One of our neighborhood Christian ministers recently discussed with me an aphorism from the Alcoholics Anonymous catalog: "We're only as sick as our secrets." I thought this was a terrific remark. It reminds you that, beneath the veneer in which we try to be cool and kind and wise and moral, there often are dark corners of our personalities, in which we can be stupid, weak and mean. But if you are only as sick as your secrets, then the best course is to be (in the words of the preliminary section of the morning prayers) modeh al HaEmet, v'dover Emet bilvavo, admit the truth when you hear it, and speak the truth to yourself in your heart.

For the Jewish community, one of the dark secrets we're only beginning to admit is the reality of family violence. We console ourselves to think that Jews are different when it comes to something so ugly. Jews don't hit their spouses or their kids, right? People in our community don't terrorize their loved ones, right?

What exactly is domestic abuse? People apply this term to a range of behaviors, ranging from severe sexual violence to emotional bullying. In general, you can think of it as a pattern of coercive dominance, in which one partner acquires and holds power over the other. This can manifest itself in various emotional, economic, physical and/or sexual ways. It usually traps the abused partner in a climate of fear.

I myself know of no cases of family violence in our synagogue community. Since I began working at Ansche Chesed in 2001, no one has approached me to discuss any current or continuing abuse. But the claim 'I have never seen it' is no proof that it does not exist.

On the contrary, if statistics are to be believed, Jewish families experience family violence at comparable rates to the population at large (perhaps corrected for socio-economic and educational backgrounds). In 2000, the federal government found that 25% of women are assaulted by an intimate partner or date at some point in their lives, and more than 1.5 million women are assaulted each year. (In 2003, the government reported that those numbers are falling significantly. If true, that is genuinely good news for our society.) Among the Jewish community, in 1996 in Baltimore, a quarter of the women, that same 25%, who chose to reply to a community survey reported that they had experienced domestic abuse in their lives. A lower, but still devastating percentage, 10%, reported physical abuse in a 1999 Jewish community survey in Columbus, Ohio. There is incidence of men suffering abuse, as well, though women are the victims in around 90% of cases.

Not to be omitted from the picture is the question of elder abuse. According to the National Center on Elder Abuse, some 500,000 people aged 60 and higher are victims of domestic violence each year.

In this message, I seek to convey four things to the community:

First, to bring to your attention the possibility of a problem you may never have considered in a community like ours. I hope we can become a more informed, less deluded community, by acknowledging that abuse is not always by them. Sometimes it is by us.

Second, know that I would offer a listening ear to discuss even this most horrifying problem. A New York area rabbi I know once spoke from the pulpit about the problem of domestic violence, never having heard of any incidence in his shul. Within months, several victims sought him out. I am no psychologist or social worker, but I would do what I could to help the victim in such a crisis, and even, if possible, to help the abuser get needed help.

Third, I would like to offer some additional resources for yourselves or your friends or your neighbors. Please know that there are avenues for getting help, or if necessary, getting out. And the Jewish community is building systems to help you. The Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services has a family violence hotline at 718.237.1337. There are four Jewish shelters in the New York area (including the Yiddish-speaking Project Tikva in Rockland County). In Manhattan, anyone who wants to reach the Genesis shelter should call its 24-hour hotline at 212.714.2225. I have made a contribution from my Tzedaka fund in support of their work. Also, Jewish Women International (formerly Bnai Brith Women) has done fine work in producing books and curricular materials on this topic. Consult them www.JewishWomen.org if you would like to learn more.

Finally, as Torah students we must affirm unequivocally that the Torah commands us not to tolerate violence and abuse generally, and certainly not in the home. I must admit that over the course of hundreds of years many rabbinic authorities evaded the question, denying that abuse ever occurs among Jews. May the Merciful One save us/Rahmana Litzlan, we also have our share of rabbis who tolerated wife-beating. Surely they lived in societies we would never choose for ourselves. In general, those rabbis living under Islam were weaker against abuse than those living under Christianity. (To learn more about the history of this question, consult the fine book Silence is Deadly, by Naomi Graetz of Ben-Gurion University, who visited with an Ansche Chesed trip to the Negev in 2002. The book is in our AC library.)

But there have also been many among the Sages of Torah who showed no flexibility when confronting abuse. At their head was the great R. Meir of Rotenberg, a 13th century authority (one of the Tosafists) who taught that was no place in his community for abusers. He recommended ostracizing abusers, excommunicating them, forcing them to divorce and even flogging them (Graetz, pp. 126- 129).

There is much we should do as a community to help alleviate this problem. Sometimes we also should pray together. Please take a moment and say Psalm 55, a lament, and think of those wounded by their dearest friends.

Would that I had wings like a dove to fly far away and be at rest. . .For it was not my enemy who taunted me. I could have borne that. It was not those who hate me who raised themselves against me. I could have hid from them. But rather it was you, a man, my partner and companion and dear friend, who walked with me in the house of God.