A Question for Jewish Men

If an abused person comes forward from our Jewish community, how do we attend to her or his needs for safety, healing, and justice? In order for our personal responses to be strong we need a systematic, community wide response that puts the safety and healing of survivors first, that provides training and education and prevention throughout the community, and then, finally, focuses on the perpetrator and his t’shuvah. (note to non-Jewish readers t’shuvah, literally return, describes the process by which a member of the congregation returns to being a member of the community in good standing by taking responsibility for one’s abusive behavior.) Our goal should not be so much on just stopping violence, but on creating a safe, inclusive Jewish congregation/community in which every member is valued, fully able to participate, safe, and able to heal from abusive situations. (With some obvious qualifications for people who are abusive).

In order to achieve such a community, all of us who are Jewish men have some work to do.

What is Jewish men’s work?

There are several aspects to Jewish men’s work against male violence. First we need to look at our own behavior. In what ways are we controlling or abusive? How do we treat the people around us—our children, our partners, our co-workers, our neighbors? Are there any ways in which we scare, intimidate, threaten, yell, or coerce others using physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, or financial means? What are we going to do to change those patterns?

The second area of men’s work is to challenge other men. Many of us know men who are abusive. Many of us see male intimidation, put-downs, and harassment occurring and do not intervene. Many of us hear of abuse and do not investigate. Many of us know of men who are abusive and we deny, minimize, or otherwise downplay the significance of the abuse. And many of us fall back on individual selfrighteousness, excusing our lack of involvement by saying that we are good men, we don’t hit or abuse anyone and that’s all we can be responsible for. We do have a responsibility to stop male violence. The concept of tikun olam (note to non-Jewish readers: tikun olam is the obligation Jews have to heal the world by working for justice) does not just apply to abstract social justice issues. It applies as well to interpersonal relationships. Part of men’s work is to reach out to other men with strength and caring to challenge abusive behavior whenever and wherever we encounter it.

The third area of men’s work is to model and teach our sons—Jewish boys and young men—non-abusive ways to be men. They are looking to us for models of men who treat others respectfully, solve problems non-violently, and participate in struggles to make our community more inclusive and more just. Many of us are fathers, others are teachers, counselors and therapists, probation officers, youth workers, coaches, uncles, grandfathers, older brothers, cousins and neighbors. We can reach out to Jewish boys and young men to help them understand and resist the pressure to become men who abuse others. Jewish youth receive the same mainstream cultural messages from peers and the media as Gentile youth do to be tough and aggressive, in control, not to back down, and to use force to take care of business. They also receive the cultural messages to devalue and objectify women and to expect them to take care of men emotionally and sexually. Drawing on our own values and on the progressive aspects of Jewish tradition we can contradict those messages and offer them others ways to be strong, caring, and

The final area of Jewish men’s work is in the community. We can be active participants in the struggles in our congregations, our neighborhoods and in our cities for gender equality, social justice and an end to male violence. We can support the efforts of the many Jewish women who are already actively working to stop the violence. We can help change the policies and institutional practices which foster abuse. We can support training and prevention efforts in our congregations, schools, and youth programs.

I want to end with an example of Jewish men who are making a difference. Although Jewish men have been active in the movement to end male violence since the very beginning, it has only been in the last few years that we have addressed ourselves to issues of male violence in the Jewish community.

Several years ago, inspired by the women of Shalom Bayit and their efforts to challenge domestic violence in the Jewish communities of the San Francisco Bay Area, a group of us came together to create a group we called Gvarim: Bay Area Jewish Men Against Violence. We began to support Shalom Bayit’s work, and to do education with youth and adults within the Bay Area Jewish community. Some of us were members of the Kehilla Community Synagogue, a Jewish Renewal congregation of which I am a member. We decided to work with the congregation, in collaboration with Shalom Bayit to develop policies and protocols to create a safe congregational community and to respond to those incidents of abuse which were brought to our attention.

Through this work I have seen men take initiative in supporting the efforts of Jewish women to create a safer community. Men who are fathers, men who are spiritual leaders, men who are synagogue board members, men who are teachers—men who understand their stake in building a safe and inclusive community. The congregation has been developing a set of protocols dealing with all aspects of male violence and some of these men are helping to craft it, to refine it, to lobby for it, and to implement pieces of it as appropriate situations arise.

These men are willing to struggle with their own issues of abuse, with the traditional denial within the Jewish community, and with the patterns of collusion and male bonding that have often undermined women’s safety. Each of these men inspire me and give me hope that, working with women, we can indeed confront male violence within the Jewish community.

I invite you to join these efforts. We have a long history in Judaism of drawing on alternative versions of masculinity which are not based on the dominating and violent norms of the societies in which we lived. (the mensch tradition) These alternative masculinities have valued learning, critical thinking, caring, concern for justice, and sensitivity to the needs of the community. However these same values have not always translated into non-controlling, non-abusive relationships with women, with children, and with each other. Now is the time to extend our male values to include taking a stand against male violence and building a safe, inclusive community in which everyone can thrive.

Sidebar: questions for Jewish men to ask ourselves

Do I yell at the people around me?
Do I tease, put down or belittle others?
Do family members of co-workers "walk on eggshells" when I get angry?
Do I physically touch women around me in ways that are sexual, intrusive, or disrespectful?
Do I threaten or intimidate my children or partner?
Do I talk louder than others, interrupt people, pull academic or professional rank, or otherwise try to control conversations, silence others, or increase my own status?
Have I ever hit, slapped, shoved, pushed, or used my body to threaten others?
Have I had sex with a partner when I knew they did not want to?
Have I seen abuse in my family or in relationships around me and have not intervened?
What is my next step in ending controlling and abusive behavior in my own life and in the lives of those around me?