By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
This is the first in a two-part series about domestic violence in Seattle’s Jewish community. This piece discusses the stigma surrounding domestic violence in our community, while the following piece will show resources and ways of eliminating violence from relationships.
Deborah DeDonaldo tells her story in a telegraphic staccato. She has told it many times before and seems to expect the plot to already be familiar.
“I was in a relationship for not quite ten years that was very abusive — that progressed from tirades to physical abuse. Long story short, I got pregnant, found myself pregnant, married the guy because I was pregnant — bad decision — and things got ten times worse after that.
“He had issues, he had drug problems. He was in and out of jail all the time and I found myself happier when he wasn’t there,” she said followed by a nervous laugh.
“He went to jail,” she continued, “he got out — I stayed with him through that. He didn’t clean up his act. That was when the physical stuff started — that was in the last two years of our relationship.”
In truth, Deborah’s story is not atypical. It is the story of her life, and no one’s life is really just a predictable series of events or an allegory for everyone else. At the same time, it is not unusual — and therein lies the tragedy. Domestic violence happens and it is everybody’s problem. No one is exempt; no one is immune.
For Susan (who preferred not to be identified further), the abuse was more psychological. Her husband ignored her plans and desires for a career and life of her own for decades while he pursued his goals, working on a succession of military bases in Europe. While there was only one incident of physical violence in their years together, and she has been divorced for a number of years, she still feels victimized by his failure to acknowledge her pain or even to talk about the problems they had.
Both women, and many more like them, have found support from Project DVORA (Domestic Violence Outreach, Response and Advocacy) at Jewish Family Service, the only program in the Seattle area that is organized specifically to provide a range of ongoing counseling and other services in the context of the Jewish community and culture.
Michele Lifton, Project DVORA’s coordinator, said one barrier for women seeking support is “the belief system that domestic violence doesn’t exist in Jewish families.”
“Part of the mythos of our community was that Jewish men aren’t wife-beaters — aren’t involved in this behavior,” said Rabbi Jonathan Singer of Temple Beth Am in Seattle’s Northend.
Lifton said part of her task is to help survivors and the community as a whole acknowledge the reality of domestic violence in Jewish communities.
“Where do they go if they’re not going to be seen as someone who is experiencing domestic violence? Also helping people experiencing the violence to identify it for themselves. There is a lot of shame” that results from the difficulties in being heard and believed, she said.
Seth Ellner, a counselor who deals with abusive men, said the Jewish community’s difficulty dealing with the issue is not unique.
“My experience in the Jewish community is very much similar to my experiences in the immigrant communities,” he said. “The fact is there’s just the same amount of domestic violence in the Jewish community as there is in any other community in this country.” Some form of domestic violence — physical, psychological, emotional, sexual coercion, threats or actual violence — occurs in one in four homes, Ellner said, and that number remains constant whether they are poor or well-to-do, educated or not, in gentile or Jewish households, among Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews alike.
“A lot of times people can’t reach out for help. They’re told by their rabbis and their friends, go home, make it better,” Ellner said. “Shalom bayit. Your job is to make the peace, so that’s what they tell women.
“It’s really around issues of control,” Ellner continued. “trying to make the other person do things. And that comes from a belief of ownership. ‘I own my partner I can justify telling you what you should wear, what you should do, who you should see, who you shouldn’t see.’ So that’s how it usually starts — with that kind of emotional-psychological stuff.
“Someone can physically hurt the other person or scare the heck out of them by just destroying things like crazy in a rage,” Ellner said, “From that moment that person has that threat alive in their mind. The only time it comes to physical violence is when those tactics don’t work. If I can just give you a look, and that works, that’s fine.”
Ellner said among Jewish people the problem of denial is especially daunting, “because we’re the victims, historically. So the idea that we could be the perpetrator of something that’s violent or venal or criminal” is all the more unthinkable.
“There’s a lot of denial which really causes a lot of isolation in the Jewish community, just like in the various immigrant communities that come here,”
Lifton said an important part of her job is “creating within the Jewish communities a cultural understanding that, yes, this happens amongst us, and yes, there is no shame in coming forward, seeking support and safety.”
“My goals are, first and foremost safety for the victim and the children,” said Lifton. “The second is, there needs to be accountability for the violence, but how that’s going to play itself out in each community? It is up to the community to work with me to think, ‘Okay, what’s going to work best here?’ What can we do as a community to get together and work here to safely support her?’ How does the community come together and hold the person who is using violence accountable, when that person is very well liked, or actually the community has a hard time seeing that person as someone using violence? It gets very complex.”
Yet no matter how complex, coming forward is the first step to recovering from abuse. Deborah, Susan, and countless others have joined Project DVORA to enable them to take back their lives.
In the next edition of the Transcript, we will focus on ways the community is helping women recover from domestic violence situations.