A number of years ago, early into my professional life but not so early that I was a novice, I had a phone conversation with a powerful man in our community. He treated me horribly on the phone, talking down to me, almost yelling, and making me feel as though the question I had called him with wasn’t worth the time of day. I got off the phone feeling shaky, diminished and confused about what I had done wrong, because of course, as a younger woman, I was sure I had done something wrong.
As it turns out, he was the one who had done something wrong. I went to my boss, with whom I had a strong and positive working relationship, but who was not known for being warm and cuddly, and instead of comforting me, as I expected, she marched right back onto the phone and called this man back, berating him for treating me so poorly. He offered her (not me) a weak apology, and we all moved on.
I was incredibly grateful to my boss for standing up for me when I didn’t know how or even think I could for myself. But clearly, I’ve never forgotten that feeling of being completely struck down in the workplace by a man whose position and attitude seemingly rendered him entitled to treating someone else so insensitively. This call was a power play, one that I can look back on with anger as we continue to fight battles for women’s role in the world – the work world as well as the everyday world.
I was reminded of this story as I have been grappling with the horrible news here in my community. A prominent Orthodox rabbi in Washington, DC, has been accused of terrible crimes. He has been accused of sneaking tiny cameras into his synagogue’s mikveh – ritual bath, where women and men go for religious and spiritual purification, one of the holiest and most personal moments in a religious life – and spying on his congregants. He apparently also spied on women who came to him for their conversion rituals, and in addition to voyeurism, he took advantage of his position of power and ordered some of them to work as his secretary, and to run errands for him, and even coerced them into making donations.
But there’s more. He brought his students from a local university to visit the mikveh, and encouraged them to “try it out.” They police confiscated 12 computers, three cameras, six external hard drives, 20 memory cards and 10 flash drives from his home. The later found and confiscated more evidence from his university office.
What drives a man to conduct himself in this manner? He has been described as “manipulative, intimidating and threatening” by potential converts who came to him for help. His own congregants find him brusque and abrasive. And the Rabbinical Council of America, the main group of Orthodox rabbis in the U.S., was investigating him for allegations of impropriety dating back to 2012. One rabbi from the RCA has been quoted as saying that the rabbi in question had a history of abusing power and that “most of us believed he was just a slightly delusional and idiosyncratic personality with an exaggerated sense of self importance and a lack of empathy.”
Not someone with whom I would want to have a cup of coffee. But he was a large and important figure in our community, heralded for his intellect and political savvy, in a city that thrives on both.
We are now two weeks into the revelations, and I have been flattened by this story. I have had a hard time talking about it, let alone writing about it. I’ve started several pieces to explore my reactions, only to scuttle them, as they didn’t reach the kernel of personal truth I know I’ve been searching for.
Why have I been so affected? So angry and sputtering and unable to articulate my response? So ready to cry whenever I think about this scandal? As a lifelong feminist, if offends me on so many levels, from the abuse of power vis a vis women in the rabbi’s congregation, to the male assumption that voyeurism is about sex rather than power. It’s not. It’s about a man who wants to hold sway over women from such a distance that the women are further disempowered by simply not knowing that he is watching them.
It took a conversation with several very close friends, two of whom are therapists, to get to the bottom of what is ailing me around this story.
I am, for the most part, an open book. I tell my stories – through my friendships, and through my writing. I have written often about the deepest and saddest story of my life – losing my infant son – both to help me parse it but also so that others can feel the freedom of bringing what could be a devastating secret out into the air, and the liberation and joy you can feel when you let something so sad and hard breathe openly.
But I have one more story that I don’t tell. There are only a few people alive with whom I’ve shared it. I told it this past Saturday to my friends, over brunch, and releasing it was both liberating and revelatory. I now know why this rabbi and his crimes have hit me so hard.
My grandfather touched me. When I was a 12-year-old girl – developing, awkward, insecure about my body and my mind – my alcoholic grandfather came up behind me on the dark, musty second floor hallway of my grandparents' enormous house, and grabbed my breasts.
My parents were downstairs, as was my grandmother. I was terrified. I spun around, said good night and ran into my room. I think my sister, seven years old at the time, was sitting right there watching television, but neither she nor I can really remember.
It never occurred to me to tell anyone, because I knew what had happened was bad. I was a good girl, who avoided conflict at all costs, and didn’t want to get my grandfather in trouble. Conflict was already swirling around my head, as my parents were enmeshed in battles that would lead, ultimately, to their divorce, but that was still a few years away. I didn’t want to stir the pot.
It happened one more time, on one more visit to my grandparents' house, and after that I started begging and pleading with my parents to not have holidays there anymore. I really wanted our holiday celebrations at our house, where I felt safe. Thankfully, they listened. It was probably easier for them not to be stuck together at my grandparents’ house as well. They never asked why I was so opposed to visiting my grandparents, and I never told. We did not return until my grandfather died two years later. At the time, it was the happiest day of my life.
I have always wondered how I got up the gumption to plead my case for staying home, but as my friend noted when I relayed this story this week, whatever strength compelled me, my parents listened. It was a start.
I told my mother many years later, who told me that he had done the same thing to her when she and my father were first married. When I finally told my father what his father had done to me, he was devastated. His head in his hands, he told me he doesn’t know what he would have done had he known at the time.
I have lived with this story for many years, sharing it with only a few people. I have never felt particularly scarred by it, assuming that the scarring story of my childhood was my mother’s desertion in the wake of my parents’ divorce, and because I didn't define it as full-out abuse. But I’m starting to think that that’s not quite the right assessment. Because this story of mine has now bubbled up in the wake of scandal and has stopped me in my tracks.
It is not a story of sex, of course. It is a story of abuse of power, and how of a man – even a broken, aged, alcoholic man – can hold a young girl in his sway. It is story of lies, and silence, and fear. Breaking open this story to see the light of day has made me understand my reaction to the rabbi, and why I have had such a hard time articulating my upset.
I have felt like those women who he victimized. I have felt abused, secreted, and made to feel like I was the one who was making the trouble. I have felt scared, and ashamed, and unsure who to turn to, for fear of upsetting the balance. I was made to feel that my body was not my own. And that my needs were secondary.
I think back to my many years of advocating for the needs of women and girls in the pro-choice movement, where our rallying cry has been “Who decides?” I have always fiercely believed that a woman has a right to choose what to do with her body. I have been a feminist since I was in high school, which I can now pinpoint as a time where my intellectual and political awakening coincided with my sexual awakening, and now I see that my experience from my younger teen years clearly played a role in pushing me into advocacy.
I think back to the day I was mugged at knifepoint as young adult, and my recovery from the fear of that day. To the night I reported a campus rape at a fraternity party in college, and the heckling and threats I endured from speaking truth to power on a campus steeped in fraternity life, patriarchal mores and sexism. I think back to the encounter with the male colleague on the telephone, and how I was unable at that time, still, to find my voice and push back. I think back to my life as a vulnerable 12-year-old girl, and suddenly understand my motivations to help others in similar situations.
And I think of this rabbi in our midst, and the terrible demons that drove him to his hubris and to do what he did. It angers me, it pains me, it makes me wanna holler. But truth be told, I also feel a bit sorry for him, as I do for my grandfather, all these years later. These are pathetic, sick men, whose lives were crushed by their weaknesses.
And so I shout. Thank god I’m a woman. Thank god I’m strong, and powerful, and I will teach my children, especially my daughter, to be strong and powerful, and together we will make sure the light always shines on our stories.
I will never again back down.
We love you, Karen. You are a brave role model.
Posted by: JonathanE | 10/28/2014 at 09:12 PM