Jewish Refuge for Battered Women : Shiloh Offers Shelter From the Storm

The word Shiloh has several biblical interpretations. It was the resting place for the Ark of the Covenant. It was known as one of the biblical cities of refuge, where one could escape revenge. And it was said to mean, by the medieval French Hebrew scholar and commentator Rashi, “till peace cometh.”

Place of Rest

Mimi Scarf has found yet another use for the term, a 20th-Century meaning. Scarf is the executive director of Shiloh, a kosher shelter and hot line for battered Jewish women, which has been in operation in the San Fernando Valley for several months. And, indeed, it is a place of rest and refuge.

“Traditionally,” said Scarf, who holds a master’s degree in Jewish Communal Service from Hebrew Union College, “the stereotypical Jewish husband is seen as smart, successful, generous to his family and gentle. The Jewish home is seen as a bulwark against the outside world. Unfortunately, this idealized concept of the Jewish family is fallacious. Wife-beating cuts across all socioeconomic and religious boundaries.”

Scarf first became interested in this issue through a strange set of circumstances about seven years ago. Required to write a paper on an undiscovered social problem for a graduate seminar, she found herself at a loss for a topic. Then, by chance, she was approached by a distraught woman at a college library parking lot who asked if they could talk.

“She began to cry,” Scarf explained during a recent interview, “and to tell me about the horrible business of verbal abuse against Jewish women. Then she said, ‘I’m probably the only Jewish woman who has ever been beaten by her husband.’ ”

Troubled by the idea, Scarf undertook to see if this was true. It wasn’t. She had no difficulty finding other battered Jewish women. “I went to hospitals and to the police. I began speaking to people. It turned out that everyone had a story to tell.”

Subject for Dissertation

Scarf was so moved by the subject that she wrote her assignment and eventually her master’s dissertation on Jewish wife-battering. For the latter, she placed an ad in a local newspaper. “I got hundreds and hundreds of phone calls from women saying, ‘I thought I was the only one. I’d like to tell you my story.’ The hot line started through that. And then I realized we needed a grass-roots movement to create a shelter.”

Shiloh, which can house as many as 12 women and children, takes in residents of all races and religions. “Everyone is welcome here,” Scarf explained during a tour of the tidy, newly furnished suburban house. “Indeed we’ve had at one time two “born-again” Southern Baptists, a Hasidic (highly Orthodox Jewish) woman and two black women and their children. We don’t have the restriction that you have to be Jewish to come in. But this is a place where religious Jewish women can come and feel at home. There are Mezuzoth (small tubes encasing tiny rolled scrolls of prayer) on the door posts so they know the house has been blessed. And they can eat the food and use the same plates and pots and pans as everyone else.”

Scarf views this environmental familiarity as vitally important. “Jewish women leave their homes because of battering as a last resort,” she explained. “Even if they are non-religious, non-believing, non-observant women, often their Jewish identity is all they have left after leaving their families, friends and personal treasures. So, it is important for them to come into a shelter that feels like a Jewish home.

“For example, we celebrate Hanukkah and Passover rather than Christmas and Easter. When Jewish women go into other shelters, even though the love and caring is there, they often don’t stay because they feel uncomfortable. Frequently they return home, to the battering situation.”

According to Scarf, the necessity of kosher food goes beyond the strict observation of dietary laws. “The other shelters may also provide kosher food,” she explained, “but it’s treated as ‘special’ food. There, observant women have to eat from special utensils because they can’t use those that have held forbidden foods like pork. One of the most important aspects of the shelter experience is the support that the women get from one another, even if it’s sitting around talking, having coffee, making meals together and eating. If the Jewish women are segregated because they can’t eat from the same pots or dishes this separates them from the other women in the shelter.”

Hot Line Staffed

Shiloh’s singularity of purpose extends even to its hot line. Its counselor-advocates are Jewish women trained to be especially aware of the specific needs of the Jewish family. Counselors who speak Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Russian and Farsi are available.

And, in addition to furnishing emergency food and shelter, Shiloh helps women obtain police protection, orders of protection, counseling, emergency hospital care, welfare assistance, employment counseling, job training referrals, legal aid, and advice on negotiating the social system necessary to emerge from violent domestic situations. The maximum stay is eight weeks. Services are free.

Shiloh has received a $112,000 grant from the California State Department of Housing and Community Development to buy and renovate the building in which it is housed. Otherwise, it has been funded by private foundations and donations. And Scarf--director, motivator, counselor and driving force--has yet to be paid for her services. “I’m down for a decent salary but I have to put everything in to keep the house going because we have high bills to pay.”

But beyond the bread-and-butter issues, Shiloh seeks to address some particularly Jewish problems. Scarf has discovered differences between Jewish and non-Jewish wife-battering situations.

The one most frequently encountered is denial. While it may be common knowledge that wife battering occurs in non-Jewish homes, the fact that it goes on in Jewish settings is often denied by the community, the family and even the woman herself. This, according to Rabbi Joshua Gordon, director of the Valley Chabad House (an active supporter of Shiloh) and member of its board of directors, causes the victim of the abuse to feel that “she is the only Jewish woman in the world to be battered by a Jewish man.”

Gordon said that the community has been slow to recognize that the problem exists. “Jews have a problem admitting that they have any problems,” he said and he went on to theorize that Jews are being plagued by Western social ills because as they become assimilated into American culture, there has been a breakdown in what he calls the “spiritual immunity system.”

Rabbi Harold Schulweis, the spiritual leader of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino and a member of Shiloh’s board, spoke of a revolution in attitude in a telephone interview. “Communal secrets have been exposed. The dreadful thing is to continue to pretend nothing is there. Shame and denial are forms of repression and self-deception. A community that would like to see itself exempt from all of the unhappiness of society sooner or later has to succumb to the reality that we’re all human beings subject to frailties and weaknesses.

Answering the Cries

“This is difficult for a community that saw itself attached to the family’s warmth. . . . We are, all of us, not perfect people. Now, instead of people suffering private wretched lives, we can hear their cries and do something intelligent about them.”

On a personal level, the denial leaves battered Jewish women with little recourse. “When the women run to their parents or in-laws for help,” Scarf said, “often they are told, ‘Well, because Jewish men don’t do that kind of thing, what did you do wrong to make him do this to you? He’s a nice boy. Go home to your husband and children where you belong.’ That attitude intensifies the women’s isolation, guilt, helplessness and paralysis. Their sense of shame may prevent them from seeking help for years.”

One of Shiloh’s success stories underscores just how long denial can trap some women in violent homes. “We had an very elderly battered Jewish woman with no place to go,” Scarf said. “She had been in an abusive situation for probably most of her married life. Every time she tried to leave in the last 20 years, the family would say to her, ‘Mom, why would you want to do that? You’ve lived with Pop all these years.’ And she was always completely out of funds so she never had a way to take care of herself.

“One day, the husband, also quite advanced in age, knocked her to the floor and began beating her in public. It took three people to pull him off of her.

“After she was with us for about four weeks, she began to heal inside and out. We had someone help her with legal proceedings, pro bono , and she filed for divorce and to take back her maiden name.” Eventually, Scarf was able to place the woman in a safe Jewish environment where she could live in peace. “She is very, very happy now.”

When asked if she felt good about the work she is doing, Scarf hesitated. “I don’t feel good or bad about it,” she replied. “It’s just something I must do. In the Jewish religion, there is the notion of tzdaka . It’s righteous giving--an obligation, not a good deed. The people who come to this house are allowing us to perform a mitzvah . They do as much for us as we do for them. We’re grateful to them for allowing us to fulfill our obligation.”

(Shiloh can be reached at (818) 901-9998.)