Orthodox women begin sex strike against divorce refusal

A group of New York women are withholding sex to encourage their husband to pressure a recalcitrant husband.

(JTA) — Orthodox women activists are withholding sex from their husbands as they escalate a public campaign to help one of their own obtain a religious divorce from her husband after four years of trying.

Supporters of Malky Berkowitz, 29, are launching what they are calling a “mikvah strike” — a form of protest that leverages Jewish sexual purity rituals as a pressure tactic. It began on Friday night.

According to traditional Jewish law, following menstruation, married women must immerse in a mikvah, or ritual bath, before they can have sex with their husbands — which many do later that night. In fact, some authorities say that Jewish law, or halacha, attaches special significance to the intimacy that follows immersion, requiring that it take place without delay.

For Adina Sash, an advocate for Jewish women whose estranged husbands are refusing to divorce them ritually, that makes post-mikvah sex a natural site of protest.

For the last seven weeks, Sash — an Orthodox feminist activist in Brooklyn known by her Instagram handle, Flatbush Girl — has led a team of activists, lawyers, and community leaders pursuing a “get,” or Jewish divorce document, for Berkowitz. Berkowitz’s husband, Volvy, is refusing to issue the get that would complete their divorce, making her what is known as an “agunah,” or “chained woman” who cannot remarry under Jewish law.

Sash believes that Orthodox women need to negotiate and formalize Jewish legal terms around divorce before getting married — and that those who don’t run the risk of one day having a divorce withheld, widely understood to be a form of abuse.