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 "