Modesty From Cats, Sexual Morality From Doves: Orthodox Jewry's Silence in the Face of Sexual Misconduct

Abstract

Jewish tradition maintains that the laws pertaining to modesty and sexually sanctioned behavior must be maintained at all costs. Despite these injunctions, sexual misconduct in the Orthodox Jewish (OJ) world has been met with deafening silence from the religious leaders who are most responsible for upholding traditional Jewish values. This article attempts to explore how a society that has taken pride in its strict adherence to laws of modesty and sexual propriety has recently found itself embroiled in numerous sexual abuse scandals. In the first section of the article, clinical vignettes are used to examine the role played by systematized, dissociative processes in both the sexual abuse itself and the silence surrounding it. The second section of the article examines particular features of OJ life, which, enabled by defensive operations including denial, minimization, and self-deception, have resulted in a culturally sanctioned tendency to deny the existence of sexual misconduct or, when such denial is impossible, to dismiss it as relatively harmless behavior.