By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Temple Beth Am’s Rabbi Jonathan Singer still seems a bit shy about the award he and his wife, Rabbi Beth Singer, received in late October from the King County Coalition Against Domestic Violence. After all, he explains, he was just doing his job.
“In the words of my wife,” he says, “we just got the award for doing what you’re supposed to be doing, and that is working with people, helping.” In this instance, he adds, it is a special group — “people who live with the reality of domestic violence in their lives, giving them tools and support… to help them find a way of changing their life path, getting out of unhealthy relationships or finding the support they need to repair the situations.” In his view, providing help and support to one another, he says “is something that we all should do, but it’s something I can do.”
One member of their congregation, who asked that her name not be used, recounted how that had manifested in her own life.
“I have been the beneficiary of their compassion, kindness, support and sound advice,” she says. “A few days after my husband’s arrest for two counts of domestic violence I received a call from my rabbi.” When he asked if she was all right the woman says she responded truthfully, “No.” As they talked she asked Rabbi Jonathan how he had come to call.
“A fellow congregant was concerned about you,” he said, “and suggested I look in on you.”
She says she was affected not only by his reaching out at a time of need, but by the climate the rabbis had created within the Beth Am community that empowered people “to look after one another and to alert their rabbi if they sense that something is amiss.”
The King County Coalition Against Domestic Violence is a consortium of individuals and nearly 40 organizations, ranging from Jewish Family Service, Refugee Women’s Alliance and the YWCA to the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Swedish Medical Center Perinatal Medicine Department and the Seattle Police Department’s Victim Support Teams. The organization’s mission is to end domestic violence “by facilitating collective action for social change.”
KCCADV strives to represent the diverse interests of domestic violence survivors, providing training, education and outreach for both professionals and the general public. This was the third year the coalition presented their “Take Action Against Domestic Violence Awards” in five categories: Community, Youth, Institutional Change, Workplace, and Faith, the category in which the Singers were recognized.
In addition to counseling individuals in the congregation, some of the ways Jonathan Singer says they have tried to begin the healing process through their positions at Temple Beth Am is by raising the issue from the bima themselves. They have also brought in speakers to make it clear that “this is an acceptable thing to talk about in our community — that it exists in our community just like in every other community.”
Laura-Lee Karp, who introduced the rabbis at the October 30 ceremony at the World Trade Center in downtown Seattle, says they have joined with others in the community to address the mistaken belief that domestic violence is less of a problem in Jewish households than in other communities.
“It’s something as a community and as a culture, that we’ve always swept under the rug. ‘Good Jewish men don’t do that,’” she says. “We’ve bought into our own stereotypes and that has worked against us.”
“Part of the mythos of our culture,” says Jonathan Singer, “is that Jewish men aren’t wife-beaters — aren’t involved in this kind of behavior. I think it was really a mistake on our part to engage in that myth, so that I can do something to correct it is important. When someone comes to you and tells you there is an illness in your community, the Torah tells us that you have to do what you can to help rid yourself of it and help prevent it’s spreading.”
One of the most potent speakers they have invited is Michelle Lifton, Jewish Family Service’s Domestic Violence Program Coordinator since the position was created in1999. She also founded JFS’s Project DVORA. She has spoken to both the Beth Am congregation and visited Rabbi Singer’s 10th-grade class. Lifton, he says, is “deserving of awards and recognitions for the work she has done.”
In a Domestic Violence Awareness Sermon she delivered at Temple B’nai Torah in Bellevue, Lifton quoted national statistics that in the U.S. one out of three women reports being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in her life.
“Domestic violence crosses over all ages, races, cultures, religions, sexual orientations, socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels. And we can even turn to studies within the Jewish community,” she says, “that indicate domestic violence occurs at a rate similar to the one in the general community, across all sects of Judaism, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Orthodox, alike.” Questions about domestic violence within the Jewish community date back centuries, Lifton noted.
“Rabbenu Tam in 12th Century France wrote, ‘wife beating is unheard of among the children of Israel.’ And in the 16th century in the Shulchan Aruch it states, ‘it is not the manner of Jews to beat their wives but it is a deed of the Gentiles.’
“Yet,” she added, “some rabbis claimed that it was permissible for a Jewish man to hit his wife under certain circumstances, and other rabbis took a vehement stance against it. And if they were trying to figure out whether or not to prohibit this activity, then we can assume that this activity was occurring,” Lifton said.
Singer says he and his wife have worked to make the temple “a safe place for people and a place where people know they can go for support.”
“When you open the paper and read all the stories where you can publicly read about someone shooting their spouse, you know there’s a lot more domestic violence that goes undisclosed.
“I don’t think we should have gotten an award for it by any means, but I’m glad to be able to draw attention to the problem in our culture.”