New York woman at center of Orthodox ‘sex strike’ receives her Jewish divorce
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Around 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, Brooklyn-based activist Adina Sash received a phone call she had long awaited: Malky Berkowitz, 29, a fellow Orthodox woman, had finally received a “get,” or Jewish divorce contract.
For Sash, better known on Instagram as “Flatbush Girl,” the phone call also ended a six-month sex strike she had mounted on Berkowitz’s behalf. Jewish law affords men the power to withhold ritual divorce from their wives with no recourse, and Berkowitz’s estranged husband had refused to issue a get for four years.
So in protest, Sash rallied Jewish women to withhold sex from their husbands on Friday nights, known as “mitzvah night,” as well as following a period of ritual impurity during and after menstruation, known as niddah. The goal was to recruit men as well as women to pressure Berkowitz’s estranged husband to divorce her.
“The case needed a lot of public visibility in order to sort of shake it awake and make everyone aware,” Sash told the the New York Jewish Week on Wednesday. “Definitely each woman, in her own way, took on the solidarity with Malky and until she was free, had made pledges to not have sexual relations Friday night, or just to completely strike.”
