Opponents are Gearing Up in the Perry Reich Custody Battle
The battle between Penina "Pearl" Reich and her husband Sinai Meir Susholz we reported on last week has only just begun. Both parties have throngs of sympathizers and are gearing up in preparation for the fateful court date on which it will be decided whether Ms. Reich gets to retain joint custody of her children or will be forced to reliniquish custody to Mr. Sucholz.
What got this couple entangled is a beth din decision to which both parties agreed to submit for binding arbitration of their dispute. The beth din ruled that the couple should share custody by alternating weekends and some weekdays. A special clause stipulated that Ms. Reich must raise the children religiously and that a beth-din-appointed therapist shall evaluate her periodically to ensure conformity with this clause.
In the meantime, Ms. Reich, who is a successful model and actress, was found not be observing the religious modesty laws prevalent in her Lakewood, NJ community. She was accused of "wearing pants in public and failure to don a wig". The court-appointed evaluator hence ruled that she must surrender custody completely, which prompted Ms. Reich's suit in NJ family court to have the evaluator's pronouncement overturned.
HasidicNews.com has not been able to obtain a copy of the beth din's verdict and the relevant parties have not responded or declined requests for an interview. However, it is believed that the basis of Ms. Reich's suit is that she was intimidated or coerced into the allegedly 15-year beth din binding agreement without having a clear understanding of the ramifications and terms of her action. She is now tearfully pleading that "having one's children torn away from home is more painful than death".
Another possible argument she may use in court is that her conduct does indeed conform to religious standards. After all, there is no explicit law in Orthodoxy that forbids wearing pants or exposing hair in public. In fact the Orthodoxy of the interwar years in America (mostly in New York City) was marked by a wholesale violation of this traditional Jewish modesty standard. Moreover, even in contemporary times, most in the Modern Orthodox community do not follow the "no pants in public" rule.
At any rate, the dispute between them, seemingly a private affair, has been thrust into the limelight of Haredi Judaism in metropolitan New York. While Mr. Susholz is well-funded and politically connected --the judge presiding over the case is a "right-wing" Orthodox Jew-- he has far from unanimous support within the Haredi community in Lakewood. Many women, especially, see this as a struggle for the rights of women in custody battles and argue that children's connection with their mom trumps secondary religious violations such as pant-wearing in public, especially when it does not carry over into the way the children are being raised and indoctrinated -- the children are getting a traditional Lakewood education and their mom is fully cooperative in this regard.
With extensive support from a wide coalition of liberals within the Lakewood community, haredi defectors and women's rights advocates, Ms. Reich has been immensely successful in her campaign to sway public opinion on her side and is thus hoping to tip the scale in her favor in court. Her Facebook support group has surpassed the 2,000 membership mark since being launched on February 12 -- a mere 5 days ago. She is also soliciting funds for her cause via a Facebook app and is asking her supporters to sign a public petition on change.org advancing her cause.
Mr. Susholz claims that Ms. Reich is confusing the children and creating an unstable environment by bringing boyfriends home and kissing in front of them. He is reportedly withholding the granting of a religious divorce until Ms. Reich agrees to surrender her custody claims.
The case is commanding considerable publicity within the Haredi community at large as well. Surprisingly, many in he community are siding with her despite her allegedly lax religious adherence. In a recent poll conducted on HasidicNews.com, 62% of voters were in favor of Ms. Reich retaining partial custody of her children --some voting so on the condition that they be raised religious, which they reportedly are.
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