Neve Yaakov: Immodest and Modest Women Asked to Sit Separately

According to the religious Zionist weekly Matzav Haruach, the following sign appeared in a playground in the haredi neighborhood of Neve Yaakov in Jerusalem:

According to the suggestion of our teacher the great rabbi H. Kanievsky, women are requested as follows, to divide seating in the city according to groups of women. Women dressed appropriately (wide clothes, a properly covered neck, a modest scarf [MiI: to cover hair]) will sit on separate benches. Women dressed immodestly [bepritzut] Heaven forbid, (tight clothes/open collar/bandana) will sit by themselves. And in this merit the women [MiI: there's no question as to which women, even though the wording is vague] will merit viable offspring, a comfortable living, and true comfort [nachat] from their children.

Notice that the suggestion is not directed at women who wear pants, show cleavage, or (married women) who leave their hair uncovered. The target appears to be women who more or less follow the rules, but fall from the community standard or the standard of whoever wrote the sign. There is even a subtle dig at wigs, as they are not mentioned in the description of modest clothing. Wigs are verboten in more modest circles.

Somehow I don’t think ostracizing women in the park is going to make anyone start dressing more modestly. And the implication of this sign—that a woman who wears a bandanna is contaminating someone who wears a modest scarf—is scary. We should be glad that children of prutzot are still allowed to play in the park with the children of righteous women.

Related:

An Uninspiring Letter to the Women of Beit Shemesh

VozIzNeias: Jerusalem Home Tznius Campaign (thanks to Joel Katz for the link)

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Hyper-Tzniut at the Jerusalem Zoo

While the face-covering phenomenon seems to have died down, shalim, capes or cloaks worn over the shoulders to disguise the contour of the  body, are still popular. I saw many women in shalim during our visit to the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem, along with the two girls pictured above who looked about 7 and 10 years old.

In my next post I’ll share thoughts about a shal-wearing mother nursing her baby on a park bench.

Click here for more posts on tzniut, or Jewish modesty.

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Keren attracted the attention of the press in December 2007 because she covered her face, wore multiple layers of clothes, refused to speak while men were present, and persuaded other women to do likewise. Shortly after this “movement” became known in the press, she was arrested for severe child abuse.

Here you can find photographs and links to more posts on the subject.

According to Ynet, Keren’s lawyer brought expert witnesses who recommended psychiatric care for his client, “whose voice I never heard, and whose face I never saw.”  But the psychiatrist appointed by the court determined that the behavior stemmed from religious belief, not psychosis.

The judge, while placing the blame firmly on the parents, criticized the extended family and community, who for 25 years stood by while the children suffered and “the walls around them grew higher.”

Defense attorney Gil Dechoach criticized the decision.  (I don’t know what happened to the female lawyer who represented her originally.) He claimed that because his client refused to speak to him, she could not get a fair defense. “This is a woman who was enclosed in darkness, did not leave her house for ten years, who was absorbed in ceremonies and murmurings. She should be treated by a doctor and not imprisoned with convicts.”
Rafi’s take on it can be found here.

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The mentally handicapped son is scheduled to testify. In an unusual move, the judge and lawyers will wear civilian clothing, because the traditional black cloaks normally required by law might remind the son of his mother and scare him.

The article refers to other dramas in the six-month long trial. A month and a half ago, the lawyer of the accused claimed the prison system was condemning her client to death by not providing her with vegan meals. [The early articles written about her discuss her interest in nutrition, and I know a woman who attended a class she gave on the subject.]

According to the article, another child testified using a video hookup, because he feared [chashash] the presence of his parents in the courtroom.

The trial is being held behind closed doors.

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The sensationalist headline reads:

Today: The Children against “Mother Taliban”

Four of 12 children of the Beit Shemesh woman nicknamed “Mother Taliban” are expected to testify today at the trial in which she is accused of serial abuse and neglect of her children. The letter of indictment states that for nine years, the parents beat their children and whipped them with belts and cords. They even locked the children out of the house when they did not act according to their wishes. In one case detailed in the indictment, the mother extinguished a match on her son’s chest.

If you are new to this story, start here.

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Below is Part II of Maariv transcript of interrogation with hyper-modest mother of 12, in jail after being indicted for child abuse. Introduction; Part I.

By Shmuel Mittelman and Ami ben David.

4/5/2008

“Whoever disturbs my prayers—something bad happens to him”

What brought B, a haredi woman, to strengthen her faith, to preach extreme tzniut (modesty) and to engage incessantly in prayer, all while, according to the accusation, she was abusing her children? She told her interrogator that the exhausting need to travel back and forth to the hospital with her handicapped son, D., opened her eyes and caused her to change direction.

“One day I decided that instead of wasting time in the hospital, with no improvement in the child’s condition, I would dedicate my traveling time to reading prayers from Psalms and Song of Songs. Only then did they see a recognizable improvement in the child, until the last test when the doctors told me, ‘Excuse me, we erred. Everything is fine with the child.’ Every time I tried to stop the prayers, the child stopped functioning.”

A few mothers of children like D. told me that their child died at age 5 or 6. I so feared that this would happen to me, that I didn’t stop praying. I know that the heavens want me to pray all the time, because it happened a few times that people came in and disturbed my prayers, and something bad always happened to them . . . Everyone with a problem comes to me, I pray, and they are immediately healed and have “shalom bayit” with their husbands.

“The daughter told me that her brother touched her in an intimate place.”

Here the mother adds, in all seriousness, to the interrogator: “As long as I have lived in Bet Shemesh there has not been one terror attack in the city. Over five years ago I travelled to America to marry off my daughter, and before I returned an explosion almost went off in town. I returned immediately, and since then we haven’t heard of a single attack or problem with Arabs. Instead of letting me pray peacefully, you are disturbing me. I forgive you, but it is I who watch over you, not you. Even if you tell me that I’m crazy.”

[Below are a series of questions and answers in the interrogation:]

Interrogator: You knew that your children committed incest, a very serious sin, yet you didn’t prevent it, or treat it, or report it.
“I didn’t know about it at all. It’s a lie. I don’t believe it in the slightest. They are wonderful children, and I don’t believe it, unless they were to come and tell me themselves . . . let them come and tell these things to me and my husband.”

I: The boy Y (now 17) molested your daughter H (now 8). You knew but didn’t stop it.
“First of all, don’t use the phrase “You knew but didn’t stop it.” You didn’t see anything. The girl once told me that the boy touched her in intimate places. So I kept watch that she wouldn’t be with any of the boys. Since then she slept in my bed, because I feared that they would touch her when I was sleeping.”

Did you take Y for treatment for his sexual urges?
”I didn’t know exactly what was happening to him, because he knew it was against the holy Torah, and he therefore took care to hide it from us so we wouldn’t know.”

And how did you react when H told you?
“I spoke to him of course. He smiled, and I thought it was a teenage prank. I didn’t stand for that type of behavior, and therefore I didn’t think there was any problem.”

Y. told you that he and your daughter R (now 22) committed full incest at many opportunities.

“If that’s true, all I have left to do is cry and pray for them . . . but how can I believe it?”

Here the interrogator asked the mother to respond to the complaints of the children themselves, that she regularly hit them cruelly. The mother takes pains to be specific: “This never was and never occurred, that we hit them with cruelty,” she emphasizes. “Sometimes we hit them with no physical trauma, to educate only, like every parent is permitted to hit for educational purposes . . . I was always careful when I was upset not to hit until I calmed down, so as not to hit more than necessary. I admit that sometimes I poured water on them because I needed to hit them, and I didn’t want to hurt them. So I chose to pour a little water instead of hitting so they would understand that they weren’t ‘beseder.’”

Maybe once I told one of the children to put a match on Y.

The interrogator quoted the report of the child Y., where he complains that his parents hit him and didn’t let him in the house after he played soccer. The mother’s reaction: “You don’t understand, because you aren’t religious. With us, as in every house that observes the Torah and the commandments, a child needs to learn Torah and not play soccer. This is against our education. With us it’s absolutely normal not to let a child stop learning Torah.

I: Did your husband hit Y in the back so he would sit straight?
M: “Those weren’t cruel blows. That was just a light hit with the hand. I also straighten out their backs.”

I: Did you hit the children with a belt, an electric cable, antennae, and other objects?

“Sometimes I hit them with a belt, but I was careful not to use more strength than [necessary] for a token hit. As it says in the holy Torah: ‘He who withholds the rod hates his son.” Therefore I was careful that they should be educational blows without leaving any marks. I was also careful that they shouldn’t hurt too much, because after all I love them all. In the book of Lamentations it says, “the hands of compassionate women cooked their children.” Rashi explains that those women that didn’t punish their children when they saw them fail to observe the Torah caused the children to be killed later during the destruction of the Temple. So they [the commentators?] agreed with me that it’s better for a child to receive a few blows and not die.”

I: Your son Y tells that you extinguished a match on him.

There was a period when every time I left the house, the children played with fire and burned blankets and sheets. One time I might have told one of the children to put a match on Y, because I feared that the house would go up in flames.

[Mother in Israel: There is lots more, but I have had enough for today. I think we all get the idea; this woman has serious psychological issues, perhaps accompanied by mental illness. She expressed these ideas in her parenting, her understanding of religious texts, and her observance of rituals. I feel sorry for her obsessive, delusional self; for her children who will probably never completely recover; and for the women and their families from her community who fell under her influence.

I will also add that this is what happens when you try to apply verses in the Torah directly to everyday situations, without exercising common sense or seeking guidance from qualified people.

Later in the report B mentions that she and her husband consulted with R. Eliashiv about the handicapped child, and were told not to hit him. She claims that they followed his ruling.]

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By Shmuel Mittelman and Ami ben David.

4/5/2008

The detailed statements of the mother in her interrogation, exposed here for the first time, shed light not only on her allegedly twisted relationship with her children, but allow a glimpse into her fanatically religious world that combines a strange blend of violence and incessant prayer.

B., 54, became famous as the “mother from Beit Shemesh” or the “black mother” because of the black clothes covering her entire body, hair and face. According to the police and prosecution, she shockingly abused six of her twelve children, leaving them physically and emotionally scarred until today.

The indictment served against her in the Jerusalem district court, via the prosecution’s lawyer Dan Bahat, accuses her of no fewer than 25 counts of serious attacks and three counts of abuse of a minor. All this, presumably, is in the name of her extreme religious belief that it is the appropriate way to educate her children. “Batsheva hit Solomon, and afterward he became a successful child,” claimed the mother in defense of her approach, and admonished her investigators.

She hit six of her children and didn’t prevent incest

The event leading to the opening of the investigation happened in early February after, according to the police allegation, B. locked her small son D, who suffers from a mental handicap, in the yard of her Bet Shemesh home for many hours, wearing short clothes, and withheld food and drink from him for many hours despite his screams. The neighbors called the police, who arrived with social workers. The social workers removed the child from the house and placed him in a dormitory [this usually refers to an institution that cares for children in something similar to a home setting].

During the initial investigation the mother assured he police: “You took him on the basis of lies that you invented and believe. My prayers do not return empty-handed, and whoever took the child will pay dearly for it.”

During the investigation the mother was accused of hitting six of her children with a belt, a stick, a rolling pin, and an electric cable, and of cutting the hair of two of her girls as a punishment. In one case she extinguished a match on the chest of one of the children, and regularly poured water on several children to wake them in the morning. In a few instances she refused to allow the children to come home, and they had to eat at friends and neighbors. Similarly, the mother is accused of tying the child D., who suffers from a handicap, by his hands and legs and leaving him outside for a long time.

The judge had to be satisfied with a photo

The police investigators didn’t know how to relate to B. She wrapped herself in no fewer than 12 dresses in the height of the heat, and covered her face with a veil. The prison doctor asked to check her, but she refused to undress. Interrogation by men? Absolutely not, she indicated. I won’t expose my face to a strange man.

Similarly in the courtroom, during the extension of her remand, she refused to allow Judge Aaron Farkash to look at her. “But to hold a deliberation, I must see the person opposite me,” he explained to her lawyer, Vered Berger of public defense. “It won’t help, Your Honor, she is not prepared to expose her face,” she replied, “even if everyone but you leaves the room.” With no choice, in a rare move, the judge was presented with a picture of B’s face as photographed by the prison service, to let him know who the anonymous woman is.

The police sent an experienced investigator, Hagit Nosri, who did her best to extract answers to the serious suspicions. In a[nother] rare move the interrogation was carried out with the mother writing her answers by hand and passing them to the investigator.

She denied most of the accusations, admitted to a few, tried to justify some of them, rebuked her listeners, showed pride in the strength of her prayers and her mission, and outlined her “educational” philosophy. In one of the conflicts between them [B] even reprimanded the female officer for “wearing very tight shirts, and that’s not okay (zeh lo beseder).”

The door is locked after midnight

The transcripts of the interrogation expose a woman with a zealous religious faith, who cares for a variety of children, each with his or her own problems and went through a crisis after difficult pregnancies. Under these circumstances, presumably, she lost control over the children, was beset by attacks of rage, and latched on to twisted methods of powerful punishments and violence in order to try and return order and display authority.

At the beginning of the interrogation the investigator asked B for her reaction to the accusations, that she and her husband regularly hit the children, prevented them from eating and sleeping at home, and knew about the sexual transgressions that occurred among the children. The mother replied angrily: “The charges are a cruel lie. They never existed. You have no proof. Every mother can give a slap from time to time for educational purposes.”

The mother also related to claims that she prevented her children from returning home at night. “I prevented the children from sleeping at home a few times, after they came home from the soccer field at 2 in the morning,” she said. “I told that that the door will be locked after midnight. After sleeping outside twice, they stopped arriving so late. I have never starved my children. At every meeting with them they love to tell about the delicious dishes I prepared for them.”

[I once heard singer Yehoram Gaon tell a similar story on his radio program. He once returned five minutes late for his midnight curfew and found the door locked. He learned his lesson. The difference is the context (and the age of the children involved); did the parents employ this extreme measure as a way of teaching responsibility in an overall loving environment, or is it part of a series of punitive measures meant to instill fear and demand absolute authority?]

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“I’m careful to hit only after I’m calm”

“The mother from Beit Shemesh denies that her children had sexual relations or that she abused them. Maybe symbolic hits. The transcripts of her investigation expose what is hiding behind the black clothes.”

By Shmuel Mittelman and Ami ben David.
4/5/2008

“Don’t make me into a monster. . . My prayers prevent terror attacks in Beit Shemesh. The heavens want me to pray, and whenever someone interrupts my prayers, something bad happens to him. I didn’t hit my children cruelly. I gave them light hits, symbolic ones, without any physical damage. . .every mother can give a slap to a child once in a while for educational purposes. It’s my right to throw a “kavkav” (shoe without a back; nowadays a beach shoe) on a child who hits his siblings. . .the daughter that got hit by the rolling pin and whose nose bled, simply was pushed against me instead of going backward. . . I’m careful to hit only when I am calm . . . I don’t believe that my children committed incest with one another . . . I know how to heal children better than the doctors. “

“These are only part of the extreme, even delusional statements of B., the haredi mother from Beit Shemesh, during her police investigation in recent weeks.”

Rafi has more. My translation: Part I. Part II.

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Abuse scandal: Accused mother says allegation a vicious lie

Mother-of-12 accused of severe child abuse goes on record for first time since her arrest, categorically denies all accusations against her

Neta Sela

Published:

05.04.08, 11:55 / Israel News

Ynet exclusive: Beit Shemesh mother-of-12 accused of severe child abuse speaks out for the first time since the horrendous affair was revealed.

K. has been under house arrest in Jerusalem for two weeks. She is awaiting trial for abusing her children and for failing to report incest among the children.

In her first interview to the media, she insists all the accusations against her are a vicious lie: “Nothing of the kind ever happened. I never abused my children. If I hit them, it was nothing more than spanking, and even that didn’t happened more than once every couple of months, educational spankings.”

Just over a month ago, the state filed a severe indictment against her, for aggravated assault and abusing a minor. The indictment included multiple counts detailing years of abuse and neglect, as well as graphic details of the ways she used to beat her children using belts, sticks and a rolling pin; smash their faces into her kitchen countertop, wake them up by pouring cold water on them, throw bleach at them, put out matches on her son’s chest and cut her daughter’s hair as means of punishment.

But K. is sure she will be vindicated, even from the allegations that she knew of incestuous relations among the children and said nothing: “I don’t believe any of these lies. I’m well aware of the lies being told about me and this too is a lie,” she said.

Nothing more than a game

“There’s a proverb – ‘He who spares the rod hates his son’,” she said when confronted with the allegations she used to chain her children to a chair and hit them. “It tells of how Solomon’s mother tied him up and bit him until the Messiah emerged. The kids read it and decided to act is out. It was a game.”

While in prison, those around her began fearing for her life. Being a vegan, she stopped eating almost completely. She spends her days praying, reading the Book of Psalms and saying very little. According to reports, she used to communicate with her children by passing them notes.

“After I realized I was wasting my time with them, that they just won’t listen to me I decided it was better to spend my time praying,” she explains – on paper.

Faced with her radical chastity, we asked how could it be, that she of all people is suspected of committing such unchaste acts. She believes God is testing her, saying the experience has made her faith even stronger: “I know the heavens are testing me, to see if I’ll break and give up my chastity.

“Every day I tell the lord how much I love him and when they respected my chastity in prison I saw the good lord hasn’t abandoned me… on the contrary, my faith is stronger. I realize the heavens have sent me to see how miserable the people of Israel are. It’s like they told me – ‘You have to see what’s really going on and who needs you to pray form them.

“The women here began reading Psalms and even the wardens are dressing more modestly… I have seen that Israel is holy and now I pray every day, as hard as I can, for God to have mercy on all of Israel, to help them find their faith, so that everyone can see the coming of the Messiah and be redeemed.”

‘Mother Taliban’

Supported by the mass wave of modesty sweeping over ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem, K. has found support in many women who have began attending her lessons and following her lead – wearing layers upon layers of clothes. Those layers have dubbed her “Mother Taliban”. Her piety seems endless and the women surrounding her tell of devotion to the mitzvas of faith.

The last few years have seen many women begin radically covering themselves up, so much so that the ultra-Orthodox community has expressed some real concern about this eccentric behavior.

K. on her part, insists the dress was acceptable among Jewish women throughout history, and that it is secularism and education that have led to the change: “There is a prophecy saying that before the coming of the Messiah you will see women covering themselves completely and that will be the sign that the Messiah in on his way… there’s nothing anyone can do. It is written in the heavens and no one can fight their will.”

Supreme Court judge Hanan Melzer, who allowed K. to be released to house arrest, forbade her from having any contact with her children. She still cannot understand where the allegations against her came from.

“If I could talk to men I’d ask the judge where’s his self respect, how can he even bring himself to ask me such things,” she said.

Is there anything she would like to tell her children? “My sweet children, I love you very much,” she wrote on a piece of paper, “and I’m not angry at any of you. I love God more than anyone.”

Thanks to Rafi and Tamiri for sending me links.

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