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Hasidic Rabbi Sentenced to Ten Years for Beating Men into Divorcing Their Wives

In the Orthodox Jewish community, the ability for a woman to get divorced is at the whim of her husband. We spoke to a expert about this misogynistic tradition and why violent force is sometimes a woman's only way to freedom.
Photo by Brian McEntire via Stocksy

Earlier this week, 70-year-old Mendel Epstein became the last of ten rabbis to receive a sentence for kidnapping and torturing Orthodox Jewish men into granting their wives religious divorces. Epstein has been sentenced to ten years in prison for conspiracy to commit kidnapping.

The New Jersey rabbi and his co-conspirators were arrested in 2013 following an FBI sting operation that confirmed the rabbi's practice of kidnapping and beating recalcitrant men—using tools like cattle prods and stun guns—until they agreed to give their wives a get, the document that is required in the Orthodox Jewish community for a woman to divorce her husband and remarry. Without one, a woman is essentially trapped.

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"Basically what we are going to be doing is kidnapping a guy for a couple of hours and beating him up and torturing him and then getting him to give the get," Epstein said during a recorded conversation.

While Epstein envisioned himself a hero for women's rights, the rabbi provided his brand of last resort "help" to women at a cost, according to court documents, charging thousands of dollars for his services. Indeed, as Fraidy Reiss—an activist and former member of the Hasidic community in Brooklyn who fled her abusive marriage—tells Broadly, Epstein was simply taking advantage of a broken and misogynistic system in which women are largely powerless.

We spoke to Reiss about Epstein, leaving her faith, and helping other women leave stifling marriages through her organization, Unchained At Last.

BROADLY: In The Forward, a magazine about Jewish culture, you talked about being married at 19 through a matchmaker. Is that the pretty much the standard age for marriage in the Orthodox Jewish community? It seems very young.
Fraidy Reiss: Yeah. By 20 you're already considered old. In more Hasidic circles, 17 is the standard age that girls get married. In less Orthodox circles, it starts as early as 18, and the goal is to be married by 20. I was started feeling the pressure to get married long before I was 19. Typically by 18 a girl is already under immense pressure, and by 19 it's like, "Hello? What's taking so long?"

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Marriages by matchmakers are absolutely common in the Orthodox community—it doesn't even have to be by a professional matchmaker. My marriage, for example, was arranged by my mother's first cousin. Usually a matchmaker is just someone who is good at introducing people to each other, and if the match goes through then they get paid like, $1000. There's a lot of money in it.

When did you realize that you didn't want to be married to the man you were arranged to?
After one week I realized he was violent. It was right from the beginning. My initial reaction was not divorce; I just thought, What now? Divorce is very difficult in the community I was in and [in] a lot of communities that practice arranged or forced marriage. There's a lot of pressure, especially on women, to keep a marriage intact, even at the price of her safety and happiness. Also, under Orthodox Jewish law, a woman doesn't have the legal right to divorce her husband. Eventually I ended up just leaving the community entirely because I didn't want to deal with trying to obtain a get. The whole process is misogynistic. And when my husband asked me for a get to remarry, I refused.

It was an extremely difficult decision to leave. It's a very insular community, and I grew up very cut off from most things; I never had any meaningful contact with anyone who wasn't Orthodox Jewish before I left. Everyone I knew in the community told me not to leave, and my family shunned me when I did. They consider me dead now.

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If a woman wants a divorce in the Orthodox Jewish community, how can she obtain one?
Only a man can grant a divorce. If a woman wants to get a divorce, she can ask her husband for a get, or a religious divorce. The husband has the right to say no or put any demands that he wants on her, which typically involve money. A man can make his wife, or usually her father, pay him in exchange for a get. He can ask for whatever he wants—the marital home, custody of their kids, anything—and a woman in that situation has no legal recourse. If a man flat-out denies a woman a get, then she becomes an agunah, which is literally a chained woman. She's chained forever to that marriage and is not allowed to remarry.

Does a man need any sort of permission to get a divorce?
If a man grants a get and his wife doesn't accept it, he has options, unlike a woman. He can get permission from 100 rabbis to remarry. That sounds like a lot, but it's not as difficult as it sounds. Everyone around is a rabbi. A man just has to go a Bar Mitzvah and pass a piece of paper around, basically. Though it's extremely uncommon for women to refuse a get. When I did it, the rabbis were very confused.

Is there a movement within the Orthodox Jewish community to abolish this process?
My response to it was to just leave, but there are women who have stayed and are trying to change the process from within. There's an organization called Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA) that helps women get a Jewish divorce, and there's also the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance. Unfortunately, so far, I haven't seen much change.

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Are coercive actions a standard method that women have to resort to to get a divorce? Is the situation really that bad?
My personal observation, based on my experience in the Orthodox community, is that there's not a lot of incentive for a man to grant his wife a get hassle–free. It's a very corrupt system. If men know they can benefit financially from their divorce, why would they do it for free? That's become the standard. When I was in the community, I had friends who were also seeking divorces, and I don't know any who didn't pay a really steep price for her get. It's evil.

For women who have husbands who come up with all these unreasonable demands that they can't meet—or for women who do give into the demands and the husband only asks for more—they have almost no choice [but to use coercive methods]. Rabbis will come around to a woman who they know are in this situation, and they'll say something like, "I can help you get a divorce as well as the revenge you feel you deserve. All you have to do is give me $20,000." And you can't really blame the women for not being completely upset that a rabbi is going to beat their husbands with a cattle prod. They're being trapped and extorted!

In an interview with CNN during Rabbi Mendel Epstein's trial, Epstein's lawyer told the reporter that his client "still firmly believes that he was protecting women's rights and was protecting the agunahs and the families." It seems like rabbis who offer this type of "help" are really just taking advantage of women without very many options.
Exactly. They're absolutely backed up against a wall.

How does Unchained At Last help Orthodox women out of their marriages?
Our clients come from many different cultures and religions. Certainly some of them come from the Orthodox Jewish community, but we also have other clients in arranged marriage situations. Our policy for our clients in the Orthodox Jewish community is that we help them get a civil divorce, and we help them to understand that they have rights in a civil court. They don't have to go to a beth din [rabbinical court] and be mistreated because they're women. They can go to a civil court where they're treated as equals and then get a get separately, if they feel that they still want that. Some women are uncomfortable with this because under Orthodox Jewish custom you're supposed to go first to a beth din and then go to a civil court. A lot of women are afraid to disobey that; a lot of beth dins won't help you get a get if you go to a civil court first. But I always say to women that that rule is laughable because they won't help you either way.

How long has it been since you've been out of the community? Would you say that leaving was ultimately the best choice?
It's been eight years. I'm fully acclimated now. I now know that hamburgers are not made out of ham, I've discovered who the Beatles are, and I now know what size I am in pants. It was quite a process and traumatic journey getting out, but I can tell you with certainty that my life is one million times better and happier now.

Some people can thrive living in an insular community where there's a rule for every second of the day. But for people like me—who don't want to have rules dictating what they have to do, when to wake up, when to go to the bathroom—it's a painful life [in the Orthodox community]. I'm grateful everyday that I'm out of it and I survived. I'm really glad that my girls, who are seven and 11, have their whole lives ahead of them and will have opportunities that I never had.