Show Notes
Adina Sash, known online to over 100,000 followers as Flatbush Girl, is an American Jewish social media influencer and activist based out of Brooklyn. Originally, her content focused on the comedic aspects of Orthodox female life, but in recent years, her activism has shifted to advocating for agunot, women who cannot get halachically divorced from their husbands for various reasons. For all intents and purposes, they are trapped in their marriages under Jewish law.
Sash's most recent focus is a couple originally from Montreal, Raphi Stein and Adeena Kohn. For five years, Stein has refused to grant Kohn a gett, a Jewish divorce. Sash has taken up the cause and waged a social media campaign urgently calling on Montreal's Orthodox Jewish community to increase pressure on Stein.
As part of that campaign, Sash launched an online initiative called “Gett Naked”, where Orthodox women have sent unusually revealing photos of themselves with the hashtag #freeadeena. In the pictures, they show parts of their bodies that are usually covered: hair, elbows, shoulders, knees. Others go further, snapping shots of cleavage and bikinis.
In some ways, it's a successor to Sash's successful 2024 campaign, in which she organized a sex strike in support of Malky Berkowitz, a 29-year-old agunah. Hasidic women in Brooklyn withheld sex from their husbands on Friday nights, and after they went to the mikvah, to recruit men and women alike to the cause. After six months of the campaign, Berkowitz received a gett.
Will Sash's efforts work for Adeena Kohn? And what are the broader effects of these massive digital campaigns in Orthodox circles? Our rabbinic podcasts discuss on this week's episode of Not in Heaven.
Credits
Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director)
Music: Socalled
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