Women from some Orthodox Jewish communities in New York state, United States, are protesting against traditional rules governing divorce. These are religious rules that attribute a lot of power to the husband, and which in many cases do not allow women to end a relationship, even after obtaining a civil divorce.
The protest began several weeks ago to support a 29-year-old woman, Malky Berkowitz. Berkowitz’s family lives in Kiryas Joel, a traditionalist community of around 38 thousand inhabitants inhabited almost exclusively by Orthodox Jews, about eighty kilometers from New York. For four years Berkowitz has been trying to convince her husband to grant her a religious divorce: so far, however, her requests have been unsuccessful, and she is forced to continue living with him.
Communities like Kiryas Joel are entirely subject to US law. At the same time, however, they welcome people who strictly follow the customs dictated by Orthodox Jewish law, and who live separately from the rest of the population. This is, however, a minority within the American Jewish communities, who live in a more secular way and are not physically separated from the rest of the population.
According to Adina Sash, an Orthodox Jewish woman from Brooklyn who is the main organizer and spokesperson for the divorce protest, Berkowitz’s case is not an isolated one. “In the last year alone we have protested to grant religious divorce to eighteen women,” she said. This protest, she clarified, is aimed at supporting “all Orthodox women, wherever they live”, and to denounce a problem that is “systemic”.
According to Jewish law, a religious marriage can only be dissolved when the husband gives his wife a document, called get, which in fact is a kind of permission that certifies that the woman is free from her husband’s authority and can meet and marry other men. If this does not happen, for the community the couple remains legally married, even if the divorce has already been recognized by a civil court.
When an Orthodox Jewish couple gets married, they celebrate a civil ceremony as well as a religious one. But due to their religious beliefs, civil divorce is not enough for women to truly consider the marital union dissolved. Get the get it is important because it is prescribed by the religious authorities and because, trivially, it is part of the duties that Orthodox women feel they must respect.
Furthermore, religious divorce is essential for them to be free women and not ostracized within the communities in which they live.
A woman who wants a divorce, but can’t get the get, is not independent, cannot remarry and cannot have children with another person. Women in this situation remain stuck inside a religious marriage that they cannot abandon: in Jewish tradition they are called agunotthat is, literally wives “in chains”.
It is a practice that can easily lead to abuse: it can happen that a man exploits the get as a weapon of blackmail against the wife, for example asking in exchange for a sum of money, custody of the children, or even to force the wife not to have relations with other men.
It is a problem common to many Orthodox communities. An association was created in Israel, Yad La’ishawhich deals with supporting women who find themselves in this situation (and who according to the same organization all over the world there would be more than 2,400 each year). In the United Kingdom, do not grant the get it is considered a crime.
But in the United States, where according to the Pew Center 5.8 million Orthodox Jews live and where religious communities are guaranteed great autonomy, the problem is more complicated: the civil authorities are not very interested in the problem (given that, from the point of view of the state, the divorce occurred, and the woman is free to leave her husband) and the religious authorities, made up exclusively of men, rarely decide to intervene.
So, often, women who want a divorce have to organize themselves and invent methods to persuade their husband to grant the divorce get. Often these are peaceful methods of pressure, but not always: in 2015 in New York two men, Mendel Epstein and Binyamin Stimler, were convicted of organizing a group who kidnapped and beat recalcitrant husbandswith the aim of convincing them to consent to religious divorce.
Adina Sash explained that, to support Malky Berkowitz, activists organized protests in several Orthodox communities around New York. They have also begun a “sex strike,” refusing to have sex with their husbands until Berkowitz gets a divorce.
Jewish tradition prohibits intercourse during menstruation. At the end of the cycle, Orthodox women must immerse themselves in a mikvah, a ritual bath, before having intercourse with your husband. Sash urged women to refrain from mikvah, exploiting the rules of purification to refuse marital sex; or to refuse sexual relations during the traditional rest on Saturday, considered particularly important.
Sash explained how, due to the very nature of the initiative, it is difficult to have precise figures on how many women are participating in the strike. According to her, this strategy serves to give visibility to the protest, but it is also a way to put pressure on the men of the community, and convince them in turn to actively support Berkowitz and the others agunot.
The idea of using sex as a means of protest has attracted much criticism from activists. Hershel Schachter, a prominent American Orthodox religious leader, he said in a letter that “suggesting such a tactic is a recipe for disaster.” Sash also explained that he is regularly the victim of threats and intimidation.
The right to divorce, for Sash, is part of a broader issue, which concerns the role of women within their community. Although the rules vary, Orthodox Jewish women are usually subject to many restrictions: they must dress chastely (for example, avoiding skirts that reveal the knees), shave their heads, and wear wigs in public. Marriages are usually arranged by families when the spouses are just adults and do not know each other.
Sash argues that even if the rules don’t change, using sex as a means of protest serves to introduce a discussion about consent and sexual intercourse experienced as obligation: «It’s a way to allow women to reassert control over their bodies. It’s also a way of telling our leaders that women are no longer playing their game.”