The Human Spirit: A Clenched Fist
November 10th, 2004
Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered after making a film that depicted the abuse of Muslim women within their society. The expos , and the brutal reaction, reinforce our negative feelings about a religion whose practitioners are hostile to us.
I suppose we should take satisfaction in the fact that Anat Zuria, whose latest film exposes the anguish of Jewish women, doesn't need a bodyguard. Sentenced to Marriage (Mekudeshet) even won the Wolgin Prize for best documentary at this year's Jerusalem Film Festival.
But the film elicits anything but ethnic pride.
Watching it in an audience of observant Jews in Jerusalem made me feel ashamed as a Jew, doubly ashamed as a religious Jew, and humiliated as a woman. I cringe to think of the reactions at film festivals in Biarritz, Prague, Munich and New York.
Zuria brought her camera inside the halls of the rabbinical courts so that we could listen in to the degradation of women seeking divorces from abusive, promiscuous husbands. She concentrated on the story of three women, and of their pro bono female advocates at Yad L'isha � the Max Morrison Legal Aid Center and Hotline sponsored by Ohr Torah Stone.
The central story is that of Tamar, a beautiful Israel-born woman with doe-brown eyes. She had finished her army service and was studying industrial design in Jerusalem. In the evenings, Tamar pursued her spiritual interests by attending classes and lectures. She was surprised and flattered when the charismatic Jerusalem rabbi whose popular Torah lessons she attended phoned her to suggest a marriage match. The young man in question had peculiarities, but she rationalized them as the side effects of a deeply committed religious and spiritual nature.
When he called her out of her college classroom to give her flowers, she saw this as an expression of overpowering love.
Soon after their marriage, only the overpowering part remained. He insisted she drop out of school. The kitchen was locked lest she eat the cheese that was meant only for him. Her labor pains, he railed, were punishment for a lack of respect for her husband. She was locked in the apartment. When the baby became the object of his lunacy, she knew she had to get away. After the birth of their second child, she planned an escape to her parents' home. Her husband found her, beat up her father, and was about to kidnap the baby when the police arrived.
And so Tamar's miserable acquaintance with the rabbinical courts began, like the intifada, about four years ago. She's still linked in holy matrimony.
Two days after seeing the movie, I met Tamar.
"I used to think that only death would release me from my suffering," she said. She's 29. We were both attending an evening of tribute marking the seventh anniversary of Yad L'isha. What a bittersweet event.
Yad L'isha's female rabbinical court advocates, themselves relative newcomers, have facilitated some 300 divorces, but the situation remains dire. Thousands of Jewish women are waiting for divorce, chained within a draconian system that fosters extortion and exploitation.
For years, Ohr Torah Stone chancellor Rabbi Shlomo Riskin has called for a more radical approach � the establishment of a separate court with the power to annul marriages � but that hasn't happened. Women's organizations have fruitlessly entreated the rabbinate to make prenuptial agreements routine, with built-in fines for intransigence in granting divorce. The Knesset has put more teeth in sanctions that can be levied against a recalcitrant husband, but dayanim think twice and thrice before applying them.
Rabbi Eliahu Ben-Dahan, director of the rabbinical court, followed Rabbi Riskin on the evening of tribute program. Ben-Dahan's beard is turning white. We're growing old with him, I thought; we who have long bewailed the injustice of the rabbinical courts, and he telling us of the improvements.
Rabbi Ben-Dahan had ostensibly come to praise the advocates, not to bury them, but complained that Yad L'isha � literally a "helping hand to a woman" � was becoming a fist. His word choice in the context of the divorce struggle was a particularly unfortunate one. Rabbi Ben-Dahan, I was told, was remonstrating against Yad L'isha's new and brilliant practice of suing for civil damages in family court, and also passing on the rabbinical court's displeasure over the women's cooperation with the filmmaker.
Tamar is trying to get on with her life. She has gone back to school. She and her children are living with her parents. Yad L'isha continues to provide legal services. Mevoi Satum, another Jewish women's aid organization, provides financial, practical and emotional support. Hadassah College has granted Tamar a full scholarship. Her best hope for divorce, she reckons, may come from the publicity generated by the film.
So if Mekudeshet makes us squirm, maybe it will also move us to action. Communities need to ostracize � no friends, no synagogue honors, and no phone calls � intransigent spouses. Rabbinical judges have to realize that the religious community � men and women both � want them to use the full range of their halachic options. Women are still a minority on the committee to appoint dayanim.
Lo ta'amod al dam re'echa. We are forbidden to stand by and do nothing.
