The Observer: Could you please explain who you are and what you do (aside from your activism regarding sexual abuse), your role as Mashgiach Ruchani, etc- basically so everyone has some idea of who you are at the university. Rabbi Yosef Blau: You know what my title is [Mashgiach Ruchani: Spiritual Advisor]: how it plays out in Yeshiva is a good question.
Esther Rachel Russell's 2006 half-hour documentary about domestic abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community, "Shame, Shanda and Silence," reveals a stunning statistic: Orthodox Jewish women tend to stay with abusive partners for 5 to 7 years longer than the general population.
The Observer recently conducted a poll inquiring as to whether members of the Yeshiva University community had personally experienced any form of abuse (spousal, psychological, emotional, verbal, sexual, physical or otherwise), whether they knew someone who had been abused and their thoughts regarding the prevalence of abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community.
Major types of abuse include physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse and financial abuse. These kinds of abuse may occur within the context of domestic, elder, or child abuse, but can also occur between any two individuals who share a relationship.
Recent statistics show that over fifty percent of teenagers personally know someone who has been involved in an abusive relationship. One in ten teenagers report being physically abused, and one in four report being a victim of another form of abuse. In light of these frightening statistics, many programs have been established for public schools with the purpose of teaching students how to recognize signs of abuse, how to leave abusive relationships, and how to help a friend who is currently in one.
Due to increasing awareness of the problems pertaining to domestic abuse in the Jewish community, many organizations have increased their programming and outreach to the public. These organizations seek to help both the individuals who are ensnared in an abusive relationship as well as to educate the larger population.
Although verbal abuse is perhaps most commonly thought of as name-calling and shouting, this category of abuse is, in reality, far broader. A verbal abuser uses language to control, reject or cause emotional pain to another person. Verbal abuse includes, but is not limited to, withholding information and feelings from a partner, making ridiculing statements (even disguised as a joke), trivializing the other person's feelings, ignoring the other person, interrupting the other person and never letting her or him finish a complete thought, de-legitimizing the other person's opinions and feelings, blaming the other person for the verbal abuse and for things that go wrong, as well as denying responsibility for one's own actions or even pretending to forget that an incident of abuse has even occurred.
This past January, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem held an erev zikaron [evening memorial conference] as a tribute marking twenty years since the passing of the important Bible scholar Sarah Kamin (1938-1989), a name well-known to the students of Rabbi Mordechai Cohen here at Stern College for Women (SCW).
On April 24th the United States government shut down four federally-insured banks as a result of government "shock tests", or scrutiny of a bank's viability. "Some banks won't survive the shock test, so we're going to take them over or have zombie banks," said economist Nouriel Roubini a few days later at Yeshiva University's Economics Department annual lecture.
Dr. Kim Evans, associate professor of English literature at Stern College for Women (SCW), has some questions of her own when I sit down to interview her: What hope is there in an interview? More specifically, what does a reported interview hope to provide for its readers? Should interviews come with a set of instructions regarding how they ought to be read, or do readers know without thinking what to do with them? "A professor profile is a good way for students to hear more about their professor, and for the professor to share her voice with the student body," I proudly state.
It only took a subway ride from Grand Central Station to 116th Street for a fifteen-year-old Alan Tigay to make up his mind that New York City, a cultural microcosm of world, was where he wanted to be. Decades later at 61 years old, after having traveled around the world twice, his mind hadn't changed.