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Case of Joseph Zitrenbaum

(Domestic Violence - attempted murder of his wife)

Former furniture salesman is charged with the attempted murder of his wife, 34-year-old Blima Zitrenbaum. In court Oct. 11 (1996), she testified that he entered her home in the hamlet of Monsey, N.Y., on the morning of Feb. 10 and beat her into a coma with a hammer.

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Table of Contents:  

1. Hasidic N.Y. Enclave Shaken by Lurid Case (10/28/1996)

Also see:  

1. The Awareness Center's Brochure  

2. Domestic Violence in Jewish Communities

BY David E. Rovella

The National Law Journal, October 28, 1996

SECTION: EXHIBIT A; On Trial; Pg. A10

Domestic violence triggers debate over the divorce laws of Orthodox Judaism.

WEARING THE LONG BEARD, black velvet yarmulke, vest and white fringes that traditionally signify a follower of Hasidic Judaism, Joseph Zitrenbaum cuts an odd figure at the defense table in the small, New City, N.Y., courtroom where he is standing trial. Often gazing at his fellow Hasidim in the rear of the courtroom, he nervously shifts his bespectacled gaze from face to face.

The returned stares are not sympathetic.

A pariah in the close-knit Hasidic communities that dot New York City's northern suburbs, the 35-year-old former furniture salesman is charged with the attempted murder of his wife, 34-year-old Blima Zitrenbaum. In court Oct. 11, she testified that he entered her home in the hamlet of Monsey, N.Y., on the morning of Feb. 10 and beat her into a coma with a hammer.

She shocked court spectators, many of whom were neighbors, with a lurid account of the welfare fraud, intravenous drug use and alleged domestic abuse that accompanied their 14-year marriage. At one point during the trial, while she described the attack, he screamed, "You are a liar! You are framing me! You are a liar!" Another time, he slammed his fist down on the table, prompting sheriff's deputies to lurch toward him.

In his opening statement, Rockland County Asst. District Attorney John Geidel noted that the attack was so severe doctors had to remove pieces of Mrs. Zitrenbaum's skull from her brain. She lay in a coma for four days following the attack.

While Hasidic observers agree that the case has crystallized just how much the darker side of secular society can penetrate insular religious communities, they emphasize that the dozen or so sects constituting America's Hasidic community are not strangers to domestic abuse and drug use.

More important, some say, are the religious and legal conflicts raised by the case. Despite her husband's alleged abuse, threats and drug use, Mrs. Zitrenbaum was not able to obtain a religious divorce because Mr. Zitrenbaum refused to grant her one. The refusal to give what is called a "get," or religious divorce, which usually happens after a separation has already occurred, often places Orthodox Jewish women in a sort of marital limbo known in Hebrew as agunot -- or "chained women."

Giving a Get

Under Jewish law, a husband must willingly give his wife a get to enable her to formalize a civil divorce in a secular court. But more important, a woman who obtains a civil divorce without obtaining a get may be shunned by her community, depending on the sect. Under Jewish law, her old husband is unable to remarry, and her new husband and existing children may be frozen out of their communities. Worst off will be any children of the second marriage, who are considered illegitimate.

In People v. Zitrenbaum, 96-78, the prosecution alleges that early on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 10, Mr. Zitrenbaum used a cellar door to enter the two-family Monsey house where Mrs. Zitrenbaum and her seven children live. Once inside, he allegedly sprayed her with mace, assaulted her and then fled via taxi 35 miles southwest to New York City, where he was arrested several days later on Manhattan's Lower East Side, his beard shaved and sporting a hunting cap as a disguise. Mr. Zitrenbaum's record includes prior arrests for possession of drug paraphernalia, according to court testimony.

The trial started with County Court Judge William K. Nelson's insistence that everyone in the courtroom stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Then Mr. Geidel called Mrs. Zitrenbaum to the witness stand. Dressed in a blue-jean skirt and a long, traditional Hasidic women's cap, known as a tichel, she testified to the physical and mental difficulties she endures as a result of the alleged attack, including speech and concentration problems.

Mrs. Zitrenbaum's testimony took a bizarre twist when she said that the couple, desperate for marital advice, had met with John Cardinal O'Connor, head of New York's Roman Catholic Archdiocese. A spokesman for the archdiocese could not confirm the account.

Her account became yet more colorful when Mr. Geidel played answering machine tapes of phone conversations between the two, recorded just days before the attack. The tapes reveal Mrs. Zitrenbaum repeatedly swearing at Mr. Zitrenbaum, telling him to stop calling, while he pleads with her to take him back:

Mr. Zitrenbaum: "Blima, I love you."

Mrs. Zitrenbaum: "You don't love me; you're full of shit."

Mr. Zitrenbaum: "There's no one in the world who loves you as much as I do."

Mrs. Zitrenbaum: "You're a liar. I hate you."

Attacker in the Hallway Light

Mrs. Zitrenbaum said that, because she left her hallway light on before sundown Friday, Feb. 9, she was able to see her attacker. (Orthodox Jews are not allowed to do anything that could remotely be considered work during the Sabbath, including flipping light switches).

"The light woke me up," she said. "I saw my husband coming through my room . . . he sprayed something in my eyes -- I don't know what happened afterwards."

But defense attorney Roy P. Miller, a New York sole practitioner, questioned her ability to identify her attacker, pointing out that when she awoke she was not wearing her glasses.

Mr. Miller attacked Mrs. Zitrenbaum's credibility by nothing that, despite receiving state welfare assistance since 1983, she owned a Cadillac Fleetwood and had failed to report the taxicab and bakery businesses she owned. He continued by arguing that it was she who had led Mr. Zitrenbaum to inject cocaine, allegedly intended as an aphrodisiac. When she denied this and reiterated that it was her husband who had led her to drugs, Mr. Zitrenbaum began slapping his arm in a reference to needle tracks, then jerked out of his chair suddenly, only to sit still a second later as two reclining sheriff's deputies jumped up to subdue him.

Mr. Miller argued that Mrs. Zitrenbaum, in an effort to obtain a get from the defendant, has pinned the attack on him. Mr. Miller attributes the attack to someone who has it in for his client.

"You bring him into court, you threaten him with jail, you get a get -- you're free," he concluded. Mr. Geidel said that Mr. Zitrenbaum, if convicted on all three counts of assault, burglary and attempted murder, could face up to 25 years in prison.

Keeping Issues Separate

The few battered women's shelters that help Orthodox Jewish women, including the local Rockland Family Shelter, refuse comment on the case for fear of retribution -- both from the more conservative Orthodox rabbis and from Mr. Zitrenbaum himself, said one Hasidic Monsey woman at the trial who requested anonymity. She confided that her husband had forbidden her to attend the trial but that she was there to see that "justice was done" to Mr. Zitrenbaum.

She said that while some Monsey residents are afraid to testify or even attend the trial, there is an equal amount of frustration at the attention the trial has garnered. "The Jewish community is very touchy about having their laws and community be on trial," she said. "When something like this happens, we don't know how to react."

Hasidic Jews emphasize that the issue of abuse and issuance of a get are issues they would like to keep separate. But, as in this case, the charge of domestic abuse often raises the issue of a husband's willingness to give a get.

An Orthodox Jewish couple seeking a divorce must first seek the counsel of a "bet din," or rabbinic court, which is composed of three male rabbis. Such a court can order the husband to issue a get, but often tries to save the marriage.

"The religious marriage is a contract. It's religious, but has secular implications," says Rabbi Eli Cohen, Director of Chabad, a Jewish community association at New York University. "A civil court can withhold the final ruling of divorce of a religious divorce has not been granted," because the absence of a religious divorce impedes both parties' ability to remarry.

Rabbi Ronald Greenwald of Monsey says that Orthodox communities like Monsey are not to blame for domestic abuse because such communities have few options when it comes to interpreting Jewish law.

"The get issue is a cloud," he says. "It clouds all the issues of domestic relations, and it makes us all seem at fault. People indict the community [for the attack] when it was the community that supported her when her husband left her."

Rabbi Greenwald, who works as a metals trader in Manhattan, admits the trial is "a little bit embarrassing," and that his community "certainly suffers from the maladies of the rest of society." He emphasizes that where a husband is violent, the community can usually coax a husband to grant a get, but that it remains difficult because he has to comply willingly.

Speaking of Mrs. Zitrenbaum's predicament, he comments, "If she got a civil divorce without first obtaining a get, her friends would leave her and she'd be out of the community," he said. "She could still live in Monsey, but she would not be very comfortable."

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