I did something last week that I had not done in a long time — looked at a copy of Moment Magazine. There’s an article featuring Rebbetzin Chana Weinberg (widow of Rav Yaakov Weinberg zt”l, Dean of Ner Israel Rabbinical College) and the work that she and other individuals are doing to protect women from “domestic violence.” It’s a good article about a very important, if regrettable need.

At the same time, it contains a terrible misquote of Maimonides, that I have seen appear repeatedly for more than a decade. In this particular form, it said that according to the Rambam, “a wife may be poked with a cattle prod for doing a poor job with the housework”! If the Rambam were alive, he could sue for libel — and win. But since some people on this list may have seen this and believed it, let me correct the record.

Maimonides’ Laws of Ishus govern spousal responsibilities in Jewish Law, the majority of which fall upon the husband. The court may enforce these requirements, including with corporal punishment (the Ra’avad demurs that he’s never heard that a court may strike a woman). That’s what it says: the court, not the husband, can force a woman who is refusing to work. For both sides, forcing them to fulfill their obligations — and thus saving the marriage — is deemed preferable to the alternative.

“Poked”? “Cattle Prod”? “Poor job”?!! Absolute mythology.

Maimonides writes that if the husband claims his wife is not working, but she says otherwise, then “we appoint a woman between them, or neighbors.” So not only does he make it very clear that the husband has no right to judge or act on his own, but he also indicates that a woman is preferred as the moderator of domestic disputes.

With all of that, here’s what I really don’t understand: the people who are publishing this misogynistic mistranslation of Maimonides are all supposed “women’s-rights activists”. Why does it benefit women to tell them that Judaism supports wife-beating, when what Judaism actually demands is that a man “love his wife like himself, and honor her more than himself” — and that the court appoint a woman to moderate domestic disputes, when necessary?

It makes no sense. Can anyone explain this to me? To use an old Yiddish expression, OY!