A Hasidic woman who has spent several years fighting for a religious divorce from her husband upped the ante this week, making her prolonged plight public by taking it to the skies above Brooklyn.
A plane circled Williamsburg for three hours on Monday, dragging a banner behind it that read, “Free Aguna Mrs. Steinmetz Now!!!”
“Aguna” is Hebrew for “chained woman.”
The plane was hired by members of the Hasidic community who support Yenta Reisa Pollack and her ongoing campaign for independence from husband Eliezer Duvid Steinmetz.
The 26-year-old mother of one has been trying for seven years to split from her husband, who refuses to grant her a religious divorce known as a “get.”
“The objective [of the campaign] is to both mount awareness for this current case, apply pressure to the ‘get’ abuse family, and to try to systemically change the cultural norm,” explained Pollack’s advocate, Adina Miles-Sash, known online as FlatbushGirl.
“In this situation the abuse exists in a family dynamic,” Miles-Sash said. “It’s not an isolated perpetrator and husband — but someone protected by his father and brothers.”
Pollack married Steinmetz when she was just 18. She asked for a divorce a year into the marriage.
“He was never home, he was always abandoning her — he was missing,” said Miles-Sash. “And for seven years, he’s been trying to convince her to give it another try.”
The shame plane is owned by New Jersey-based High Exposure Aerial Advertising, according to online flight records. Miles-Sash said the banner ad cost “thousands.”
Pollack’s campaign continued Friday, with a mobile billboard truck cruising through their neighborhood admonishing her husband and in-laws.
There was also a small protest outside the Foodoo Kosher Supermarket, attended by supporters with bullhorns, who handed out fliers calling on the family to acquiesce.
They also planned to crash a Steinmetz family wedding Sunday.
“They don’t understand that we are ready to go nuclear,” Miles-Sash said, adding many in the Hasidic community support Pollack’s bid for freedom. “They’re holding [the get] in limbo like this, as an abuse tool. He’s demanding she return to the marriage, and she has said, ‘No.'”
Miles-Sash said the couple entered legally binding arbitration, taking their case to a “beth din,” a rabbinical court panel established to resolve disputes.
Steinmetz, Miles-Sash said, was instructed by the tribunal in December to give Pollack a “get” within 10 days, or be excommunicated.
But Steinmetz has faced no repercussions for violating the order, due to his parents’ high standing in the community, Miles-Sash said. His parents are Eizek Steinmetz and Shifra Eizek.
“This isn’t just about freeing this particular woman, but sounding the alarm on this abuse — everywhere where there are Orthodox women, this abuse is taking place.”
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