Family Violence: Our Problem, Too

by Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff

Editor’s Note: Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff is Rector and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Judaism. He is also a member of the Conservative Movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which endorsed his responsum -- on which this article is based -- and a Vice President of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles.

Family violence is not simply an unpleasant memory from days past or a malady that affects only non-Jews. Rather -- contrary to our self-image -- it afflicts our own Jewish families in our own time. Indeed, the contemporary Jewish community is now openly admitting that family violence occurs within its midst.

Each of the past several years in the United States, there have been over 400,000 reports of verifiable sexual assaults against children filed with authorities by teachers and doctors who deal with obviously battered and traumatized youngsters. Studies indicate that at least one out of every three girls and one out of every five boys is sexually abused before age eighteen. Moreover, the number of cases of battered children reported to state agencies per year has grown from roughly two million in 1986 to three million in 1994, and some two thousand children, most of them under age four, die each year at the hands of parents or caretakers.[1] It is too early to know whether Jews engage in these and other forms of family violence to the same degree as do other groups within the general population, but our community surely suffers from all modes of this malady.

In addition, family violence occurs among the Orthodox at least as much as it does among Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform Jews. Devotion to tradition has not, unfortunately, prevented violent behavior within the family. I have been a member of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles for about a decade now, with special interest in its Family Violence Project, and I have consequently been informed of the woeful extent to which this plague infests our community. Similar projects are now in place or in the planning stages in New York, Chicago, and other cities as Jewish communities throughout North America, Israel, and indeed the world finally acknowledge the problem and then take steps to deal with it.[2]

Defining Abuse

The first task in dealing with abuse is to identify the parties involved in an abusive situation and the nature of illegitimate, in contrast to legitimate, interactions between them. Specifically, we need to define "family," "abuse," "victim," and "abuser" so that we know what we are looking for.

While we commonly think of families as consisting of two parents and the children they produce, the United States 1990 census reported that only 14% of American families fit that description. The remainder are singles, single-parent families, blended families, foster homes, adoptive homes, gay and lesbian homes (some with children), and homes in which a couple either has no children or in which the children have grown up and left home. Thus, when we think of family abuse, we must contemplate all of these varieties of families. Furthermore, while individual families in any of these configurations may be stable and loving, the instability of many contemporary families adds stress to everyone involved -- increasing the chance that family abuse will occur.

"Abuse" has physical, sexual, and verbal manifestations. Physical abuse consists of striking a person in a painful way and often with a degree of force which produces bleeding or leaves bruises. Sexual abuse, which usually does not leave bruises, consists in unwanted sexual touching, from fondling to intercourse. In the case of children, even if the child consents, the act constitutes sexual abuse since the child has no legal standing to consent to sexual acts.

Verbal abuse is the hardest to define, especially since people use and understand language differently and since some remarks are intended as humorous by the speaker but are considered offensive by the listener. Even so, verbal abuse can be identified by the vicious intent of the speaker and/or the negative way in which uninvolved bystanders would understand the comments. It is distinguished from legitimate criticism by virtue of the fact that the latter is directed to specific actions and includes, at least in the best of cases, constructive suggestions for improvement, while the former is an attack on the person him/herself. The "abuser" is usually imagined as a man and the "victim" as a woman or children, and that is generally the case. A recent article in The Los Angeles Times, though, reported that the number of women arrested in Los Angeles for domestic violence (which includes abuse of children) has nearly quadrupled in the last nine years, from 340 cases (7% of all domestic violence cases) in 1987 to 1262 (14.3% of all such cases) in 1995.[3] All instances of abuse are underreported, but it can be presumed that those in which husbands are abused by their wives are even more underreported than the reverse, since the degree of embarrassment for a man in not being able to defend himself against his wife exceeds that in the reverse situation, and police authorities are prone to doubt men making such claims.

In any event, the abuser is not generally someone who appears threatening and dangerous; on the contrary, abusers are usually indistinguishable from non-abusers in the way they behave in society. That is part of the reason why they are so hard to recognize, and that is what makes vigilance on the part of caregivers like rabbis and teachers all the more important.

The Status of Abuse in Jewish Law

While one would expect Jewish law to condemn abuse of any sort -- after all, each of us has been created in the image of God -- that, unfortunately, is not the case. There is some support in Jewish tradition for husbands to beat their wives and for parents to beat their children in the name of discipline. Despite that, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has declared through my responsum that spousal abuse (including wives beating their husbands) is completely forbidden, and hitting children is only permitted when the spanking does not produce bleeding or leave a bruise, is done with an open hand and not a belt or other instrument, and when it occurs rarely and in response to a specific misdeed. As a matter of general policy, though, parents should discipline their children without hitting them. Parental abuse (usually inflicted on elderly parents) violates many canons of Jewish law and is completely unsupported in Jewish sources.

These strictures, of course, do not prohibit hugging, kissing, and pats on the back by parents or parent-substitutes like teachers or camp counselors or by children vis-a-vis their parents as acts of love, friendship, or congratulations. Such contacts are clearly differentiated from acts of violence by the intention and context of the parties and the form and energy of the physical touching. Far from being abusive, such demonstrations of support and love are continually needed by both children and adults.

When a person offers honest, constructive criticism or writes a negative letter of evaluation, that does not constitute verbal abuse so long as the remarks are directed at specific acts or failures to act and, ideally, contain suggestions for improvement. Verbal abuse, in contrast, attacks the person him/herself rather than that person's actions, employs words which are understood by everyone who hears them (even if not the victim him/herself) as derogatory, and is repeated often and in situations which do not call for such negativity. This is forbidden in our tradition as ona'at devarim (oppression by means of words), a category separate and apart from other forbidden verbal acts like lying (sheker), gossip (rekhilut), and true but negative reports about a person which are not needed for any legitimate, practical purpose (lashon ha-ra).

Since our tradition was so careful to delimit areas of forbidden speech, and since causing embarrassment to another is also strictly forbidden, some witnesses to abuse think that they should not come forward to expose the abuse lest they violate such strictures. Moreover, there are some who worry that if governmental authorities are notified of Jews engaging in abuse, it will constitute a desecration of God's name (hillul ha-shem).

The responsum points out, however, that such desecration cuts both ways, that Jews are much more likely to be faulted in the public eye for hiding their cases of abuse and refusing to deal with them than they are for having them in the first place. Moreover, since saving the victim's integrity and sometimes their very lives is involved, the duty to take steps to help people extricate themselves from abusive situations takes precedence over these important, but secondary, concerns of proper speech and saving people from embarrassment.

Therefore, even though shame and defamation are inevitably involved to some degree, witnesses to abuse must report it to the authorities and take whatever other steps will help to extricate the victims from the abusive situation. Even more importantly, victims of abuse must report it to authorities and/or seek help from agencies like Jewish Family Service, for their duty to themselves (and to their children) to save their lives and their physical and mental health take precedence over their duties to avoid shame and defamatory speech.

The Abuser

Until now, we have presumed that we are dealing with a clear and undisputed case of abuse. If the alleged abuser denies the abuse, however, then we must uphold the usual presumption in Jewish law that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Truthfully, in such cases there is a real tension between the Jewish demand that we exonerate people unless there is clear-cut proof to convict them, on the one hand, and our duty to save people from abusive situations, on the other. Such cases are never easy. In some situations, even though abuse cannot be proved, the proper thing to do may nevertheless be to seek means to separate the parties for everyone's good. No privileges can be legitimately taken from an alleged abuser, though, unless proven true in a fair hearing.

When an abuser admits his/her guilt or is found guilty by a tribunal, s/he must seek to return to the proper path and to reinstatement in the community through the traditional Jewish process of return (teshuvah). That includes: (1) acknowledgement of the wrong; (2) remorse; (3) public confession; (4) asking for forgiveness from the aggrieved party; (5) restitution to the extent that that is possible; and (6) refraining from committing the wrongful act the next time the opportunity arises.[4] The famous twelve-step programs used to help people with addictions of various sorts have strong echoes with these traditional steps in Judaism, and Jewish forms of those programs have therefore quite naturally emerged. In addition to the more well known programs of this sort for alcoholics, drug abusers, and overeaters, there also exist Parents Anonymous for those who physically abuse their children and Parents United for those who sexually abuse their children.

Going through such a program, of course, is anything but easy, for it seeks to change long-standing behavior. Indeed, unless successful therapy has intervened through programs such as the ones mentioned above, people who were themselves abused as children are more likely than the general population to abuse their own children. At the same time, though, most people who have been abused do not abuse others, and usually that is because they have found a caring community that confirms their own self-worth despite the degradation they suffered from previous abuse. That makes it all the more imperative for synagogues to sponsor groups such as Parents Anonymous and Parents United, or at least to refer those of their members who abuse family members to such groups, and it also makes it critical that synagogues accept such steps as indications of teshuvah, making the person worthy of reinstatement into the community as a whole. Teshuvah, after all, is very difficult, especially when it involves deeply rooted behavior patterns such as the ones we are discussing. No wonder, then, that the Talmud says that fully righteous people (zaddikim) cannot stand in the same place as those who have repented, for the strength needed to repent is much greater than the strength needed to be good in the first place.[5]

If one succeeds in reversing a history of abuse, one attains the status of a person who has returned (ba'al teshuvah). American law makes convicts who have served their sentence indicate their criminal past on all sorts of documents, and such people often continue to be denied voting privileges, the right to apply for a government job, etc. Jewish law requires us to trust the process of return (teshuvah) much more strongly. It mandates that Jews not even mention the person's past violations, let alone bar him or her from participation in society. Such recounting of the person's wrongful deeds is categorized as verbal abuse (ona'at devarim) itself. Moreover, it puts obstacles in the way of those who try to do better, a violation of the biblical command, "Before a blind person you may not put an obstacle."[6]

Nevertheless, people may engage in the process of teshuvah as far as they are able and yet continue to be sorely tempted to repeat their offense if the opportunity arises. This is especially true for child abusers. For such people, it is a favor neither to the offender nor to the people s/he may harm to put the culprit in the position where such temptation exists; that would be "putting an obstacle before the blind." We need to support people in their efforts to return to proper behavior, but we are not obligated to give such people opportunities to test their new resolve, especially when the welfare of others is at stake.

As a result, it may well be that, for such people, full teshuvah is not possible. For its own protection and for the sake of the abuser as well, the community may not afford the abuser the opportunity to complete the last stage of teshuvah, where the sinner confronts the same situation in which s/he previously sinned. In such cases, the community, recognizing that the situation has not been caused by a failure in the abuser's resolve to do teshuvah but rather because of its own decision, may reinstate the abuser into the community, despite his/her failure to complete the process of teshuvah, for all purposes except for functioning in situations where s/he was previously abusive.

An Imperative to Act

It simply will not do to hide from the instances of physical, sexual, and verbal abuse in our own community. Since people's very lives are at stake, let alone their physical and mental health, we are called upon by our tradition to take steps to recognize abuse, to extricate people from abusive situations, and to attempt to heal the wounds in both the victims and the abuser, once they have been separated. This is clearly not a pleasant aspect of Jewish communal life for anyone, but it is definitely real, and we must respond in kind. The Torah's command that we "choose life" demands no less.

1. The 400,000 figure: Christine Gorman, "Memory on Trial," Time, April 17, 1995, p. 55. The estimate of one out of every three girls and one out of every five boys: J. Crewdson, By Silence Betrayed: Sexual Abuse of Children in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988). The figures for battered children in 1986 and 1994: U.S. News and World Report, May 8, 1995, p. 14, based on statistics from the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse. That 2,000 children died of parental neglect or abuse: U.S. News and World Report, May 8, 1995, p. 14, based on statistics from "A Nation's Shame: Fatal Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States," a 248- page report of the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect.

2. For a summary of some Conservative Movement efforts on this, see Bette Fried, "Responding to Domestic Violence: A Progress Report," United Synagogue Review 47:2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 15-16, 23.

3. John Johnson, "A New Side to Domestic Violence," Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1996, pp. A-1, 19.

4. For a good summary of these steps as required by rabbinic sources, see Maimonides, Laws of Repentance (teshuvah), especially 2:1-2.

5. B. Sanhedrin 99a.

6. One of the specific examples of ona'at devarim given in Bava Mezia 58a is reminding a person of past violations of the law. The verse forbidding putting a stumbling block before the blind (Leviticus 19:14) is probably talking in its plain meaning about physically blind people and physical stumbling blocks, but the classical Rabbis applied it also -- indeed, more often -- to intellectual and characterological stumbling blocks put before those who are blind in those areas.