Feminist anthropologists unite!
We visited the Rape Crisis Center for Religious Women today in our Israel seminar class, and it was VERY interesting. The Center is run by Orthodox women for Orthodox women (technically for everyone, but mostly the Orthodox call), and deals with rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence, suicide, and other "crisis" issues. They do educational outreach, talking to schools - K through 6 for boys and girls, and 7 through post-HS only girls - and they also talk to teachers and other educators.
What's fascinating was the ultra-Orthodox part. The hotline is run by "religious" women so the callers have someone who understands their culture, and can relate to the world that they come from. It's different than a secular crisis center in a number of ways. One, how they talk - they talk around the issue in schools, because they can't culturally come out and say "if a man touches you here here and here.." They are invited to speak in the Beit Yaacov system, the ultra-Orthodox girls' schools, and they have to respect the boundaries and modesty codes.
Two, it's unique in who they talk to - e.g. not just regular outreach, but they address the Orthodox counselors who talk to women (teenagers really) before they get married, the police (how do you speak to a 5 year-old ultra-Orthodox boy about sexual abuse? What do the Orthodox call body parts? How do you convince the parents to talk to you?). The center even gives lectures to various Orthodox rabbis about addressing these issues in their community.
The third interesting part was the issues that came up. For example: according to Jewish law, a woman can't have sex for the five days of her period, and the seven days after. One call was from a woman who said that she came home during her time of niddah, purity, and her husband ordered her to the mikvah (ritual bath, purifying her for intimacy after the days are up). She objected, saying it wasn't time yet. he said that he had counted for her, and it was time. She called the Crisis hotline, saying that not only had he taken away her "olam ha-ze" (earthly world of the present), but he had also taken away her "olam ha-ba" (heavenly world to come - since she broke the commandments).
Another call was about domestic violence. Oftentimes violence escalates when a woman is pregnant; since divorce isn't an option in the ultra-Orthodox world, the Center was able to intervene with this woman's rabbi so that she would be able to take birth control, and keep from conceiving.
The Center also has hotlines in Russian and Amharit, for the Ethiopian population. This matters not only in language but in culture too. E.g. one teenage girl had been raped by an adult man, and her Israeli prosecuting attorney told her to appear in court alone; it would gain the judge's sympathy and the man would get the maximum sentence. The attorney was right, and the man was put away for years in jail. But back home, the girl was ignored and devalued - the Ethiopian community figured that she must be lying, since her family didn't even show up to court to defend her. The cultural difference between the Israeli and Ethiopian mentality is huge.
I very much enjoyed the visit, and praise the woman who gave the lecture - she was direct, forthright, and broke all my stereotypes. And while I praise the Center for daring to talk about what usually lies unspoken, I still have a few issues as a whole. Ultra-Orthodox women now have somewhere to call, but what happens after they hang up? They live in a fishbowl community to an extent that the secular world has trouble imagining. Sure, the Orthodox woman who takes birth control thwarts her husband (whose goal is to have as many children as possible), but she's still married to him. A Battered Women's Shelter isn't an option. Agunot, women whose husbands won't grant them a divorce, abound, even *if* the men are threatened with excommunication from the community (see my posting last month about the sign on this). The Center most definitely helps with prevention of abuse, and helps adults pinpoint problems, but I wonder what it does for those who are in the throes of need - besides giving them someone to talk to. But then again, maybe that in itself is helpful. It's more than they ever had before.
Tangential from that, we had a wonderful speaker in the morning, an anthropologist who writes on ultra-Orthodox women. After finals I want to read her book, Educated and Ignorant. It's about how ultra-Orthodox women are trained to be satisfied and happy with their lives as wives as mothers, and how they deal with modernization and the contrast to the secular world.
What's fascinating was the ultra-Orthodox part. The hotline is run by "religious" women so the callers have someone who understands their culture, and can relate to the world that they come from. It's different than a secular crisis center in a number of ways. One, how they talk - they talk around the issue in schools, because they can't culturally come out and say "if a man touches you here here and here.." They are invited to speak in the Beit Yaacov system, the ultra-Orthodox girls' schools, and they have to respect the boundaries and modesty codes.
Two, it's unique in who they talk to - e.g. not just regular outreach, but they address the Orthodox counselors who talk to women (teenagers really) before they get married, the police (how do you speak to a 5 year-old ultra-Orthodox boy about sexual abuse? What do the Orthodox call body parts? How do you convince the parents to talk to you?). The center even gives lectures to various Orthodox rabbis about addressing these issues in their community.
The third interesting part was the issues that came up. For example: according to Jewish law, a woman can't have sex for the five days of her period, and the seven days after. One call was from a woman who said that she came home during her time of niddah, purity, and her husband ordered her to the mikvah (ritual bath, purifying her for intimacy after the days are up). She objected, saying it wasn't time yet. he said that he had counted for her, and it was time. She called the Crisis hotline, saying that not only had he taken away her "olam ha-ze" (earthly world of the present), but he had also taken away her "olam ha-ba" (heavenly world to come - since she broke the commandments).
Another call was about domestic violence. Oftentimes violence escalates when a woman is pregnant; since divorce isn't an option in the ultra-Orthodox world, the Center was able to intervene with this woman's rabbi so that she would be able to take birth control, and keep from conceiving.
The Center also has hotlines in Russian and Amharit, for the Ethiopian population. This matters not only in language but in culture too. E.g. one teenage girl had been raped by an adult man, and her Israeli prosecuting attorney told her to appear in court alone; it would gain the judge's sympathy and the man would get the maximum sentence. The attorney was right, and the man was put away for years in jail. But back home, the girl was ignored and devalued - the Ethiopian community figured that she must be lying, since her family didn't even show up to court to defend her. The cultural difference between the Israeli and Ethiopian mentality is huge.
I very much enjoyed the visit, and praise the woman who gave the lecture - she was direct, forthright, and broke all my stereotypes. And while I praise the Center for daring to talk about what usually lies unspoken, I still have a few issues as a whole. Ultra-Orthodox women now have somewhere to call, but what happens after they hang up? They live in a fishbowl community to an extent that the secular world has trouble imagining. Sure, the Orthodox woman who takes birth control thwarts her husband (whose goal is to have as many children as possible), but she's still married to him. A Battered Women's Shelter isn't an option. Agunot, women whose husbands won't grant them a divorce, abound, even *if* the men are threatened with excommunication from the community (see my posting last month about the sign on this). The Center most definitely helps with prevention of abuse, and helps adults pinpoint problems, but I wonder what it does for those who are in the throes of need - besides giving them someone to talk to. But then again, maybe that in itself is helpful. It's more than they ever had before.
Tangential from that, we had a wonderful speaker in the morning, an anthropologist who writes on ultra-Orthodox women. After finals I want to read her book, Educated and Ignorant. It's about how ultra-Orthodox women are trained to be satisfied and happy with their lives as wives as mothers, and how they deal with modernization and the contrast to the secular world.
posted by Michal at 1:04 PM
1 Comments:
"Fiddler on the Roof" is kinda kitchy, but the song Tradition, spells it out. The rules are set for each person in the family, and it you stray from the pattern, it all breaks down. It's so simple that it becomes complicated to try to dissect it. It works wonderfully as long as brainwashing holds.
Savta
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