ILIFE IN ISRAEL

JOEL REBIBO

Special to The Jewish News

F

fifteen years ago, Bar-
bara married the man of
her dreams. What he
lacked in the social graces her
parents had thought were so
important, he more than
made up for in his scholarship
and commitment to Judaism.
But today, Barbara, or Bracha
as she is known by her friends
in Jerusalem, is having se-
cond thoughts.
"I knew what I was getting
into," recalls Bracha, an at-
tractive woman who, after six
children, still retains a petite
figure. "But now I feel I need
more out of the relationship."
Bracha was raised in a
modern-Orthodox home in
New Jersey and after com-
pleting high school she came
to Israel to study at the "in"
seminary that all of her
friends were attending. She
stayed for the optional second
year of the program, then
decided that the U.S. was a
nice place to visit but no
place to bring up a family.
By the time she was 20, she
had met and married an
American who was studying
at one of Jerusalem's premier
yeshivot, and settled in an
ultra-Orthodox community in
Jerusalem. Their lifestyle was
decidedly more observant
than that of their parents.
The first years were hard —
he continued to study day
and night and she gave birth
to six children while holding
onto two part-time jobs.
Though life is much easier
today — he is earning a
salary as a yeshiva rebbe and
the youngest child is four
years old and out of the house
until 1 p.m. each day —
Bracha feels that "something
is missing" from her
marriage.
Last year, nearly 20 percent
of Israeli couples divorced.
While the figure seems modest
by American standards, it
represents a 40 percent in-
crease in the past 10 years.
The Central Bureau of
Statistics doesn't distinguish
between secular and Ortho-
dox couples, but experts
suspect that marital misery
is just as common among the
ultra-Orthodox as it is among
the secular.
According to Jerusalem
psychologist Baruch Shulem,
Bracha is just one of many
women in the ultra-Orthodox
community who feel a need
for intimacy, which he defines
as "sharing a desire to give

38

FRIDAY, JULY 15,1988

Art By Mimi Palladino

Divorce,
Israeli-Orthodox
Style

Experts suspect that marital misery is just as
common among ultra-Orthodox couples as it is
among secular couples. But the Orthodox don't have
some of the coping mechanisms that are available to
the secular in times of stress.

without expecting in return."
Marriages appear to be
vulnerable after five years,
when the couple realizes that
the honeymoon is over and
sees the chinks in each other's
armor, and after 15 years,
when the woman is left with
an "empty nest" while the
husband is busy pursuing
success.
"The woman is usually fed
up with her husband and her
marriage," Shulem says. "She
wants more from the relation-
ship."
Women who were raised on
American television — with
American ideals of love and
romance — tend to be more
disturbed about a lack of
intimacy than those in the
extreme right of the ultra-
Orthodox spectrum.
Shulem, who received his
Ph.D. from Washington
University in St. Louis,
Missouri, headed a special
unit for couples in Bnei Brak,
an ultra-Orthodox communi-
ty outside rIbl Aviv, for three
years. He gives high marks to
the rabbis and their teachings
but is less generous in his
assessment of their followers.
"I've seen rabbis who are as
understanding of human prob-
lems as any people I've met
at the university or profes-
sionally," he says. "Their
perception of married life is
healthier and more realistic
than anything I've learned."
The problem, he says, is
with their disciples. "One of
the things that has always
pained me is to see guys who
will do 840 things to keep a
drop of milk from a piece of
meat but won't talk to their
wives. They will drive up to
Tiberias in the middle of the
night to help a lost soul, but
they won't take out the
garbage."
In part, the yeshiva, which
is the central force in the lives
of both American and Israeli
Orthodox boys from the age
of 13 and on, has encouraged
this distorted sense of
priorities.
"Yeshiva men are taught
weird things about women
that aren't positive," Shulem
says. "The message is 'Be
careful.
"The men are inherently in-
tellectual, analytical . . . The
women see the gestalt of
things, the spirit."
The women, on the other
hand, are given mixed
messages. As girls they are
taught that the home is their
place, but as adults they are
told that going to work is
fine. This leads to internal