It’s a movement to stop the schtup.
In a rare display of public protest, women in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community are railing against a traditional practice that makes it hard for married women to get a divorce– by going on a sex strike.
The collective action was sparked by the plight of Malky Berkowitz, an Orthodox woman in upstate New York whose husband has for years reportedly refused to grant her the religious document that would allow her to officially separate from him and remarry, according to organizer and influencer Adina Sash.
“It’s been four years and they’ve been trying to help free Malky from the clutches of a very toxic relationship that has multiple levels of coercive control,” Sash said in an interview. And they approached me and they said, ‘We need you to come out loudly and we need you to raise awareness,’”
Sash is a self-proclaimed Orthodox feminist and activist based in Brooklyn who often speaks out on her Instagram account, Flatbushgirl. She said this is not the first time the community has rallied around an “agunah” — a woman “chained to a dead marriage” — with a public pressure campaign.
Berkowitz wasn’t immediately available for comment.
In some cases, husbands can withhold that religious divorce document, called a ‘get,’ and wield it as a source of power over their wives. The get is a ceremonial document, often written in Aramaic, that is passed from a husband to his wife after a rabbinical court signs off on it.
A woman cannot enter a new relationship until she obtains that document – even if she is physically separated from her husband.
“I don’t believe that the law of the get was created to hold women as property,” Sash said. “It’s more about creating an intentionality about when men are leaving a relationship so that women are not left in a destitute status where they’re abandoned by men.”
Still, Sash said there is plenty of room for improvement in the ancient system, which is largely governed by…
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