Shalom Task Force began in a moment of genuine moral urgency. In 1992, a New York pediatrician kept seeing battered Jewish women and children in his practice—bruised, frightened, and without culturally appropriate resources.
Distressed by what he saw, he approached community members, and a group of women banded together to create what became Shalom Task Force, an Orthodox Jewish organization dedicated to helping abused Jewish women and their children through a hotline, legal assistance, counseling, and prevention education.
That origin story is real and important. The women who founded the organization were responding to a very real crisis: domestic violence in a tightly knit religious community where victims often had nowhere to turn.
But over the decades, that women‑centered mission has hardened into a rigid institutional frame in which MEN ARE THE AGGRESSORS UNLESS THEY EXPLICITLY AGREE TO EVERYTHING WOMEN WANT, and the organization now presents itself as a universal victim‑services provider while receiving more than $13.19 million in federal funds.
You can’t take money from the government and favor one sex over the other.
The CEO of Shalom Task Force, Keshet Starr, is an attorney. She knows the law. She oversees an organization that has taken $13.19 million in federal funds over the years, including over $12.5 million in direct federal grants from the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) and the Department of Health and Human Services, plus nearly $683,000 in state pass‑through grants.
That money comes with a clear legal condition: services must be gender‑neutral, cannot discriminate on the basis of sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation, and cannot tie assistance to religious observance.
Under the Violence Against Women Act’s civil rights provision (34 U.S.C. § 12291(b)(13)), any organization that receives OVW or Legal Assistance for Victims (LAV) funding is strictly prohibited from discriminating on the basis of sex or gender identity. That means hotlines, legal aid, counseling, and safety planning funded by these grants MUST BE ACCESSIBLE TO ANY VICTIM, REGARDLESS OF SEX OR GENDER.
Shalom Task Force’s own Form 990 and federal grant records show that the bulk of its funding comes from programs like the Legal Assistance for Victims (LAV) grant and other Office for Violence Against Women‑funded initiatives explicitly designed to provide civil and criminal legal services to adult and youth victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Regardless of how they are named (e.g., “Violence Against Women”), these programs must serve all victims, without exception.
There are some exceptions. The law allows limited sex‑segregated services when integrated settings would compromise safety. Yet even then, it requires comparable services for male victims.
Importantly, there is no exception that lets a nonprofit use public money to serve only women while publicly presenting itself as a universal victim‑services provider.
Women As Victims, Men As Aggressors
Completely ignoring the legal requirement to be gender-neutral, the Shalom Task Force ALWAYS casts men as the villains of the story.
Its 2025 Impact Report is a case in point.
It highlights survivor narratives such as “Leah’s Story: Rebuilding Her Life” and “Sarah’s Story: Trusting Her Instincts.”
Both of these stories, and the visuals which accompany them, convey the message that men are inherently dangerous and must be restrained, tamed, retrained, and otherwise whipped into place by women, who are inherently superior and more knowledgeable.
The exception to this rule, of course, is when the men who are “well-trained” turn into “allies” meaning enforcers of their regime. When sufficiently castrated, they can be set loose into the wild.
Yes, Shalom Task Force, men are abused. Quite a lot!
Now, it is true that sometimes men are abused by women AFTER the women have been abused by those very same men.
Sometimes the men and the women are both abusive.
But sometimes, the men ACTUALLY ARE INNOCENT.
You don’t see that fact listed ANYWHERE in the Shalom Task Force narrative.
We, the taxpayers, are giving them money to cast men, whether fathers or partners or husbands, as evil.
There are no male survivor stories, male-victim service pathways, or female-aggressor, male-victor narratives at all.
I understand that this group serves an Orthodox Jewish community, but gay and lesbian Jews do also exist. There is no mention whatsoever of same-sex intimate partner violence.
Forget mentioning violence against transgender males, which do exist in the community and are documented targets of abuse.
Where do men and boys show up in the world of Shalom Task Force? Of course! There is a “program” for “engaging men and boys as allies” in preventing violence, and for training couples to have healthy relationships.
Dear Shalom Task Force, I have news for you. Women can be and often are a bunch of violent, manipulative animals. They lie and they scheme. They target men spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
We’re just like men!
For a group of women who considers themselves to be feminists, to ignore the innate aggressive capabilities of women is bigotry of the highest order.
I don’t like to cite statistics on violence against men as definitive because it’s so vastly underreported. The stigma against women coming forward is only just now falling away, but the same thing is not happening with men.
Taking just October 7 as an example, we know that the rapes against women were emphasized, while the sexual violence against men was not. While documented, it was only because some hostages bravely came forward that we even heard about it in the news.
Nevertheless, let’s throw some numbers out there.
– One 2020 medical review found reported prevalence rates for physical domestic violence against men ranging from 3.4 percent to 20.3 percent, with psychological violence as high as 37 percent and sexual violence up to 7 percent in some groups. (Kolbe and Buttner 2020, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7658679/)
– Another summary from the San Diego Sheriff’s office cites even higher figures of up to 33 percent. (https://www.sdsheriff.gov/resources/domestic-violence/abused-men)
It’s worth quoting from that summary:
“An abusive wife or partner may hit, kick, bite, punch, spit, throw things, or destroy your possessions. To make up for any difference in strength, she may attack you while you’re asleep or otherwise catch you by surprise. She may also use a weapon, such as a gun or knife, or strike you with an object, abuse or threaten your children, or harm your pets.
“Of course, domestic abuse is not limited to violence. Your spouse or partner may also: Verbally abuse you, belittle you, or humiliate you in front of friends, colleagues, or family, or on social media sites. Be possessive, act jealous, or harass you with accusations of being unfaithful. Take away your car keys or medications, try to control where you go and who you see. Try to control how you spend money or deliberately default on joint financial obligations. Make false allegations about you to your friends, employer, or the police, or find other ways to manipulate and isolate you.
“THREATEN TO LEAVE YOU AND PREVENT YOU FROM SEEING YOUR KIDS IF YOU REPORT THE ABUSE.”
Obviously, the Shalom Task Force needs to attend an educational session to bring their programming into line with the realities of intimate partner violence.
The Unspoken Impact: Cutting Fathers Off From Their Children
No one is arguing that the Shalom Task Force actively sets out to hurt men. Rather, the point is that there are real-world consequences to their tunnel vision, to their determined operation in isolation from the realities of the world we face today.
Nowhere is this more visible than in the tense environs of family court. In a world where judges are routinely inundated with he-said, she-said claims of improper behavior, the Shalom Task Force is considered a trusted resource; the courts, just like the rabbis, look to them for training and expert input on domestic violence.
In that ecosystem, the bias of the Shalom Task Force becomes a nuclear weapon against the fathers desperately trying to salvage their parental rights from the wreckage that was once called their marriage.
Very unfairly, Shalom Task Force’s insistent framing of men as the default aggressor reinforces a legal culture that is deeply skeptical of fathers’ claims. Certainly, in this environment, there is no feasible way for men to report abuse or seek custody from a wife who vindictively turns the system on them.
We, the taxpayers, are paying Shalom Task Force to separate fathers and children. One should not have to prove the extreme importance of fathers in the lives of children, so I will refrain from citing study after study of what has been the God-given natural arrangement of the nuclear family from the beginning of time.
It’s a noble thing to save women from abuse. I have seen abused women. I have seen them stalked by their ex-husbands. This is not just a minor threat but a deadly one: again, we don’t need to revisit the statistics on how many women are actually murdered by an aggrieved ex.
But the reality of male-perpetrator domestic abuse doesn’t give the Shalom Task Force the right to turn men UNIVERSALLY GUILTY. Certainly they are not allowed to take federal monies to do that.
The Audit Gap: Financial Clean, Gender Parity Unstudied
A 2019 audit reportedly gave Shalom Task Force a clean bill of health on financial matters, but there is no public evidence of a gender‑equity audit that examines:
– Who receives services (by sex, gender identity, and age)
– How survivor stories are framed in public materials
– Whether male, same‑sex, and transgender victims have visible service pathways
– Whether prevention and victim‑service programs are balanced across genders
Without such an audit, the community cannot verify whether the organization’s public claims match its actual service distribution.
Shalom Task Force should not be immune from scrutiny just because it operates in a religious community and serves an important population.
If it wants to continue to receive federal funding, it should submit to an independent *gender‑equity audit conducted by the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women that examines:
– The actual distribution of services by sex, gender identity, and age
– How survivor stories are framed in public materials and impact reports
– Whether male, same‑sex, and transgender victims have visible, equal service pathways
– Whether its litigation and advocacy practices contribute to gender bias in family court
– Whether its prevention and victim‑service programs are balanced across genders
Fairness Above All
The women who founded Shalom Task Force were responding to a real crisis. But a mission that began as help for battered women has evolved into an institutional bias that harms men, fathers, and families, and that appears inconsistent with federal law. The federal government should not subsidize that bias.
An independent gender‑equity audit is required to determine whether Shalom Task Force is violating the conditions of its federal funding.
Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal 