Jewish
communities
begin to
acknowledge
that physical
and
emotional
abuse is real
in many
homes — and
must be
treated.
Opening
Bari Beckett describes what a
healthy relationship is:
• Not about lust, it's about
friendship first.
• Look at the whole picture ---
how people respect each other,
parental role models.
• If you are incomplete with
your parents, you cannot respect
your spouse.
• Take time to get to know
someone.
• Don't live with someone, it's
a cop-out. Marriage is commit-
ment. Especially women with
children, do not allow men to
sleep over.
• Don't yell back. When the
person's through, allow for a cool-
ing-off time, then take a walk and
talk or write a letter.
• Expressing your love with
spouse and children.
• Commit 100 percent. Both
partners should be equally com-
mitted.
• Heal your past relationships;
don't dwell on them.
LYNNE MEREDITH COHN
Scene Editor
D
omestic violence occurs in
the Jewish community as
much as it does elsewhere.
Rabbis and lay leaders
acknowledge such abuse is a persistent
problem and are vowing to do some-
thing about it. As a first step, they have
formed a link to a national organization,
the Shalom Task Force, to give access to
help.
Jewish law is adamantly opposed to
all forms of abuse. Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh
Weinreb, who heads Shomrei Emunah
in Baltimore and holds a doctorate in
psychology, says, "Within the Jewish
community, there is a problem with
physical abuse, but hopefully that's
rather limited. Emotional abuse is much
more far-reaching, and probably in
every relationship, there is a certain
amount."
HaLlchah (Jewish law) expressly pro-
hibits onaat devarim, or using words in
a hurtful way. "That includes reminding
a person about past misdeeds, name-
calling, belittling, speaking in a conde-
scending way or a way that's going to
bring a person to tears," said Weinreb.
"The Talmud is full of passages
which are very critical of people who are
9/4
1998
66 Detroit Jewish News
Healthy
Relationships
guilty of onaat devarim, particularly in a
marriage relationship."
But marriage is not the only place for
abuse. While dating, if you know what
to look for, you may be able to spot a
potentially destructive relationship
before it begins.
In dating, emotionally abusive behav-
ior may be more prevalent than physical
blows, says Janis Roszler, president of
Project Shalom, which links Detroit to
the Shalom Task Force hotline in New
York.
What to look for? "Lack of respect
for [you] as an individual, a slow
manipulation of money, the longer
they're dating the less freedom of being
able to make choices," she said.
Also, look at a potential spouse's
home life; abuse is often a learned
behavior.
Roszler tells the story of a young
woman who was close to becoming
engaged. She went with her prospective
fiancee to his parents' house for dinner
one night. During dinner, his father
asked his mother for a glass of water.
She was in the middle of an animated
conversation, so he repeated his request,
again interrupting her tale. Finally, the
father asked the mother to join him in
the kitchen, where "he proceeded to
slug her," Roszler recalls.
"The girl turns to her fiancee, and
said, 'Did you see that?' He said, 'But
he asked her three times!' She decided
not to marry him."
Abuse happens in Jewish relation-
ships as much as it happens in the rest
of the population, says Ellen Yashinsky,
director of the Windows Program at
Jewish Family Service. She says some
form of physical violence happens
against women in 19 percent of homes,
divided equally between Reform,
Conservative and Orthodox Jews.
In families where a woman is being
abused, children are 150 percent more
likely to be abused than in other fami-
lies, said Hede Nuriel, the Jewish direc-
tor of HAVEN, (Help Against Violent
Encounters Now), which serves
Oakland County survivors of domestic
violence, sexual assault and child abuse.
More than half of the children who
grow up in violent homes become the
subject of abuse.
Between 60 and 80 percent of batter-
ers were raised in violent families, said
sociologist Lenore Walker in The
Battered Woman's Syndrome. "Although
they say 'I'm never going to do what
my dad did to my mother,' they don't
learn alternative methods to deal with
rage, anger, frustration, not getting their
way," Nuriel said.
Sometimes, abuse is a way of control.
"You only have to hit a woman once to
get her under your control," NuriA said.
"Men of a higher socioeconomic class
are much more emotionally, psychologi-
cally and financially controlling, using
threats of physical violence, so a woman
lives in fear," she said. "For a long time,
they learned you can get what you want
if you slap someone around, and there
were no consequences.
Sometimes, "men do this because
they can — because of male privilege,
patriarchal society; men are taught that
they are above women from day one,"
said Yashinsky. "Usually when they get
angry, it's not anger that they're feeling
— it may be powerlessness, being reject-
ed, devalued — getting angry actually
gives someone a boost of power, but it's
momentary, doesn't last long, and then
usually it results in feelings of guilt and
shame. That's what creates this cycle of
abuse — a violent episode followed by a
"