Testimony of Rabbi David Saperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, In Support of the Prison Rape Reduction Act of 2002

Committee on the Judiciary - United States Senate

The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism  - July 31, 2002

Contact: Alexis Rice or Michael Weiner 202-387-2800

Rabbi David Saperstein

Rabbi Saperstein -- Good afternoon. I am Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and I'm pleased to join you today to speak in support of the Prison Rape Reduction Act of 2002. This important legislation would address a profound violation of human rights whose shameful prevalence has been overlooked in this country for far too long.

First, let me commend Senators Kennedy and Sessions and Representatives Wolf and Scott for their passionate, bipartisan leadership on this issue. We could not ask for congressional champions more dedicated to upholding the basic values of human dignity. Their example should demonstrate to all Americans our shared capacity to transcend religious, ideological, and partisan differences and unite behind a common vision of fundamental decency on issues where core principles are at stake.

The scourge of prison rape is just such an issue: Studies show that nearly 25 percent of the more than two million individuals in federal and state prisons across the country will be the victims of some form of sexual assault or harassment during their period of incarceration. In a typical state prison, one in 10 prisoners will be the victim of a completed rape. Once so brutalized, victims are far more likely to be victims of repeated rape. These are staggering statistics that should by themselves arouse the moral outrage of all people of conscience.

The comprehensive Human Rights Watch report No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons reminds us, however, that these statistics represent traumatic incidents of violent abuse that have been perpetrated upon real people. The report contains information from more than 200 prisoners in 34 states, and notes that in addition to the often "unimaginably vicious and brutal" physical effects of sexual assault, prison rape victims also suffer serious and enduring psychological stress, manifesting itself through "nightmares, deep depression, shame, loss of self-esteem, self-hatred, and considering or attempting suicide. Some of them also describe a marked increase in anger and a tendency toward violence." And tragically, AIDS, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases devastate lives physically and emotionally. Sadly, too many prison officials turn their backs on the problem, or even worse, encourage it as a means of control.

All religious traditions teach that the ultimate judgment of a society depends on how it treats the most vulnerable of its inhabitants. Certainly, incarcerated individuals fit into this category. No matter what crime a person has committed, no one deserves to be brutally raped as a condition of his or her punishment. But for too many people in the American penal system, prison rape is merely par for the course.

We must not allow this terror to continue. The bill at issue today provides a responsible, measured approach to the problem, setting up mechanisms for the study, reporting, and prevention of prison rape. Most importantly, the legislation promises to bring to the forefront a tragic plague that is too often a punch line and too rarely a subject of genuine concern in our civic life.

The Prison Rape Reduction Act would direct the Justice Department to set up three programs to address the problem: one to collect and publish comprehensive information, one to serve as a clearinghouse for the reporting of sexual assaults in prison and to provide training and assistance to prison officials, and one to make grants to state and local programs aimed at preventing and punishing prison rape. Further, the bill would establish a national commission charged with setting standards for averting sexual misconduct in penal facilities and able to play a critical role in educating the American public on this crisis. As one who was honored to serve as the chair of a federal commission established by a unanimous act of Congress, I can testify to the potential of such commissions to be a vitally effective goad to executive and legislative officials and to the public conscience.

These reforms would, for the first time, signal a serious engagement with the problem by the federal government. Such an engagement is vital, because turning our back on prison rape would not only violate the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment, it would also mean betraying our most fundamental moral values, which tell us unequivocally that if we can prevent another person from being viciously attacked, we must.

I'm here today to tell you that we can prevent prison rape; we should prevent prison rape; and we must prevent prison rape.

Because of the profound moral clarity of the issue, a remarkable coalition of conscience has come together in support of this legislation. Jewish, mainline Protestant, Evangelical, and Unitarian groups, civil rights, human rights, and criminal justice reform advocates, health care professionals and youth workers, liberals, conservatives, and everyone in between - we all believe that prison rape is wrong, and that we can, and must, do something about it.

Some of us work together frequently; others less so. For example, it is not so common that Reform Jews and conservative Evangelicals find common ground to work together, but when we do, you can be sure that the issue at stake is one that cuts to the heart of a principle so basic that no reasonable person can stand in the way of its genuine manifestation.

We have joined together in the past on issues of similarly essential principle. Our common concern for the world's poor brought us to the table to advocate international debt relief. Our common disgust at the most foul human rights violations drives our work to prevent international sex trafficking and to end slavery in the Sudan. Our common understanding of the ennobling power of religious belief guides our quest for religious freedom, and to end religious persecution both at home and around the world.

One of the Torah's most radical innovations was to put forward the notion that human beings are created b'tselem elohim - in the image of God. The use of divine terminology to describe the human state serves to raise up humankind, to proclaim the infinite worth and potential of each individual person.

The implications of such a concept are far-reaching and profound, imposing on individuals and societies the obligation never to degrade others, to recognize the potential in all for redemption, and to assist the most vulnerable.

That this includes the prisoner is clearly reflected in the Bible in two separate places, where it pronounces a prohibition on raping those captured in war (imprisonment for criminal activity was not known in the ancient Jewish world), both women (Deuteronomy 21:10-16) and men (Deuteronomy 23:16-17). Intrinsically, rape is regarded as a vile sin - under some circumstances, the Bible holds rape to be a civil wrong that requires payment of damages by the perpetrator as compensation for pain, suffering, shame, and blemish (Deut. 22:28-29); in others, rape is categorized as a capital offense (Deut.22:25).

We must recognize that to allow the epidemic of prison rape to continue unabated is to reject the spirit of the divine that connects us all. Therefore, I urge the members of this committee to join with Senators Kennedy and Sessions in supporting the Prison Rape Reduction Act.

Thank you for your time.

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The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism is the Washington office of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), whose 900 congregations across North America encompass 1.5 million Reform Jews, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis(CCAR) whose membership includes over 1800 Reform rabbis.

NEW BOOK: on Abuse in the Jewish Community

Shine the Light: Sexual abuse and healing in the Jewish community by Rachel Lev (available late December, 2002. Northeastern University Press, Boston)

Take an extraordinary journey into the stories, minds, and hearts of adult Jewish survivors of sexual abuse and incest and those who care about them.

Jewish-Survivors · Jewish Survivors of Trauma is dedicated to breaking the silence of abuse in the Jewish Community.

Jewish-Survivors · Jewish Survivors of Trauma is dedicated to breaking the silence of abuse in the Jewish Community.

The original yahoo group for The Awareness Center was accidently deleted back in 2001.  


The networking group was created to give Jewish survivors of sexual abuse/assault who were members of AOL's Jewish community on line a place to communicate with each other.  At the time, Vicki Polin was a JCOMM (Jewish Community Leader online).  The group was originally created back in 1997 and later merged with the newly created organization in 1999.

Book: Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight Against White Slavery 1870-1939

By Edward J. Bristow

ISBN 10: 0805238662 / 0-8052-3866-2
ISBN 13: 9780805238662
Publisher: Schocken Books
Publication Date: 1983

ONE REVIEW:

“What if being a librarian was the most dangerous job

Not exactly what the title or the subtitle says--but rather, with integrity and even a certain elegance: Jewish prostitution and the Jewish fight against it. Until the late 1800s, historian Bristow (Vice and Vigilance) explains, strict religious prohibitions deterred prostitution and procuring among Jews (though there were exceptions: Dickens modeled Fagin after an actual brothelkeeper). The vice began to flourish after 1870, when the shtetl and the closely-knit Jewish family were disrupted by pogroms, wars, rapid urbanization, and secularization, and when immigration created an oversupply of single males in North and South America and South Africa. A Jewish underworld--often organized along family lines--materialized to supply women from Eastern Europe to every other continent. The subculture of that demimonde, as Bristow intriguingly describes it, was remarkably faithful to religious traditions: brothel owners founded synagogues and cemeteries; pimps ordered kosher meat; and girls in Butte, Montana refused to work on holy days. Statistically, he demonstrates, Jews were no more involved in prostitution than the French, Greeks, Poles, Chinese, or most other groups; but anti-Semites inevitably exploited the issue, conjuring up visions of an international conspiracy to abduct Christian girls and spirit them off to the bordellos of Buenos Aires. (The majority of prostitutes, in fact, were volunteers; and Jewish traffickers dealt mostly with Jewish women.) To counter the bigotry and erase ""this horrible blot on the reputation of our race,"" a coalition of Jewish socialists, Zionists, social reformers, religious organizations, feminists, and (more reluctantly) the orthodox community mounted an anti-prostitution campaign, led and funded by Rothschilds, Montefiores, and Bertha Pappenheim (Freud's ""Anna O.""). They resorted to ostracism, vigilante action, police investigation, social work, travelers' aid, muckraking journalism, problem plays on the Yiddish stage, and the League of Nations: all with limited success. In America, Jewish prostitution ended only when Jewish family life stabilized and economic opportunities opened up after 1914; in Europe, the resolution was provided by Hitler (who had heard about Jewish white-slavers). A deft, scholarly excursion into the sociology of prostitution and the byways of Jewish history.

BOOK: The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman

This book recounts the events involving Raquel Liberman, an impoverished immigrant to Argentina that was forced by circumstances into prostitution, and the powerful Zwi Migdal, which controlled the recruitment and deployment of Jewish prostitutes in Argentina while maintaining mutually profitable relations with corrupt politicians and policemen. Liberman's story is presented as an example of individual courage and determination in the face of the violence and corruption of the prostitution business. Her struggle with the Zwi Migdal and triumphant public victory over her oppressors was widely publicized in newspapers and magazines, and was a political cause celebre in its time. This book gives readers an intimate view of how the affair caught the public imagination, and was interpreted and transformed by the artistic imagination.

ARGENTINA: JEWISH WHITE SLAVERY

ARGENTINA: JEWISH WHITE SLAVERY

Bibliography Discuss

by Donna Guy
Jewish Women's Archives

Fear of Jewish white slavery, the sexual traffic in immigrant Jewish refugee women, often conducted by Jewish men, was a topic that preoccupied Jewish communities in Europe and immigrant communities in North and South America from the 1880s until the outbreak of World War II. Of all Latin American cities, Buenos Aires, Argentina, was cited as a haven for white slavers because it had a system of municipally regulated prostitution from 1875 until 1936, when a national law, the Law of Social Prophylaxis, outlawed brothels throughout Argentina.

Jewish women emigrated to Argentina from Poland, Russia and Germany in an attempt to escape poverty and religious persecution. Pressed into prostitution by inflexible religious laws such as those regarding agunot (anchored wives unable to obtain a divorce), the economic desperation of entire families, and the belief that wives, even those married under false pretenses to pimps, should obey their husband, they were among the groups of immigrant women most at risk in Buenos Aires.

As immigrants in a predominantly Catholic society, the Jewish community in Argentina—the largest in South America—became very concerned about reports of Jewish criminality in any form. The claims of white slavery, Jewish pimps, and Jewish prostitutes shook the community to its very core, and every attempt was made to separate the Jewish criminal element from the larger community, including banning them from synagogues in Buenos Aires. In 1908 the Jewish community held a public meeting to discuss the implications of street protests in Jewish neighborhoods against pimps and their relatives. Among the people invited to attend was the first Socialist elected to the national legislature, Alfredo Palacios (1880–1965), who in 1913 drafted legislation to deport foreign pimps, and Manuel Gálvez (1882–1962), a Catholic conservative who had recently written a thesis on the white slave trade. According to Gálvez’s memoirs, pimps paid the crowd to disrupt the meeting with insults in Yiddish and by throwing objects at the committee organized to discuss the subject (Gálvez, 1905 and 1961).

In 1913, Samuel Cohen, Secretary of the London-based Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women, went to South America to ascertain the plight of Jewish women and their victimization. Although he also visited Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Santos (all Brazilian cities), as well as Montevideo, Uruguay, he devoted most of his journey and comments to Buenos Aires. Wherever he stopped in South America there were Jewish women in brothels, many of whom spoke Yiddish, and most of whom were Russian or Polish (Cohen 1913, 1–10).

In Buenos Aires he learned that no anti-white slavery groups were allowed to board vessels to help women arriving from Europe seek work. He did note that an Argentine Anti-White Slavery society had already been established and that the local Immigrant Hotel did its best to find both men and women decent employment. According to the people he interviewed, the moral conditions in Buenos Aires had improved considerably from earlier years. “Immorality is still bad, but it is not so flagrant, nor is it so much countenanced as it was formerly.” Indeed many Argentines had come to support European views that female white slavery should not be tolerated, and anti-white slavery laws had been passed. 

Nevertheless, Cohen blamed the existence of legal houses of prostitution in the capital for the continued problem of immorality. As he put it, “I have talked to the ‘Madames,’ and the only conclusion that I can come to is that they [the brothels] are dens of iniquity, and ought to be closed as quickly as possible” (Cohen, 14–16).

While over thirty-five thousand Jewish emigrants had arrived since 1908, according to the calculations of the Jewish community, more Jews had arrived earlier and continued to pour into Buenos Aires. Among the few people Cohen found interested in the problem of Jewish white slaves was Rabbi Samuel Halphon of the Libertad Street synagogue, and Madame Francesca de Krämer of the Sociedad de Beneficencia de Damas Israelitas, who expanded their work with poor Jewish women to help women in danger of becoming prostitutes (Cohen, 27–29).

As part of his visit to Buenos Aires, Cohen went to brothels operated by Jewish women (Cohen, 30).

It is with shame that I have to say that many Jewish women, themselves mothers of families, are amongst those who are running the houses. They were not pleased with my visit. They did not like the questions that I asked them or the arguments that I put forward against the continuation of their ‘trade.’

…. They were ashamed, too, that a Jew was taking up the enquiry against them.

Samuel Cohen was not the first observer to criticize the plight of Jewish women who engaged in prostitution in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Argentina. Almost as soon as the municipality of Buenos Aires passed an 1875 ordinance regulating brothels as part of a public health campaign to prevent venereal diseases, reports of Jewish white slavery were published in European and Argentine newspapers. In March 1875 the local paper La Nación reported that a French court had condemned a man and woman to jail terms for trafficking in women, and soon reports of Jewish prostitution as well as Jewish pimps emerged (Bristow 1982, 113). In March 1907, two Russian Jews, Louis Gold and Harry Cohen, were “charged with procuring Jane Goldbloom and another young woman to lead an immoral life” in London because Gold had received word from Buenos Aires that attractive young girls were worth £100. This was one of several cases discovered by British police (Vigilance Record).

In 1910, the First Jewish International Conference on White Slavery released another report. It stated that in 1903 Buenos Aires “had forty-two known houses of which thirty-nine were owned by Russian Jews. …Of eight hundred new prostitutes registering in 1909, 236 were Jewish, of whom 213 were Russian” (Kaplan 1979, 111).

How did all these observers identify the Jewish prostitutes when there were no statistics of religious beliefs? When women registered to enter licensed houses of prostitution, they were asked about their nationality, among other things. Those women who identified themselves as Russian, Polish, or German, were assumed to be Jewish not only by the Jewish community, but also by representatives of those countries. The women found work in brothels through the efforts of Jewish pimps who began to organize in the late nineteenth century and had enough capital to set up the houses of prostitution and pay for a Madame to operate them. The existence of organizations such as the El Club de los 40, Varsovia, Asquenasum and later the Zwi Migdal, coupled with the ease with which moral reformers could obtain nationality statistics for legal prostitutes, made Jewish prostitution very visible, even though the much larger community of clandestine prostitutes were of Spanish, Italian and Argentine nationality.

The traffic in Jewish white slavery continued until the outbreak of World War I, and resurged after World War II. In the 1920s the investigations of the League of Nations, particularly its 1927 Report of the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children, once again highlighted the visibility of Jewish prostitutes and traffickers. The following year one of the journalists involved in the League of Nations investigation, Albert Londres (1884–1932), published a study entitled Le Chemin au Buenos Ayres (The Road to Buenos Ayres). One of the English versions had a dust jacket with a provocative picture of two white women chained to each other. This chauvinistic and anti-Semitic book described French pimps in Buenos Aires as patriots who saved women from a life of lesbianism and cocaine, but had only negative comments about the Jewish pimps (League of Nations, 1927; Londres 1928).

The plight of two Jewish women caught up in white slavery led to the final political campaign to ban municipally regulated houses of prostitution in Buenos Aires. In 1930 Cosía Zeilón described how she had been forced by the famous Jewish madame Emma “The Millionaire “and the pimp Luis Migdal to engage in prostitution. That same year, Raquel Liberman accused the Zwi Migdal organization and her husband of forcing her back into prostitution years after she had used her savings to open an antique store. These revelations led to massive arrests of pimps who belonged to the Zwi Migdal, as well as a new decree to ban brothels in Buenos Aires after December 31, 1934. In December 1936 a national Law of Social Prophylaxis prohibited all municipalities from operating brothels and mandated prenuptial medical examinations for all men. While prostitution was not a crime, hereafter the police determined when prostitutes would be arrested.

World War II did more to end the traffic in Jewish prostitutes in Argentina than any local legislation. Women who escaped to Argentina and later from prostitution married into the Jewish community and subsequently led normal lives.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alsogaray, Julio. Trilogía de la trata de blancas: Rufianes—policía—municipalidad. Buenos Aires: undated; Avni, Hiam. Argentina y la historia de la inmigración judía 1810–1950. Jerusalem: 1983; Bra, Gerardo. La organización negra: La incredible historia de la Zwi Migdal. Buenos Aires: 1982; Bristow, Edward. Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight Against White Slavery, 1870–1939. Oxford: 1982; Cohen, Samuel. Report of the Secretary on His Visit to South America, 1913. Oxford: 1913; Galvez, Manuel. La trata de blancas: Tesis para optar al grado de doctor en jurisprudencia. Buenos Aires: 1905; Galvez, Manuel. Recuerdos de la vida literaria, 4 vols. Buenos Aires: 1961; Glickman, Nora. The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman. New York: 2000; Guy, Donna J. Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina. Lincoln: 1991; Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women, Annual Reports. Oxford: 1904–1932; ibid., Official Report of the Jewish International Conference on the Suppression of the Traffic in Girls and Women: Private and Confidential. London: 1910; Kaplan, Marion A. The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany: The Campaigns of the Jüdischer Frauenbund 1904–1938. Westport, Conn: 1979, 111; League of Nations, Report of the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children, 2 parts. Geneva: 1927; Londres, Albert. The Road to Buenos Ayrestranslated by Eric Sutton. New York: 1928; Mirelman, Victor. Jewish Buenos Aires, 1890–1930: In Search of an Identity. Detroit: 1990; Vigilance Record3 (March 1907) London: 23.