<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">In response to some beliefs, the following may be of interest and much of a surprise to me:<div><br></div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 14px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4" style="font-size: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">ChaeRan Freeze explores the impact of various forces on marriage and divorce among Jews in 19th-century Russia. </font></span></font></span></div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 14px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4" style="font-size: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Challenging romantic views of the Jewish family in the shtetl, she shows that divorce rates among Russian Jews in </font></span></font></span></div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 14px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4" style="font-size: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">the first half of the century were astronomical compared to the non-Jewish population.</font></span></font></span></div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#333333" face="Arial" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 14px;"><br></span></font></div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 14px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', 'Trebuchet MS', Tahoma, Arial, sans; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#333333">"If that is not enough, evidence also indicates that there was a high level of divorce in Eastern Europe traditional Jewish society."</font></span></span></font></div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#333333" face="'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', 'Trebuchet MS', Tahoma, Arial, sans" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">From the article "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans; line-height: 14px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#323222">It's All Relative: The Contemporary Orthodox Jewish Family in America" <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(100, 98, 98); font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', 'Trebuchet MS', Tahoma, Arial, sans; line-height: 16px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#333333">By </font><a href="http://www.jewishideas.org/chaim-i-waxman" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#333333">Chaim I. Waxman</font></a></span></font></span></span></font></div></body></html>