This story first appeared in Jewish News (greater Phoenix).
Alex Shapero witnessed the emotional response of Jewish victims of domestic abuse to seeing a new mezuzah on their doorpost and immediately understood two things. The first is that a symbol as simple yet powerful as a mezuzah can demonstrate continuity and the strength of community for people fleeing abusive situations. The second is that there were probably “a lot more Jews out there in the same boat,” he told Jewish News.
Shapero is the program director for MyZuzah, a national organization that aims to unite and protect the Jewish community by providing kosher and fair-trade mezuzahs for every Jewish home worldwide.
This summer, MyZuzah partnered with Let’s End Abusive Households (LEAH), a program of Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona (JFCS) to benefit Jewish survivors of interpersonal and domestic violence.
In 2022, Shapero listened to two recipients tell their stories of abuse and how receiving a mezuzah from his organization made them feel the support of their religious community, and a sense of normalcy after surviving the terrible turmoil of an abusive situation. That prompted him to apply for a grant to get their kosher mezuzot into the hands of abuse survivors. It took less than 18 months to receive requests for more than 300.
“Most orgs are good at offering shelter, food and security for these survivors, but they don’t have as much in the toolbox when it comes to providing spiritual or Jewish community support,” he said. It doesn’t help that domestic abuse “is a very difficult topic and often kept in the shadows,” which means he didn’t have much data to pull from.
Irene Gefter, LEAH’s coordinator, loved the idea of partnering with MyZuzah and getting a mezuzah to survivors of abuse. While she is not a counselor, she facilitates twice-yearly workshops “to make sure the community knows that intimate violence exists in Jewish households.” Right now, she is planning one for National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October.
For example, Rabbi Malcolm Cohen, who talked about the history of Judaism and the ways in which domestic violence has appeared, was the program’s last speaker. Providing a mezuzah to a victim will be very beneficial, Gefter told Jewish News.
“The symbol of a mezuzah is very powerful because it represents consistency, continuity and identity for people in a state of uncertainty,” Shapero said. “Nobody else is offering this particular spiritual support. We in the Jewish community don’t want to acknowledge we also face this issue.”
The secrecy surrounding abuse in the Jewish community is what drove the creation of LEAH more than two decades ago.
“Women still feel a lot of pressure in this culture to keep the peace, don’t rock the boat and try to save the marriage,” Linda Behr, LEAH’s first director, told the Arizona Daily Star six months after the program’s launch.
Behr spoke openly as a survivor of domestic abuse and told the Tucson newspaper of her own experience dealing with her ex-husband’s verbal abuse that sometimes got physical.
“I felt so ashamed. I kept thinking that if I tried hard enough, I could somehow fix him through love and understanding,” she said. She thought she was the only Jewish woman with the experience but found out later that she was not.
Most of LEAH’s current clients are part of JFCS’ Project Safe Place Program, of whom 39.5% receive services related to domestic violence. However, if you view domestic violence as an umbrella under which people receive services for child physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse and pornography, the percentage is 55.3%, according to Gefter.
Tucson Hadassah leaders were the first to propose an organized response to domestic abuse in the Tucson Jewish community. In 1998, Hadassah’s Shelly Lipowich attended a conference with five other Arizona women and learned about domestic abuse in the Jewish community, which they didn’t realize existed. After having their eyes opened, they started the Tucson Coalition Against Jewish Domestic Abuse, the forerunner to LEAH.
A lot of people at that time “were in denial,” Behr told Jewish News.
When Behr gave talks to Jewish groups around town, she said there would always be one man to stand up and say, “It doesn’t happen here.” Then a woman would stand up and say, “Yes, it does. It happened to me, my friend, my sister,” she said.
Behr shared her own experience at those same talks and admitted that she only left the 25-year marriage when “I realized I couldn’t fix it.”
After introducing herself to one rabbi who told her there was no such problem in his congregation, she responded that it was strange because two of her LEAH clients were members of his congregation.
Most rabbis were soon open to hearing what she had to say and even championing LEAH. Eventually, they all came around, she said.
Behr is still a member of LEAH’s board and said the big difference between now and when it first started is that people are aware of the problem. JN
For more information on MyZuzah, visit myzuzah.org; for LEAH, visit jfcstucson.org/services/counseling/counseling-for-victims-of-domestic-violence.
