An Israeli court sentenced a polygamous cult leader to 30 years’ imprisonment on Tuesday for sex crimes against his wives and daughters as part of what prosecutors described as a mind-boggling saga of dominance and delusions of deity. The defendant, Goel Ratzon, 64, had denied the charges of rape and indecent assault. Tel Aviv District…
An Israeli polygamist and cult leader was convicted of several sexual offenses including raping his wives. Goel Ratzon was convicted Monday in Tel Aviv District Court in charges including rape, sodomy, indecent assault, and sexual abuse within the family. He was cleared on one charge of sexually enslaving one of the women the he called…
The chief judge of Jerusalem’s rabbinical court, Rabbi Eliyahu Abergel, recently ruled that a man may take a concubine if his wife is unable or unwilling to bear children, and unwilling to divorce him. According to an article in Israeli newspaper Israel haYom, Abergel permitted the head of a major yeshiva to take a pilegesh,…
One thousand years ago, German Jewish sage Rabbeinu Gershom forbade polygamy in the Jewish community. Now, a rabbi in Israel wants to reinstate the practice. Rabbi Yehezkel Sopher, who heads the organization Complete Jewish Family, placed an advertisement in a popular pamphlet handed out at synagogue calling for the return of plural marriage, according to…
Leah Berkenwald discussed how the reality show “Sister Wives” has joined HBO’s fictional “Big Love” in shining the spotlight on polygamous lifestyles, and in raising interesting questions about our ideas about marriage, monogamy and religion. Her conclusion? “I came to realize that my problem with “Sister Wives” is not a problem with the family itself…
I returned home from my cousin’s wedding Sunday night, happy and exhausted with barely enough energy to flop onto the couch and turn on the TV. That is how I found myself watching the two new episodes of TLC’s “Sister Wives,” a reality TV show about a modern polygamous family. I think the expected feminist…
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