LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN
LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN / have a friend xohose father had sex with her from the time she was three years old until she ran away from home at age 15. Ihave a friend whose father had sex with her from...
...Her father won't help her, even now...
...Or is the truth even more odious...
...Is it possible that you sacrificed your daughter not to keep your faith but to keep your job...
...Will you tolerate the lowest, most savage characters as your leaders as long as they win your wars—^or do your fund-raising...
...Still, you stayed his hand...
...Can it be that you valued power more...
...The rest of you knew what was happening and did not intervene...
...Maybe she tried to rescue you and a furious Jephthah sent her away, or silenced her with his fists...
...The text gives no hint that this troubled you...
...Israel, where do you draw the line...
...Ihave a friend whose father had sex with her from the time she was three years old until she ran away from home at age 15...
...Then you accepted a child murderer as your chief...
...As I challenge the characters in the Bible story, the modern parallels are left to the reader...
...Sacrificing daughters goes all the way back to Jephthah (Judges 11), a powerful warrior with a private army, who also took advantage of his little girl, one of 40 nameless daughters in the Bible...
...According to Judges 12, "Jephthah led Israel six years...
...Did you kill your daughter who "had never known a man" to keep her from ever knowing any man but you...
...You have commanded us to revere human life above all else, yet you let a vow take precedence over a life...
...My friend is in her 40s now...
...Faced with the consequences of your vow, why didn't you throw yourself on God's mercy and beg for a reprieve...
...Dtd you really accept your fate, or did you fight for your life...
...What were you thinking when you made that gratuitous vow to sacrifice "whatever" comes through the door of your house...
...He blames the victim and she accepts her fate with what one commentator calls "noble submission...
...If you were powerful enough to help Jephthah defeat the Ammonites, why couldn't you stop him from committing murder...
...Maybe he could bring himself to kill you because he hardly knew you...
...Just as he did when she was a child, he continues to sacrifice his daughter to his needs...
...He calls his daughter "crazy...
...With therapeutic help, she is trying to triumph over her lurid memories and create a healthy relationship with her husband despite the ghosts that crowd their marriage bed...
...Did you imagine that the door would be opened by a beast...
...If women had written or redacted the Torah, we might find answers in the text, but without that female perspective, we must turn to Jewish women—the crazy, noble, silent daughters whose stories have been squelched...
...She remembers cowering under the covers at the sound of his footsteps outside her bedroom door, the feeling of his weight on her, his breath, his hand twisting her tiny arm until she took the position he wanted...
...When the Israelites begged Jephthah to join their battie against the Ammonites, he made them promise that if he was victorious they would make him Israel's commander and chief...
...Most parents would readily sacrifice themselves to save their child...
...During 12 years of Hebrew school and two years of yeshivah, I was never taught this story...
...We are told you asked for a stay of execution...
...Why did you save a son but let a daughter die...
...You "companions" who went up into the hills with the daughter could have spirited her away...
...On her return, Jephthah fulfills his vow and kills her...
...Ruefully, the text reminds us, "She had never known a man" (Judges 11:39...
...First, I have questions for God: Where were you...
...My friend is one of these women but there are hundreds, maybe thousands more Jewish incest survivors who must be encouraged to go public and seek redress, this time with the guarantee that we Israelites will help them heal and protect them from the fathers «Yho have betrayed their love...
...Did your father lie about your reaction to make himself appear less cruel and more God-fearing, and was the Bible's version invented to save face for the man who was to rule Israel for six years...
...How could you allow an innocent girl to be sacrificed in your name...
...You have brought me low...
...Where was your mother in all this...
...The missing Torah lies in their souls where the truth about fathers is made bearable by hope, and where daughters dream of the healthy father love that many have never known...
...Didn't you realize that "whatever" would quite likely be your unnamed wife or daughter...
...The silence that has protected Jephthah from judgment is the same silence that protects my friend's father...
...Then he made a vow to God: "If you deliver the Ammonites into my hands, then whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me on my safe return from the Ammonites shall be God's and shall be offered by me as a burnt offering" (Judges 11:30-31...
...Letty Cottin Pogrebin is the author of Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America (Crown, 1991) and the national co-chair of Americans for Peace Now...
...Why did you let Jephthah kill his child to prove his word when you did not let Abraham kill his child to prove his fealty...
...I suspect you were crying not for your maidenhood, but for your life...
...says the Bible, adding: "She was an only child...
...Jephthah, why didn't you offer your own life instead...
...Next, some questions for Jephthah: How could you have been so stupid...
...Finally, I ask Jephthah's daughter: When you danced through the door, shaking your timbrel as Miriam shook hers at the Red Sea, were you overjoyed as any child would be to see her father return alive from battle—and couldn't Jephthah have predicted this response...
...Were you afraid God would rescind your victory and the Israelites would deny you the sovereignty you had bargained for...
...After routing the enemy, Jephthah went home and "there was his daughter coming out to meet him, with timbrel and dance...
...For I have uttered a vow to God and I cannot retract'" (Judges 11:34-35...
...maybe you begged for mercy and had to settle for 60 days...
...he had no other son or daughter...
...He won't admit what he did...
...Her torment means nothing to him compared to his reputation as a big macher...
...Maybe you ran into the hills with your women friends and were caught by your father's army...
...Abraham was acting under your explicit commandment...
...Or perhaps your mother was deceased and your were living alone with this stranger-father who was so often away at war...
...Her torment means nothing to him compared to his reputation as a big macher in the Jewish community, a big giver, a regular guy...
...you have become my troubler...
...On seeing her, he rent his clothes and said, 'Alas daughter...
...Is it possible that more than 2,000 years before Freud, you could not stand the idea of daddy's little girl becoming her own woman...
...Was it love or piety that made you so willing to die for your father's vow...
...But she does ask Jephthah to stay her execution for two months while she goes into the hills with her friends to lament "and bewail my maidenhood" (Judges 11:37...
...My second set of queries is directed to the Israelites: Why did you let Jephthah complete this heinous act...
...He makes the lunatic vow but somehow it's his daughter's fault for appearing in the doorway of her own house...
...I have trouble believing you went to your death thinking about your virginity...
...Why were you willing to play Russian roulette with your family's lives...
Vol. 18 • February 1993 • No. 1
