Since few days, the religious Jewish Internet is boiling hard on the mikvah strike. The details of the initiative started by Adina Sash aka Flatbush Girl, are getting more and more spicy - religious women do go to mikvah at the end of their period, this act permitting them to their husbands for sexual relationships - obliterating - with or without intention, Gd knows which is true - where did it start for.
Divorce is not only a goyishe recognition of the failure of a marriage. As long as there are halachic prescriptions about the circumstances of giving a get - a divorce according to the Jewish law - it involves that from immemorial times, divorce was a possibility of ending a marriage. There are many reasons to do it, some of them also halachically requested. The stigma associated with children of divorce - with lower chances to get married, as introduced by various shadchanim - and the refuse to accept abusive behaviors of men, some of them respected religious figures - may make people - women particularly - reluctant towards such a dramatic step. Also, the situation of agunot - women chained to their ex-husbands who are not willing to give them a get; according to the Jewish law, a man can marry another woman while still not officially divorced by his first wife, while the woman she cannot re-marry without a get, as her children with the new man may be further considered mamzerim, bastards - may discourage women to ask for divorce. Thus, the man can keep the control over the woman´s body, preventing her from starting a new life, re-marrying , being free...
Adina Sash, aka Flatbush Girl, is a smart and creative Jewish Orthodox woman, educated and mother of two. I follow her account for a very long time and I appreciate her unique personality. She shows that a Jewish Orthodox woman can wear proudly many hats in an open Orthodox Zionist way. She is part of a larger movement within the Orthodox Judaism of knowledgeable women who are decided to not allow extremist religious men randomly decide their fate, like Chochmat Nashim, pioneering among others against the erasure of women from the public space, without any halachic basis in this respect.
What Flatbush Girl and other organisations and individuals - mostly women, but not only - are fighting for - literally, as their vigils in the front of synagogues may esclate sometimes - is the injustice done to women. I can count on more than two hands the cases that I´ve heard about of women manipulated into staying with abusive men, or refused the get for the sake of ´honor´ and/or money rewards. Women threatened to be taken away the children from men - and their families. (Here is a beautiful visual essay by Frieda Vizel about her experience getting the get while leaving the Hasidic community.)
Malky Gold is waiting her get. Four years have passed and her ex-husband whose family is manipulating his mental weakness refuses to grant it to her. For Malky, and many other women like her - many waiting for more than ten years, or dying without being granted the get. This is a crisis that affects deeply the soul of the Jewish women and families.
In Israel, strict rules against get deniers are aimed to prevent such situations and reluctant men can even go to prison. But when they escape to galut, or men who are living in galut, cannot be forced as the local - non Jewish laws - do not have any previsions in this respect. The strike is extreme - the good point is that the discussion about marital relationships are becoming more talked about lately which is a very normal adult thing to do - but the situation requires such intervention. Men, women, people of good faith should get together to end this crisis. Until no more women are about to suffer an absurd manipulation of not-wise men, any mean should be used to challenge this situation. We can do more, men, women, people who could not accept this abuse against our mothers and sisters any more.
