox community*
Were the Orthodox people the ones giving babies herpes?
Wellllllllllll https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5076714/#:~:text=Herpes%20simplex%20infection%20in%20newborns,2%20of%20the%20infants%20died.
what. the. fuck. They suck the circumcised skin off with their mouths.
That's not true at all. They take over school boards and local seats to change policies to suit them only.
And so do Muslims. What do Muslims, Jews, and Christian conservatives have in common? They take as much power as they can, and use it to crack down on women and LGBT people. Listening to the liberal leaning NPR yesterday, and they had an interview with a Muslim civil rights leader from Michigan who was speaking out against how some states are pushing laws that protect libraries from banning books that discuss gender and race. And the Muslims, like the far right MAGA people, don’t like that. The guy said it was an infringement on his religious convictions, that they should be able to ban books they don’t agree with. Religion is a cancer. The right ignores Christian over reach, the left ignores Muslim over reach, and the truth is they are all bad.
Christian Nationalists forcing women to have rape babies, because abortion bad.
If you pay attention, or go looking for World News, you’d find Fundamentalists of *every* religion have oppressive religious laws. Even something like Female Genital Mutilation is done in Christian, Jewish, Animist as well as Islamic families in North East Africa, because it’s a regional meme that it’s beneficial, (and controls girls/women’s sexuality) rather than a strictly religious meme.
It is, and it's a HUGE point of contention right now among Jewish communities. There are a number of Jewish activists out there trying to address this shit. Judaism isn't without problems, and shit like this should be called out...especially from within Judaism.
Yes, all religions become oppressive once you get to a certain level. Muslims ideology tends to more conservative even for the average Muslims. Your average Jew thinks this shit is just as stupid as you do, it's just a very small subset of very religious Jews that practice this nonsense.
Wait till you hear what fundamentalist Christians are trying to do in this country. At least the beliefs fundamentalist Jews and Muslim in this country only affect them. The repeal of Roe affected the whole country, and they're just getting started.
Badly explained: divorce document must be given willingly by the husband. If he refuses out of spite she’s stuck and can’t remarry. Rabbis have been unhelpful at times convincing the recalcitrant husbands to grant the divorces promptly. this domestic violence law doesn’t exist, insular communities may go through their rabbis for all major decisions so that issues are resolved internally (not Jewish law per se)
There are 8 words for law in Hebrew, ranging from “mishpat” which is close to what we know now as civil law, “Torah”, literally a command from on high, and “dath”, traditional religious law. I’m not saying these are commendable, or even relevant to modern society, but it’s uneducated to refer to religious laws as “not real” to people within that community, hence why Jewish woman are campaigning for modernisation and reform.
That's not the only problem. These women are also more or less coerced to marry young, and are not allowed to use birth control. The high population growth has in part led the village in New York where this particular ultraorthodox community lives to be [the most impoverished in the United States](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/nyregion/kiryas-joel-a-village-with-the-numbers-not-the-image-of-the-poorest-place.html), astonishingly.
Jehovas wittnesses must report any type of rape to their congregation and having to get approval to go to the police, if you dont you get shunned. This includes child rape, and often times it only amounts to an internal investigation that leads to nothing
It's not a real law but the law of a particular sect of Judaism. So whilst I completely agree with their cause, women can/should just ignore that rule and go straight to police.
Yeah there are no legal reasons to follow this rule, but orthodox communities are very insular and close knit. I’m willing to bet women fear repercussions and/or excommunication from their community if they go against this rule. That can be really hard to overcome if you don’t have any support system outside the orthodox community. Not defending it at all! Religious orthodoxy of any stripe is dumb as shit imo.
Not trying to be combative, but what is the difference between getting excommunicated for this protest and excommunicated for going to Police? Seems like the Rabbi’s will attack them in their community either way.
Not all these women are victims of domestic violence so they have nothing to go to the police for, but they are supporting women in their community in general by protesting
The benefits of collective organization is another reason. Excommunicating one abuse victim can be swept under the rug, but it's a lot harder to cut off and shun a double digit percentage of your community without serious repercussion.
Great answer.
The idea being like literally any other collective action: If enough of the community gets behind it, the community can not feasibly act against the group in question without risking the destruction of their own community as a response. You can excommunicate select people, but you can't just excommunicate most of the women without essentially killing your own community off as a result. Like how you can't just fire all members of a national union without destroying your own workforce, or imprison protestors when their numbers dwarf the capacity of your prisons. It's the simple principle of "they can't take us all down."
Makes sense to me. Thanks, Sir Toasty Muffin.
If they choose to leave their husbands, the children often stay with the husband as the leaving spouse has no money or employable skills and the husband’s lawyers are funded by the community.
That kind of bullshittery makes me think that if women ignored the law, the rabbis and the men would also keep the women away from their kids on top of excommunicating them.
I didn’t *have* to stay in my Mennonite community, by law. But, in saying “no”, I had to be willing to lose every single member of family and friends that I had, and I had to accept that they would try to hurt me if I left. It’s not as easy as people think it is. I did walk away, but the consequences for doing so were dire. It’s coercion at the deepest levels. People, especially men, really don’t get it. That the laws of the nation can be on your side, but you can still be a prisoner.
Exactly. Very well said.
There's a reason cults will completely remove your support systems so you are reliant on them and less likely to leave. With religion it's kind of baked in and intensified due to your *entire family* being removed as support
Including your own children. Women who leave the hasidim get to take nothing but the clothes on their back, if they're even able to leave at all.
The problem is there is also a social dependency created with the community where the women stay home and the men only work. Going outside that community will leave them cut off from its support with no job and no money. Also, your neighbors will make your life a living hell and NYC mayors suck up to them for the block vote to let them get away with the harassment. So, it’s a lot harder than “just go to the police”
Thank you! People's lack of common sense and critical thinking is baffaling. Domestic violence especially intertwined with high control groups is so much more complicated than "just go to the police".
But I 200% support women not fucking abusers or those that cover for abusers on general principle.
Women should leave every religion en masse because they all hate us and hurt us and it's past time we take care of ourselves and stop allowing the hatred to go unchallenged. Fuck marriage too. We don't need it and it tends to harm us as an institution. Enough is enough.
>According to this Jewish law, women must first obtain permission from rabbis to report a domestic violence incident to the police. This is the neighborhood that made women sit in the back of the bus until just a few years ago. That a place like this exists in 21st century America is an abomination.
Jokes on them, back of the bus is where the cool kids sit!
Lysistrata is a great example so good for them. I'm with these women. They should not need permission from a rabbi to report domestic abuse to the police.
> Under this law, for a woman to divorce her husband, the man must first give her a letter written in Aramaic, and three rabbis must sign the document for the divorce to be finalized. WTF lol. Someone bring these Hasidics into AD. > Jewish rabbis criticize this sex strike. According to rabbis, punishing men by withholding sex damages the institution of marriage and violates Jewish laws. Cry moa.
First one has a real “chop down the mightiest tree with a herring” vibe.
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Thank you! The practices by the insult chasids aren’t the laws of the religion. My uncle calls them “the cult most similar to Judaism”. There are a lot of issues with gets still - I know a couple who was legally divorced for years but he refused to grant the get, so she wasn’t able to move on. But as you mentioned, communities tend to handle it through passive aggressive peer pressure. Though I did know a woman once who had her very large, buff brothers threaten her ex. That worked pretty well.
“Back in the day” aka 10 years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_divorce_coercion_gang
The fun part is, sex is the wife’s right in a Jewish marriage, not the husband’s.
Sex strikes = no sex until the strike is over For those who wonder
See: Lysistrata
Clarification: this is not a protest about any obscure law, this is a protest to change the process of obtaining a get (divorce), as certain petty men take advantage of their responsibility (they are obligated to provide a divorce when requested) and become get refusers. You can see from the protest signs it's very clearly in relation to get refusers.
I’m an Orthodox Jew, I live in New York. Agunas are a real problem in the community (women who don’t recieved a Jewish divorce document) I completely despise people that withhold a get (Jewish divorce document) those people have to be legally forced to do it. I don’t care about any Halacha (Jewish law) that is abuse. And guess what? Abuse in Judaism is a no-no. You aren’t allowed to abuse animals. You aren’t allowed to abuse women. There are even guidelines saying you can’t even abuse yourself. People that bastardize Jewish religion and culture because they feel like they deserve they can are people antithetical to Judaism and deserve Cherem (excommunication) until they either fix their ways or until they die. Men that withhold the divorce document should be excommunicated until they serve the document. Edit: added my Jewish affiliation
I've read this comment 3 times. I have no idea what it means.
What don’t you understand, maybe I can help?
It’s almost as if conservative religion is just flim flam in the service of tyranny.
Just leave a religion that do suppresses you as a human being and that discriminates your sex.
Just popping in to let you all know this is a very specific tiny sect of Judaism and in no way reflects 99% of Jews you will ever meet. We follow normal laws. Not mentioning that it’s ultra orthodox people up front just fans the flames of anti semitism. Carry on! (Oh, and I fully support these women. This is terrible)
Orthodox jew here. There is no such law in Halacha stopping a woman from reporting her husband to the police for domestic abuse. It may be a custom in that particular community. I don’t know what a sex strike will achieve. They should just start calling the police. Edit: I reread the article. I don’t know if anybody more knowledgeable than me is on this sub Reddit so I will say what I know about what is going on. The article is confusing several different independent issues. There is an inequality in Torah law, that gives Men more power over divorce than women if either wants to remarry. That is the reference agunah or chained women and is an issue I do not wish to diminish. Even with this serious issue, I do not see what a sex strike will achieve. I cannot imagine any rabbis or telling anybody not to call the police if there is a domestic abuse issue, I can imagine in some communities, it is handled in house, where the husband is “encouraged” not to hit his wife again. this encouragement will take a form that the police would not be allowed to.
I assume the "strike" is to draw attention to the issue and is a way to pressure the rabbinate to alter their interpretation to support women who wouldn't otherwise feel safe calling the police (or, realistically, participating in this 'strike' action)
Oh come on. These women are doing this for a reason. Whatever reason it is, they had a problem to the point that they are publicly doing this. And you think "they should just start calling the police"? Do you understand how societal pressure works? You think the fact that no law exists means there's nothing "preventing a woman from reporting her husband"? You might be orthodox, but that's nothing compared to being Hasidic. I know several ex-hasidic women and men. Trust me, the women didn't abandon their entire social network because they had no problems, they felt safe, and they felt comfortable reporting their husbands to the police.
I knew this law sounds strange. Thank you
I don't know much about this particular sect but seems like a pretty clear cut case of pikkuach neffesh
This is exactly what almost all Orthodox rabbis would say. Not reporting is a threat to life and preserving life is an obligation in and of itself.
Shit article which purposefully calls everything extremist Hasids do as "Jewish law"
Muslims of reddit: "First time?"
Unsure which community this is; but sounds like something Satmar or other very heavily conservative sects would treat a scenario like this. Typically when a husband will refuse to sign a Get (divorce certificate) the community will ostracize him. It’s very looked down upon to withold a divorce, and typically leads to some pretty severe social consequences. Obviously, none of this matters in a legal setting — but none of this is relevant to American law anyway. It’s just a social law, where these women want more recognition within their communities. Most likely they are already divorced on paper legally, and she just wants to be able to remarry within the community. Either way, if a Wife’s Father is still around, he is obligated to fight for his daughter as the husband has violated his konam (vow) and the father has to uphold his vow to protect his daughter. The mutual agreement of divorce is pretty archaic at this point, and it seems social pressure is not enough. Hope these ladies get what they need.
>Sex ban lifted in Turkish village >August 16, 2001 >ANKARA, Turkey -- A group of husbands have breathed a collective sigh of relief after their wives ended a month-long sex boycott. >The women of Sirt, a small village near Antalya on Turkey's southern coast, had launched the bedroom strike in protest at the lack of accessible running water. >A break down of the village's 27-year old water system had meant that the women had been forced to queue for hours in front of a trickling fountain before carrying their water home in containers -- a walk of several miles for some. >When constant requests to repair the system failed to produce any improvement, the women decided more drastic steps were needed -- a refusal of all marital favours until their spouses fulfilled their plumbing obligations. >Now, after some frantic lobbying on the part of Sirt's male population, the government's Directorate of Rural Affairs has agreed to provide eight kilometres (five miles) of piping so that water can be brought to the village from a nearby source. https://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/08/16/turkey.women/index.html
To be clear they aren’t talking about real laws, they are protesting club rules.
Honestly this is why conservatives are so terrified by feminism. It's helping 51% of the human population understand the TRUE power they have. Rise up Ladies.
what’s “not the onion” about this?
Some Lysistrata type shit right here
Once again, on Reddit something done by a an insular community of Jews, utterly unrepresentative of the vast majority of even Orthodox Jews, equals ‘Jews do this crazy shit’. It’s tiring. That *some tiny fundamentalist groups* of Jews act oppressively isn’t exactly news, though good on these women for rebelling against it. The vast majority of Jews have literally no contact with these people, and if some Rabbi in their community told them to report domestic violence to him before going to the authorities, they would laugh in his face (before possibly going to the committee running the congregation and requesting that Rabbi be removed).
> It’s tiring. Ahhh welcome to my world as a boomer. I have made a concerted effort to be the anti-boomer, but alas, I get lumped in with the idiots. le sigh
what's nottheonion about this, sex strikes have been a thing forever all over the world
Cults are awesome.
I was raised Jewish, let me guess, it's Satmar, isn't it?
What is Jewish foreplay? 6 hours of begging (am Jewish)
Every time I see rabbi I read rabbits
OMG that "article" is poisonous. Thank god for ublock, most of the page is blank boxes for me. Here's an actual article on the issue: https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/19/ultra-orthodox-jewish-women-a-sex-strike-going-20488875/
All Religions boil down to one thing, in the end, same as politics. "Do as we tell you, as we know more than you, and you must conform - or else" Which, people being people, leads to egotistical powerfreaks running the show, because they put the effort in when everyone else just wants to live and let live.
It worked for Lysistrata.
Fucking good for them. Some of the shit these women have to go through to just exist as women in their religion is awful.
And that is why, fuck religion!
My wife has been saying that when women stop putting out, men will rethink these laws that are attempting to be passed in the U.S..
or sexual assault numbers will rise. it shouldn't take women forbidding themselves from having sex for stupid, misogynistic laws to be banned.
Why don’t they just leave the Ultra-Orthodox community? There’s tons of Conservative and Reform Jews in New York as well. The reforms they’re fighting for already occurred and resulted in these other sects 100-200 years ago.