Dear Rachel,
Once again, I’ve visited Hell!
I’m sure you will recall that in my previous letters to you I related my having visited “hell-on-earth.” Last week, I was there once again and this most recent visit to geihenom has solidified my view that in many ways this is a man’s world which entitles so many men to be evil. Yet, no matter how one fights against this phenomenon, the ugly problem simply refuses to dissipate and the crime festers and grows.
The hell I visited then and most recently is Miklat – Bat Melech, the only women’s-shelter in Israel organized and created exclusively to house and protect the countless observant women who are abused, beaten and terrorized by their husbands. This is a one of a kind shelter which has the unique and unfortunate distinction of exclusively serving the needs of religious women who would otherwise never be able to escape the daily terror they are experiencing at the hands of sadistic animals.
The time has come, I believe, to expose in minute details the evil of such husbands by prominently advertising their names, addresses and the evil they are committing. It is time to pull back the veil and expose who they are and what they have done. The time has come for rabbonim to sip from the cup of courage and ostracize and ban these murdering husbands from every shul and community. It is time for dayonim to end the bakshish (graft) they receive from sadistic husbands in order to turn a blind eye to reality. They must end their “husband-is-always-right” attitude and get down to the urgent business of freeing our daughters from the clutches of evil husbands.
Ad mosai – how long must this ugly situation continue? Why is my daughter, or yours, or yours, automatically branded by these heartless usurpers of Torah authority as a moredes, unfit mother or mirsha’as, no matter what the true picture is – a truth they refuse to listen to? How much longer must our daughters suffer the abuse and degradation they receive from these corrupt and heartless dayonim who turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to their bitter cries and thus perpetuate the endless abuse by the hands of their husbands? How long?
Last week at the miklat, I met another young woman (20-21 years-old!) with a beautiful one-year-old daughter, whose short twenty-something years are tightly compacted with more beatings, terror and over-all mental abuse than most adults can ever imagine!
Married to a hypocrite (he dresses as a chareidi but keeps absolutely none of the Laws!), this girl became an immediate punching bag and the sponge for every imaginable abuse. Raised in a family where evil is considered a virtue, her pipsqueak husband enslaved his young wife (with his mother’s encouragement!) and turned her life into virtual hell. And it all began almost immediately after the wedding and continued in a non-stop pace for many months. The severe mental-abuse was only topped by the extreme physical cruelty visited on this young and innocent girl whose life quickly evolved into a nightmare – until literally extracted from the clutches of death by Bat-Melech.
I can go on and on, Rachel. I am seething with anger at the knowledge that prominent rabbonim are refusing to help this young child. I am furious in the mere knowledge that her suffering can easily end were some of these so-called rabbis to get up and face the responsibility they were mandated by the Torah they profess to hold.
They are liars, Rachel. They hide behind their mantel of false respectability while young women like this girl are brutally victimized, terrorized and broken.
And I seethe at the knowledge that weaklings like her husband are encouraged by this inaction and thus allowed to walk the streets with impunity and without the fear of retribution.
Rachel, I know you are very careful not to print in any articles any identifying clues that will expose the victims, culprits and those whose hands are muddy with guilt.
However, we should no longer avoid naming names in articles like this. I think it is high time to prominently advertise in details the names of some of these heartless individuals. Let the neighbors know the truth about the innocent looking criminal residing next door. I’m sure that they would be horrified if a known convict were to move next door and be in close proximity to their children. Knowing that the innocent looking, yeshivishe-dressed young-man next door is actually a brutal and sadistic wife beater ought to shake them up too.
Let us also once and for all take off the gloves and expose to the world what goes on between the four walls of many Batei Dinim and the stench that emanates from their distortion of our Torah. Let us once and for all start the ball rolling in exposing those fakes who call themselves rabbis, yet don’t know the meaning of the word.
Where are the strong willed individuals who will take matters into their own hands and do whatever is necessary to “explain” to the errant husband that he must release his prisoner? I will guarantee you, Rachel, that after “explaining” the rules to two or three of these brutes, the rest will fall quickly into line.
So many of our shackled daughters are being destroyed! Enough!
Isaac Kohn
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