Long Beach Jewish Life March, 2014 | Page 18

SPECIAL REPORT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

LBJL March 2014 | www.lbjewishlife.com

When Shalom Bayit is No Excuse

Domestic Violence

in the Jewish

Community

It sounds like sage advice. “Marry a Jewish man. They never get drunk and they never hit their wives.” The oft-repeated cliche makes Long Beach based therapist Ellen Goldsmith laugh, but not happily. Ms. Goldsmith did the pioneering research in identifying domestic abuse within the Jewish community thirty years ago. The results of her research were disturbing at the time, and things haven't gotten better in the intervening years.

Domestic abuse occurs in Jewish families at about the same rate as the general community – about 15%. And it occurs evenly across all Jewish denominations -- Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist. The same rate of abuse is even found among unafiliated Jews.

The bad news is that Jewish women tend to stay in abusive relationships 2 to 3 times longer than women in the general community. While non-Jewish women tend to stay in

relationships for 3-5 years, Jewish women stay from 7-13 years.

(Statistics from the Jewish Coalition Against Domestic Abuse)

The reason for Jewish women staying longer in abusive relationships is not clear. Some point to the concept of Shalom Bayit, domestic tranquility, which is a central ideal in Judaism. However, Ms. Goldsmith is quick to point out, "(Abuse) is a clear ground for Jewish legal divorce. But it puts the burden on the victim to step up and share their shame with others. We should never be asking a victim, Why do you stay? We should be asking the perpetrator, Why do you do this?"

Goldsmith and her research partner, Betsy Giller, first proposed measuring the prevalance of domestic abuse within the Los Angeles Jewish community in 1978 while they were graduate students in the Double Masters Degree Program offered by Hebrew Union College and USC. At first, their proposal was rejected, as the overriding sentiment at the time was that domestic abuse did not exist within the Jewish community. The young researchers persisted, and eventually made their case. Published in 1984, Goldsmith and Giller's research, Interfamilial Violence in the Los Angeles Jewish Community, shined the first light on what still remains a hot topic within the Jewish community.

Part of the problem in acknowledging that domestic violence occurs within the Jewish community just as it does outside of our community is that myths and misunderstandings still persist.