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ULTRA-ORTHODOX KNESSET MEMBER:
"HARSH PUNISHMENT SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN OUT TO MEN OF MIDDLE
EASTERN ORIGIN WHO BEAT THEIR WIVES"
Knesset Member, Nissim Ze'ev, of the Shas, Ultra-Orthodox Sepharadi Party has caused a storm of protests from civil rights and women's organization after he said during a Knesset debate on wife beating that " Harsh punishment should not be meted out to men of Mizrachi origin (from Jewish communities in Middle Eastern countries) who beat their wives once, or from time to time, because beating is part of the actions that seem acceptable to them, according to the standards that prevail in those ethnic classes.". Researcher Michal Wolf of the Ya'akov Herzog Center for Jewish Studies, run by the Religious Kibbutz Movement, points out in her Doctoral Thesis on "Legal Constraints on Wife Beating in the Talmudic Literature and Jewish Law" that this is not only a phenomenon known among Jews of Middle Eastern origin. Her research has shown that while most ultra-Orthodox rabbinic authorities strongly condemn wife beating, they allow " educational beatings to put a wife in her place."