Fight for Chained Wives Goes Online

By Talia Lavin for The Jewish Daily Forward

The websites look like those of political prisoners.

Under the caption “Free Tamar Now!” there is a close-up photo of demonstrators with signs and megaphones. “Stop the abuse,” one sign reads.

But FreeTamar.org and the Free Gital Facebook group seek emancipation not from literal bars or chains. Rather, they seek liberation for agunot — so-called chained women being denied religious writs of divorce from their husbands.

Under Jewish law, divorces are not final until the husband gives his wife the writ, known as a get. If a husband refuses, the woman cannot remarry; any intimate relationship with another man is considered adultery. Children born from such a relationship are considered mamzers, a category of illegitimacy under Jewish law that carries severe restrictions.

Under Jewish law, women chained to recalcitrant husbands have little recourse, and the problem of agunot long has plagued the Jewish community. In one recent case that garnered broad media attention, the FBI arrested several men in New York who allegedly kidnapped and tortured recalcitrant husbands — for fees of tens of thousands of dollars.

A more common and increasingly popular tactic agunot advocates are adopting to try to compel recalcitrant husbands to relent and grant their wives gets is the public shaming campaign.

Gital Doderson, 25, of Lakewood, N.J., brought her divorce fight to the front page of the New York Post on Tuesday. After three years of pursuing but failing to obtain a get from her husband, Dodelson wrote, “I’ve decided to go public with my story after exhausting every other possible means. The Orthodox are fiercely private, but I am willing to air my dirty laundry if it means I can finally get on with my life.”

The Organization for the Resolution of Agunot, known as ORA, is at the forefront of a campaign to harness public remonstrance as a means to thwart recalcitrant husbands.

Using the slogan “Get-refusal is a form of domestic abuse,” ORA, in cooperation with Yeshiva University, has organized rallies outside the homes of recalcitrant husbands like Albert Srour and Ephraim Ohana. Their website features a “Recalcitrant Husbands” page that prominently displays the images of husbands who refuse gets to their wives.

When Aharon Friedman, an aide to U.S. Representative Dave Camp, refused his wife, Tamar, a get, ORA took out a billboard ad on the DC Metro, with his face emblazoned against a demand to “Give a get now!”

“If and when we’ve exhausted all amicable means of resolving the situation, we will try to get him ostracized, and publicize his name,” Rabbi Jeremy Stern, executive director of ORA, told JTA.

The jury (or beit din) is still out on whether this tactic will prove more effective than other attempts to sway recalcitrant husbands. What is certain is that the spate of recent media coverage about agunot is drawing broad attention to a problem more often contained within certain segments of the Jewish community.

Fun and Quirky Thanksgivukkah Gift Guide

By Maggie Goldman
Thanksgiving isn’t traditionally known as a gift-giving holiday, but on Thanksgivukkah, all the rules change! It’s customary (although certainly not required) to exchange presents on Hanukkah, which means that this Nov. 28, American Jewish families will have until nightfall to turn their tryptophan-induced exhaustion into gift-induced excitement.

Can’t figure out what to get for your loved ones? We’ve got a few quirky ideas for you!

Schlep Tote

If you’ve got to lug stuff around, you might as well do it in style—in Jewish style, that is! This 38-centimeter by 15-inch canvas bag comes in black, white and hot pink. You can even have your giftee’s name or other personalized text printed on the back at no additional cost. (Barbara Shaw Gifts, $25)


Padded Matroyshka-Print iPad Case

Harken back to the Old Country while staying decidedly modern and fun with this handmade gadget case made of a colorful nesting doll print. (XSBaggageandCo, $32)



Continue for more gift ideas.

How Praying Together Can Offer Hope—Even When Prayers Aren’t Answered

Every night, I took part in a prayer group to help a sick child and her family. But I’m the one who ended up transformed.

By Rebecca Wolf for Tablet Magazine

When my daughter’s classmate Hannah was diagnosed with cancer and started chemotherapy, all the parents of fifth-graders in our Jewish day school banded together to try to help her family. One mother offered to organize a carpool to take Hannah’s siblings to their after-school activities if her parents were still busy at the hospital; another said she’d arrange delivery of home-cooked dinners; someone else would pick up basic necessities like toilet paper and milk.

Hannah’s family politely refused. “What would help the most,” they said, “is for you to pray.” Hannah’s aunt organized a nightly conference call where she would lead a recitation of psalms for as long as Hannah needed them.

Although I have been a religious person all my life, their request made me nervous. What seemed daunting wasn’t the prospect of extracting myself from my children’s homework and bedtime routines for 15 minutes each night, but rather that someone thought my prayers could make a difference. It was so much easier for me to commit to cooking lasagna than to praying with fervor.

***

My complicated feelings about prayer began when I was 12. I came home from school one September day to find the phone ringing incessantly. My mother was on the line, calling to say that her father—my Zayde—had suffered a massive heart attack. He was in the ICU and things looked bad. “What should I do?” I asked my mother. “Just pray!” she shouted, and slammed down the phone. I locked myself in my room. Despite being enrolled in religious day school, I couldn’t think of anything to say. “Please God,” I whispered, “Don’t let Zayde die.” An hour later my mother called back to say he was dead. For years I felt plagued by guilt that if I had just prayed a bit harder, things might have been different.

As an adult, I now recognize that sometimes our prayers are answered and sometimes they are not, regardless of how intensely we pray. I believe in God and pray every morning, mostly to acknowledge there is a higher power above me. Most of the time, though, I mumble the words without much regard for their meaning. I tend to focus harder on my prayers when something is wrong than when everything is going well, even though I’m unsure my piety (or lack thereof) actually affects the outcome. In Hannah’s situation, however, what I felt about prayer wasn’t really the point; if her family believed that it could save her, who was I to argue?

Continue reading.

Celebrating Thanksgivukkah, a Once-in-a-Lifetime Holiday

By Kate Bigam; Reprinted from ReformJudaism.org

Start basting your turkey and spinning your dreidels, because for the first and only time in our lives, Thanksgivukkah is coming! This November 28th, when American Jews gather around the Thanksgiving table to talk about the things we appreciate and to dig into elaborate feasts, we’ll have another holiday to celebrate, too: Hanukkah.

This year, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah will overlap, producing an anomalistic hybrid holiday that’s come to be known as Thanksgivukkah. There are conflicting reports about whether it’s happened before and when it will happen again, but most mathematicians and calendar experts seem to think this is the first occurence. Although the holidays would’ve overlapped in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln didn’t formally establish the holiday of Thanksgiving until two years later, in 1863, which means that 2013/5774 will mark the first Thanksgivukkah in history.

Just how rare is this holiday? Some reports say Thanksgivukkah will happen again in 2070; others, like Jewish physicist and calendar expert Jonathan Mizrahi, say it won’t repeat itself until 79811. Either way, it’s safe to say that for most of us, Thanksgivukkah is, indeed, a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Now let’s address the big, practical question: How do we celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime holiday?

Glad you asked! Our recipes, ecards, and other resources will help you make this the Thanksgivukkah the best yet – er, the only one yet (and ever). Of course, we know that food is a major part of Jewish holidays and secular American holidays, and because this hybrid holiday has plenty to offer in the way of creative cuisine, many (most!) of our resources focus on food.

Ready to start planning your celebration? Start here:

Continue reading.