Newsweek “Only three days into the marriage, I knew I made a terrible mistake.”
Gital Dodelson, 25, wrote those words about her 2009 marriage to Avrohom Meir Weiss in an explosive
essay in the
New York Post last week. [...]
Dodelson’s friends launched a website,
SetGitalFree.com, to help publicize her situation. A
Facebook page,
Free Gital: Tell Avrohom Meir Weiss to Give His Wife a "Get," has over
13,000 likes. Weiss’ side of the story, however, remains largely absent
from media reports. Newsweek has been unable to reach Weiss or his
family. However, Weiss’ father, Rabbi Yosaif Asher Weiss, spoke
exclusively to the
Staten Island Advance,
saying: “Our family is horrified by the vitriol, lies and hate that
permeate Gital's article… This is a very, very heart-wrenching and
ongoing dispute. We've been trying desperately to resolve this for a
long time. This has destroyed my family health wise and destroyed my
family financially.”
Dodelson’s story is not unique in the world of Orthodox Judaism, where
men hold all of the power when it comes to terminating marriages. [...]
“I consider this to be the most pressing issue facing the Orthodox
community in America,” says Rabbi Avi Weiss, the longtime leader of the
Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in New York. “It’s an outrageous
situation… If there is someone who is recalcitrant, they are not welcome
— I have actually escorted such people out of my synagogue, which is so
contrary to my work.”[...]
ORA, which has handled around 500 controversial get cases since its
founding in 2002, helped Dodelson organize two peaceful demonstrations
outside of Weiss’ home on Staten Island, the first in June 2012 and the
second a year later. The group’s tactics — a concoction of social,
communal and financial pressures that involve ostracizing a husband from
his community and publicizing his name online and in the media — assist
women who are often unable to advocate for themselves.
“Get refusal is the last stand of men who want to hurt their wives. It’s
the act of desperation: ‘You will never leave me,’” says Elana Maryles
Sztokman, executive director of JOFA, the
Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance.
“The moment of exit is the moment of greatest danger for abused women —
it’s the moment when some abusive men will take out a violent weapon
and try to kill their wives. In Judaism, men don’t need to take out a
gun. They can take out a get and say, ‘I will own you forever.’”[...]
“I don’t agree with people living their lives out in the public eye like
this, and using publicity to get something without everyone knowing all
of the facts,” says
HaDassah Sabo Milner, 40, a blogger for the
Times of Israel.
“You’ve got to think of the child. He’ll grow up and read vitriolic
posts by each camp. He’s an innocent in all of this,” she says, adding,
“I understand she’s totally desperate, and I get that, but at the end of
the day, the husband has to give his divorce of his own free will.” [...]
Orthodox Judaism is replete with the vestiges of bronze-age patriarchy, and change in the community takes time and consensus. [...]
“I’m waiting for the email to say that Avrohom gave her the get,” says
Shira Dicker, the publicist behind Dodelson’s Post article. “If we
succeed here, we will have used a 21st century solution — Facebook,
social media, the media — to combat a centuries-old law that is really
in need of change.”
