JB: While the effectiveness of community pressure may be dwindling, the press can play a positive role. Your film includes some media coverage [or the threat of it] which helped one woman to obtain her "get'. Can you tell our readers how that worked?
BS: Susan Rosenbluth, the publisher of the Jewish Voice and Opinion, is the journalist who appears in the film. She's helped more than a few women obtain 'gets.' But in the case we document, the threat of publication of her article only succeeded in bringing the recalcitrant husband to the negotiating table. Essentially here's what happened: the rabbi, whose failure to censure the husband, would have been exposed in the article, so he decided to pressure the husband to cut a deal. In the end, the 'get' cost the woman's father over $400,000.
JB: Withholding a "get' has been described as extreme domestic abuse, the ultimate power trip. And a case can drag on for years. Recent publicity about desperate measures that some wives have taken to regain control over their lives has "upped the ante" on the topic. You talk about this in the film. There have been cases where rabbis were hired to use drastic means to encourage unwilling husbands to change their minds. Please fill us in.
BS: When a marriage has irretrievably broken down and a woman finds herself unable to obtain a 'get' from her husband, she has a couple of options. She can see whether he has a "price," meaning, how much money does he want. But sometimes a husband's resistance isn't motivated by greed; sometimes, it's fueled by vengeance. He just wants to control her life.
For a woman to obtain a 'get' in a situation like that, she may have to resort to physical coercion, which means hiring someone to step outside the bounds of civil law to threaten or compel the man to sign the document that will set her free. In other words, she may opt to bring in the goon squad. A man in New York who was known as someone who would "bring in the goon squad" for an agunah has been arrested and charged with plotting to kidnap and torture a man to get a 'get' out of him. His arrest throws a floodlight on the underworld of characters willing to engage in this kind of work. Where's an agunah to turn now? And at what price?
JB: Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, Women Unchained is really not a depressing film. Please explain how you were able to pull that off.
BS: Jews have been blessed with a sense of humor, and an out-sized appreciation of irony. Over our years of immersion in the subject of agunot [ed. note: agunot is the plural of agunah], we started to connect with a multi-layered understanding that needed to be expressed through periodic outbreaks of comic relief. Sometimes, those moments just walked in the door -- like the spry white-haired lady I serendipitously interviewed in a parking lot behind a kosher grocery in Miami Beach. I walked up to her, stuck a microphone in front of her face and asked what she thought should be done with husbands who refused to give their wives a 'get.' When she said, in her cute European accent, "String them up from a tree, definitely," I knew I had a keeper. Sometimes, we pushed the envelop and created moments like that, through editing decisions, music and other tools of of the trade. Fortunately, one of our "star" agunot obtained a 'get' and remarried, and we got lots of good footage. I like happy endings. I like endings that leave viewers with a sense of hope.
JB: I'm with you there. Let's talk for a minute about your appearance in the film. That was a tad unorthodox [with a small "o"]. There are scenes of you getting married. Did you sign a pre-nup? You clearly haven't given up on tradition yourself even after making this film. Why not? And was it a hard choice to include this personal piece?
BS: Yes, Howard and I signed a pre-nup; actually, we signed two: one, the halachic pre-nup of the Beit Din of America, and the other, a standard civil agreement drawn up by our lawyers.
My appearance in the film wasn't unorthodox at all. Women Unchained is clearly a film that advocates for change in the way traditional Jewish marriage is entered into, and, for many, gotten out of. Using footage from my own wedding was the strongest statement I could make as to what I believe (about getting into marriage), which is only "unorthodox" if you believe that documentaries should pretend to be unbiased...that the filmmaker has no agenda or point of view other than "truth." We strove for honesty, certainly, but we definitely do have a point of view and here it is: change needs to take place to promote justice for women in Jewish divorce.
JB: I agree.
BS: It wasn't hard to decide to use my personal footage. I was relieved and happy to discover it worked.
No, I haven't given up on tradition. The reason I made the film is because I believe in it.
JB: For a long time, that tradition was actually quite progressive regarding the protection of women in case of divorce. Your film talks about this. What happened to reverse that trend and when?
BS: The ketubah, the Jewish wedding contract, was extremely progressive when it was introduced 2,000 years ago because it provided protection for women against capricious divorce. Should a husband decide he wanted to trade in the mother of his children for a younger version, he knew he was still going to have to support Wife #1.
The problem we face today derives from the Jewish condition in modernity. We don't have a robust, confident, unified rabbinic leadership comfortable enough in the modern world and respected enough among a broad swath of Jews to apply Jewish law boldly and creatively. Add to that a divorce rate of close to 30%. So, on the plus side, we have partial solutions, like the pre-nuptial agreement, which is very good. But it isn't enough.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
