More than 800 women are on strike (Picture: Adina Sash)
Women in an Orthodox Jewish community near New York are taking an unusual approach to getting their voices heard: they’re going on a sex strike.
More than 800 women have refused to sleep with their husbands, according to the strike organisers.
The sex strikers want to end a Jewish law that traps women in abusive or unhappy marriages – and they’re hoping that their boycott will put pressure on their partners to support their cause.
The tactic has divided the local Orthodox community. Striking women have had eggs thrown at them and faced social media abuse.
Here’s why the women are taking action and why the sex strike so controversial.
Why are Orthodox Jewish women going on sex strike?
Women in the Kiryas Joel enclave, a village about an hour’s drive from New York, are withholding sex until their husbands take action on a Jewish law that means that women can’t get a divorce without a specific declaration.
Adina Sash, who has 70,000 followers on Instagram, is organising the strike (Picture: Instagram / Adina Sash)
Under the law, a man needs to give his wife a ‘get’, a letter written in Aramaic which declares that she is no longer bound to him, in order to finalise a divorce.
The law means that women can be trapped in abusive relationships with no way out.
Men can also use it as a bargaining chip in the divorce process, as they can withhold the ‘get’ until they get the conditions they want, like money or custody of children.
Women trapped in marriages are known as ‘agunahs’, or ‘chained women’.
One agunah, 29-year-old Malky Berkowitz, has become the face of the Kiryas Joel sex strike.
She has spent four years trying to divorce her husband, Volvy. The pair separated in 2020, but Volvy has refused to give her a get. Without it, Malky can’t remarry.
Adina Sash, the strike’s organiser, said the goal of the strike was to stand in solidarity with Malky.
‘Malky is the face of every woman who has fought and gone through the system like a docile, demure, obedient sheep,’ Sash said.
The sex strikers want US courts to recognise get-refusal as a form of abuse.
In the UK, a 2021 amendment deemed the withholding of a get criminally coercive. A man was jailed for withholding a get in the UK in 2022.
Why is there a backlash?
The sex strike has stirred up controversy in the Orthodox Jewish community, with one prominent rabbi calling the action a violation of Jewish law and said that the strike would damage marriages.
What do Orthodox Jews believe?
There are many branches of Orthodox Judaism, but each group shares a strict adherence to Jewish law, which is known as halacha in Hebrew.
These laws include taking ritual baths known as mikvahs before sex and not travelling on Shabbat, the holy day.
In some Orthodox Jewish communities, there are strict rules for women. For instance, in some communities, women have to ask her rabbi for permission to report domestic violence to the police.
The majority of Kiryas Joel residents are Hasidic Jews (Picture: Getty Images)
Daphne Lazar Price, executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, said: ‘it shouldn’t take the threat of women to withhold sex from their husbands in order to get men’s.’
‘Using sex as a form of coercion is also highly problematic,’ she added.
A number of women shared their doubts about the sex strike in comments on an Instagram post by strike organiser Sash, who has a social media following under the handle Flatbush Girl.
One of Sash’s followers commented on her post: ‘Totally don’t agree with this. Yes we all feel sorry for her about this entire situation and I hope that she will hopefully get the GET. You are totally getting a sin by telling woman not to keep Mikvah. I don’t support this strike.’
Another wrote: ‘I respect your passion. But, withholding sex from your loving marriage is abusive and non- productive no matter the circumstance.’
The online tension has spilled over into the community. A group of women protesting the get law were attacked with eggs and verbally abused at a gathering in February. A counter-protest of men shouted ‘insolent women’ through loudspeakers at the group.
In response to the backlash, Sash said: ‘They say, ‘How could you withhold sex? You’re weaponizing your body! How can you withhold sex? You’re weaponizing intimacy.’ Then how could you withhold the get? You’re weaponizing the divorce process. You are holding a woman in limbo.’
On Instagram, she added: ‘It’s paradoxical how society tolerates men manipulating women’s biological clocks for power yet criticizes women for taking control of it themselves.’
Have sex strikes worked before?
Sex strikes have a long history, going all the way back to Ancient Greece.
One of the earliest references to sex strikes is in a play called Lysistrata by Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes which follows a group of women who refuse to have sex until the Peloponnesian War ends.
In the 1600s, women in Iroquois Nation, a group of Native tribes in North America, wanted more influence over warfare, so they boycotted sex and childbearing.
The tactic worked, and the women were given the power to veto battles.
More recently, women in a town in Colombia started the ‘Crossed Legs Movement’ to protest a lack of government action on a dangerous road that connected the town to the rest of the province.
After 112 days, the Colombian government agreed to fund road repairs.
In 2009, a group of women in Kenya went on a week-long sex strike to protest political infighting. A group of women in the Philippines used the same tactic in 2011 to stop violent clashes between rival villages.