Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal

On May 24, 2026, Adina Miles Sash, known digitally as “FlatbushGirl,” appeared on Talkline With Zev Brenner to discuss the contemporary agunah crisis, rabbinical courts, and Jewish marriage. Throughout the interview, Sash presented herself as a communal insider fluent in Orthodox culture, weaving traditional terminology—including baruch Hashem, neshamos, dayanim, bas Yisroel, chosson, kallah, tznius, erva, and ownah—directly into her remarks.

But beneath this familiar religious vocabulary lay an ideology far more radical than standard institutional critique. The broadcast exposed a coherent worldview that increasingly portrays the core structures of traditional Jewish marriage and sexual ethics not merely as flawed, but as fundamentally predatory, oppressive, and morally illegitimate.

While Sash addresses a legitimate, painful, and widely recognized halachic issue within Orthodox Judaism—the suffering of agunot and the weaponization of the religious divorce process—her rhetoric systematically inflates the problem into an immediate, existential crisis. By characterizing the entire institution of Jewish marriage as an inherently predatory “scam” and a form of “slavery,” she strips away the nuanced reality of marital breakdown.

In doing so, her narrative entirely ignores the actual, highly complex facts of individual domestic disputes, which frequently involve tangled webs of mental health issues, financial conflicts, child custody battles, and bilateral grievances. Rather than engaging with these intricate legal and psychological realities, Sash reduces highly specific, multifaceted family court litigations into a flattened, black-and-white spectacle designed to fuel a radical public campaign.

Criticism of abuses within the get system is neither new nor illegitimate; serious rabbinic authorities, activists, attorneys, and scholars across the Orthodox world have debated the problem of get refusal for decades. But Sash’s rhetoric moves beyond institutional reform into a total rejection of the legitimacy of the traditional framework itself.

The Sabbatai Zevi Parallel

The comparison that comes most readily to mind is not political but theological. In the 17th century, the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi developed a movement that increasingly framed transgression itself as spiritually redemptive. Rather than viewing violations of Jewish law as tragic failures, Sabbatean theology inverted the moral structure of Halacha, portraying the breaking of norms as a pathway to liberation.

Crucially, both Sabbatai Zevi and his later 18th-century successor, Jacob Frank, leaned heavily on sexual antinomianism as a core mechanism of their rebellion. They deliberately commercialized and displayed the sexuality of women, using public performative immodesty as a tool to shock the rabbinic establishment, subvert traditional boundaries, and magnetize followers. In Frankist rituals, the deliberate breakdown of traditional sexual modesty was framed as a holy act necessary to achieve a higher, paradoxical redemption.

The parallel here is not literal messianism; Sash is obviously not claiming to be a redeemer. But there is a recognizable and terrifying resemblance in the underlying logic: longstanding prohibitions and communal boundaries are recast not as sacred obligations but as instruments of cruelty, while their public, sexualized violation is reframed as righteous resistance.

Throughout the interview, Sash repeatedly portrayed traditional Jewish marriage not simply as dysfunctional in certain cases, but as intrinsically predatory. At one point, she declared:

“Shame on anyone who has a bigger issue with a provocative picture than the fact that women are being sex slaves, literal sex slaves.” (11:11)

She continued:

“They are literally being incubators.”

Sash further stated that women are “being peddled as cattle as objects into slavery” (8:03). She later summarized her position bluntly:

“The entire Jewish marital operation is a joke. It’s a scam…” (8:46)

These are not merely critiques of individual rabbinical failures; they amount to a sweeping moral indictment of the institution itself.

Not Reform But Rejection

The ideological shift becomes clearer when analyzing Sash’s proposed responses. When Brenner asked whether women should continue getting married under the current system, her answer was unequivocal:

“Until the Kiddushin crisis is fixed, absolutely not.” (26:32)

Sash openly admitted that her core objective is to directly reach religious Jewish girls with this campaign, attempting to shock them into recognizing what she considers systemic objectification. She declared:

“…and I don’t need anyone’s help to let every single bas Yisroel girl know that they’re nothing more than objectified pieces of sexual objects…” (8:46)

To broadly discourage Jewish women from entering marriage unless religious law is restructured according to an individual’s own standards is a direct challenge to the system itself. Sash framed the situation in systemic, catastrophic terms, describing how women are prohibited from intimacy because their “psychopathic ex-husband who’s addicted to control won’t give them their freedom” (5:59) and labeling the entire system “an abuse of the highest order.” (1:32)

Claiming That Sexual Immorality Is Freedom

Some of the interview’s most controversial remarks involved sexuality and modesty. Echoing the exact theatrical methodologies of Sabbatean heresy, Sash openly described encouraging women to engage in public acts of sexualized protest in solidarity with women she views as deprived of marital intimacy (ownah):

“And so we have been very successfully sounding the alarm and encouraging women to show and reveal aspects of their erva that they want to share as a means of standing in solidarity with agunas who are deprived of their ownah.” (1:32)

Within traditional Orthodox Judaism, laws of modesty (tznius) are not viewed as symbolic suggestions but as binding religious obligations connected to holiness. Thus, what Sash frames as liberation is perceived by religious listeners as an intentional rejection of halachic boundaries. The underlying moral logic is clear: prohibitions once regarded as binding are reimagined as oppressive, while their violation becomes reframed as righteous resistance.

This logic extends beyond public protests; as of May 7, 2026, her Instagram bio (https://www.instagram.com/flatbushgirl) promoted “open marriage” consulting services, meaning help with adultery.

Sash’s Instagram was removed and then restored during recent controversy over her nudity campaign. Her new Instagram profile strategically omits the adultery services and says “LINK IN BIO for paid or probono service.” Perhaps that’s where she is now hiding her full scope of activities, or maybe you just find out through word of mouth. 

Within an Orthodox framework, promoting arrangements that accommodate intimacy outside of a halachic marriage represents a fundamental departure from Jewish sexual ethics.

A Shocking Call to Intermarry

Perhaps the most startling moment in the interview came when Sash outlined what she described as her next campaign: discouraging Jewish women from marrying Jewish men altogether. She stated:

“And if you think my next campaign is gonna be anything different than letting women know they should not be marrying Jewish men while this epidemic is going on, you have no clue how far I’m gonna go.” (11:21)

She then justified the position by declaring:

“…nothing more than incubators to make Jewish babies and guess what, Zev Brenner, Jewish women don’t need Jewish men to make Jewish babies.” (11:21)

While some defenders might attempt to interpret the “babies” comment strictly as a reference to reproductive technologies like sperm banks, the broader rhetorical architecture of her campaign points to a far more disruptive conclusion.

When an influencer commands an audience of traditional young women to completely boycott marriage with Jewish men, while simultaneously arguing that being denied sexual intimacy is an absolute human rights violation that justifies breaking classical boundaries, the sociological result is predictable.

By telling Jewish women to bypass Jewish men, and asserting that men are entirely optional to Jewish continuity, her rhetoric undercuts the foundational tenet that Jewish survival requires a halachic household. The logical conclusion of this trajectory is not institutional reform; it is a dismantling of traditional endogamy. For a community defined by its covenantal boundaries, a directive to boycott Jewish men and look outside the community for companionship is functionally a call for structural assimilation.

A Campaign Based on Lies

A critical flaw in Sash’s activism, however, is that the weaponization of her platform relies on narratives that are contextually and factually inaccurate. To justify her radical systemic indictment, she points on air to high-profile “anchor” cases that simply do not hold up under scrutiny.

For instance, she repeatedly leans on the plight of Adeena Kohn and Lonna Kin as primary proof of an unyielding, cruel rabbinic apparatus. In reality, these cases are weaponized for public outrage rather than legal truth.

• Adeena Kohn: Her case is currently in the midst of an active, ongoing secular divorce proceeding rather than a completed standard halachic stalemate.
• Lonna Kin: Sash claims Kin has been “chained for twenty-two years.” Factually, I am told, a valid get has already been executed and sitting ready for Kin for roughly 20 years in the office of a Rabbi Avrohom Gestetner at the Mishpat Tzedek Beis Din in Monsey—a get that Kin has simply never picked up.

By building an entire theology of resistance on foundationally distorted facts, the campaign exposes itself less as a search for systemic justice and more as a calculated manipulation of public emotion.

Threatening to Provoke Anti-Semitism

The broader phenomenon here is not only theological but digital. Modern social media ecosystems reward escalation, emotional absolutism, and identity-driven conflict. Influencers gain attention not by moderating claims but by heightening them. Within that environment, discussions about legitimate failures inside religious institutions can gradually transform into narratives portraying the institutions themselves as irredeemably corrupt.

Sash repeatedly framed rabbinical courts as systemically abusive, asserting that “the batei din are aiding and abetting get abuse” (3:48) and using it as “extortion and blackmail.” (3:48) She further stated that these courts promote antisemitism by demonstrating that “Jewish women are worthless to them.” (30:10)

To force institutional change, she spoke approvingly of bringing outside media pressure—noting that she “had the New York Times at my last protest” (11:38)—utilizing secular legal mechanisms to override religious law.

Some listeners will view these tactics as necessary activism against injustice. Others will see them as an attempt to delegitimize traditional religious structures through external coercion and public humiliation, or worse, a provocation of antisemitism. As Brenner asked Sash:

“How could you promote anti-Semitism with all that’s going on?” (30:00)

The Case for Excommunication

Under classical Jewish law, a compelling halakhic argument can be made that Adina Sash has met the explicit criteria for Cherem (excommunication) through her public campaigns. By her own admission and deliberate strategy, Sash has actively encouraged thousands of Orthodox Jewish women to violate core Torah and rabbinic prohibitions—most notably through campaigns urging women to engage in a “mikvah strike” (withholding marital relations in violation of halakhic obligations) and soliciting and publishing immodest images under the banner of social activism.

In the framework of classical jurisprudence, these actions transition from a personal lapse into the severe offense of Machti et HaRabbim—one who actively induces mass public sin. Historically, the Jewish community has used absolute excommunication to isolate leaders who weaponize the systematic violation of Torah law for ideological movements; most famously, the self-proclaimed messiah Shabtai Tzvi (Sabbatai Zevi) in the 17th century and his successor Jacob Frank in the 18th century were severely excommunicated for actively inciting large-scale antinomianism—the doctrine that traditional laws are no longer binding—and leading entire populations into deliberate sin.

Traditionalists argue that because Sash’s methods similarly leverage the intentional, public violation of tzniut (modesty) and marital purity laws as tools of social protest, her actions mimic this historical subversion, justifying a formal ban to protect the boundaries of Torah law and stop the widespread spiritual compromise she champions.

The Freudian Slip

The deepest concern raised by the interview is not that Adina Miles Sash criticizes rabbinical courts. Jewish history contains a long tradition of internal criticism and moral protest. The deeper concern is the growing normalization of a worldview in which the foundational norms of Jewish marriage, modesty, and communal continuity are portrayed not as sacred obligations but as mechanisms of oppression.

That kind of inversion has appeared before in Jewish history. It rarely ends with reform alone. When a religious system’s core moral vocabulary is turned against itself—when transgression becomes liberation, restraint becomes abuse, and continuity becomes optional—the result is a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of the tradition itself.

Perhaps there is a telling moment of self-awareness regarding the destructive nature of this crusade. At the very end of the interview, Sash offered a highly revealing remark about how she views her own legacy:

“If I could just slither away and no one would ever know my name again, and one day I have an unmarked grave and no one even knows I ever existed — that would be more than fine with me.” (1:00) 

While framed on the air as an act of humility, the claim collapses under the weight of her own behavior. This is not the conduct of an ascetic figure seeking anonymity. Sash is someone who actively and constantly puts herself forward on digital video feeds, books high-profile media interviews, coordinates public spectacles, and aggressively positions herself in the center of the spotlight.

The choice of the verb “slither”—a word deeply associated with deception and the primordial snake that brought ruin to the first human family—functions as a powerful subconscious admission. It reads as the Freudian slip of someone who knows, on some deep level, that the ground they are burning down cannot easily be rebuilt. Her ultimate wish to vanish into an unmarked grave sounds less like genuine modesty and more like the ultimate desire to escape the long-term communal accountability of a scorched-earth campaign.

Written with the help of AI.