The Legal Theory Orthodox Jews May Come to Regret

A developing application of federal forced-labor law raises a question Orthodox Jewish institutions should take seriously: When can the powerful influence of a religious leader or close-knit community be treated by the government as evidence of psychological coercion?

The question involves concepts often described as “coercive control.” At their core, these concepts are neither absurd nor something religious people should reflexively oppose. People can be controlled without being locked in a room or threatened with physical violence. Financial dependence, intimidation, psychological pressure, and threats to important relationships can all be used abusively. Laws addressing domestic violence, trafficking and forced labor need to recognize that reality.

The difficulty begins when courts and prosecutors move from identifying objectively coercive conduct to interpreting the psychological influence one person or community exercises over another. For religious minorities, that distinction can become extraordinarily consequential.

Orthodox Jewish life offers a clear example. Observant Jews may seek guidance from rabbis, leaders, and teachers about marriage, children, education, livelihood, and deeply personal matters. Religious obligations govern aspects of life that secular society generally considers private. Families and communities influence whom people marry, where they live, and how they educate their children. A religious court (beis din) can carry enormous authority. Communal standing matters, and exclusion from a close-knit religious community can be devastating.

None of this means religious authority cannot be abused. It can. Religious liberty cannot provide immunity for trafficking, violence, fraud, or forced labor. The harder question is when influence, attachment and fear of social or spiritual consequences become sufficiently coercive to satisfy the requirements of criminal law. A recent federal forced-labor prosecution in Brooklyn illustrates why that question deserves attention.

The defendants were leaders of OneTaste, a spiritual and meditation organization whose practices many Orthodox Jews would undoubtedly find unfamiliar and perhaps even objectionable. One need not approve of the organization or its practices to examine the prosecution’s implications.

At trial, witnesses testified that they voluntarily entered the community. They described choosing to participate, receiving benefits from their involvement and, yes, having the ability to leave. Some continued aspects of the practices after their formal involvement with the organization ended. Yet looking back years later, witnesses also described experiences in which they had once willingly participated as manipulative, pressured, or coerced.

Those positions are not necessarily contradictory. People can voluntarily enter relationships that become abusive. They can fail to recognize manipulation while it is occurring, and everyone has the right to reconsider experiences they once viewed positively.

Criminal law, however, has to answer a different question: When does an adult’s later understanding of a voluntary experience become evidence that another person was criminally coercing him or her at the time?

In the Brooklyn case, the consequences were substantial. A federal jury convicted the two women of conspiracy to commit forced labor. They are now serving federal prison sentences of nine years and six and a half years.

They were not convicted of an offense called “coercive control.” The concern is not that federal law now contains such a crime; it does not. They were convicted of conspiracy to commit forced labor under the U.S. trafficking statute. The concern is that psychological, reputational, and communal pressures can form part of the evidence used to establish coercion under a forced-labor statute carrying severe criminal penalties.

One aspect of the testimony should be particularly relevant to Orthodox Jews. Witnesses described fearing the loss of leader Nicole Daedone’s friendship, approval, and support, as well as ostracism from friends, colleagues, and their community. Those fears helped explain why they continued participating even when, in hindsight, they said they no longer wanted to. That does not prove manipulation did not occur. Powerful emotional relationships can certainly be exploited. But it raises a difficult question about where the law draws the line.

Consider someone with a close relationship with a rabbie. He may seek the rabbi’s advice about dating, marriage, his children, his livelihood, where his family should live, or where his children should attend school. That rabbi’s approval may matter enormously. Disappointing him could be painful, and losing the relationship might feel devastating.

Because of that relationship, the follower may make decisions he would not otherwise make. He might donate money he otherwise would have kept, reject a professional opportunity, remain in a difficult situation, or substantially reorder his family’s life.

At the time, he understands these decisions as products of faith, trust, and spiritual guidance.

Suppose that years later he leaves the community bitterly. Looking back, he says he was terrified of disappointing his rabbi, feared losing the rabbi’s approval, and worried about losing his friends and his place in the community. He no longer believes some of his decisions were truly free. He may sincerely believe every word. Perhaps the rabbi did indeed abuse his authority. That possibility cannot simply be dismissed.

However, what legal standard allows a secular court to distinguish that abuse from the extraordinarily powerful influence inherent in some religious relationships? That is a question Orthodox Jews should want answered before the person sitting at the defense table is a beloved rabbi.

Federal forced-labor law makes the issue particularly serious. Under 18 U.S.C. §1589, “serious harm” can include psychological, financial, and reputational harm when the statute’s requirements are satisfied. That breadth is justified. A sophisticated trafficker should not escape prosecution merely because psychological intimidation proved more effective than physical restraint. The broader the concept becomes, however, the more important its limits become.

Fear of losing one’s religious community is real. Fear of disappointing a spiritual leader is real. Fear of losing family relationships because one leaves a community can be devastating. All of those things can influence human behavior, but powerful influence cannot automatically become criminal coercion simply because it is powerful.

Orthodox Jews should recognize how easily their own lives can be redescribed by someone who does not understand them. Members follow powerful religious authorities. The community regulates behavior. Religious obligations are taught from childhood. Marriage overwhelmingly occurs within the community. Members contribute substantial amounts of money to religious institutions. Leaving some communities can carry painful social and familial consequences. Violating communal standards can result in exclusion.

Someone living within Orthodox Judaism understands that each of those statements requires context. Someone predisposed to view an insular religious community as a “high-control group” could arrange precisely the same facts into a narrative about indoctrination, psychological dependency, and coercion.

Jewish communities have already encountered the difficulty of translating religious practices into secular legal concepts. American courts and government agencies have wrestled with Jewish religious divorce, custody, religious upbringing and yeshiva education. European courts and governments have debated restrictions on ritual circumcision.

These controversies involve different facts, statutes and constitutional questions, and they should not necessarily be conflated. What connects them is the underlying problem: A practice whose meaning seems obvious from inside a religious community can appear very different when a judge, prosecutor or government official is asked to interpret it from outside.

There is another complication: hindsight. People leave religions, marriages, political movements, and intense personal relationships. Sometimes they look back with gratitude. Sometimes they look back with anger. Sometimes they conclude that people they once loved and trusted manipulated them.

Their experiences should be taken seriously. But a profound difference remains between saying, “I now believe I was manipulated,” and proving beyond a reasonable doubt that another person committed a federal crime.

That distinction is especially important for minority religions.

Professor Alan Dershowitz and a multifaith coalition of attorneys, scholars, religious leaders and religious-freedom advocates have raised concerns about the implications of psychological-coercion theories entering forced-labor litigation. Those concerns should not be dismissed merely because the prosecution that brought the issue into focus involved a spiritual community most Orthodox Jews would never consider joining. In fact, that is precisely when religious-liberty principles matter most.

It is easy to defend religious freedom when the religion is ours, its practices are familiar, and its leaders are respected. The harder test comes when the beliefs seem strange, the practices make us uncomfortable, and the people whose liberties are implicated are people with whom we would rather not associate. We have seen how legal precedent does not necessarily remain with its first defendant.

That principle should carry particular weight for Jews. At a time of heightened antisemitism and growing hostility toward visibly Jewish religious life, it would be shortsighted to assume that an expansive legal theory applied today to an unfamiliar spiritual community could never be applied tomorrow to a Jewish one.

Adults must remain free to join demanding religious communities, submit voluntarily to spiritual authority, make substantial sacrifices for their beliefs and even make decisions they later regret. They must also remain free to leave, and the law must vigorously protect people from genuine abuse, trafficking and forced labor. Those principles are not incompatible. Protecting one should not require sacrificing the other.

The danger arises when psychological-coercion theories become elastic enough to blur the distinction between criminal compulsion and the powerful influence inherent in religious authority, spiritual commitment and communal belonging. Orthodox Jews should not wait until the community being characterized as controlling is theirs, the spiritual leader being characterized as coercive is a dear “rebbe”, and the religious practices being explained to a federal jury are their own before deciding that distinction matters.