The State of Israel has a “wanted” list. It is a list with a Jewish twist. It is
not put out by our equivalent of the FBI. Rather it is issued by the rabbinic
courts – photographs included. The photographs do not show shameless bank
robbers, they display shameful men who have turned their wives into
agunot.
Admirably, the rabbinic courts seems to keep up with the latest
technological tools available. A brief glance at their website (rbc.gov.il)
informs us that a file can be opened online; opening hours and telephone numbers
of rabbinic courts across the country are readily available; groundbreaking
rulings are downloaded at the click of a mouse; all the relevant laws are easily
accessed.
Perhaps the most eye-catching page is that listed under
“Freeing Agunot.”
Just click on the moving banner “wanted” (presented in
English and Hebrew) and you will reach a photographic display of the five men
most wanted by the rabbinic courts. These are men who have refused to obey the
court’s ruling to divorce their wives and have gone into hiding to avoid doing
so. The wives are in an untenable position – without husbands yet still
considered married – agunot.
They and other victims of get refusal who
married in Orthodox ceremonies are in limbo, their very lives frozen in time.
Nevertheless, time does march on, leaving their child-bearing years behind,
together with any chance of happiness or of partaking in a stable family
relationship.
It is not only technology which is embraced by the rabbinic
courts. The laws of the state are those which actually empower the rabbinic
courts. Civil laws grant the rabbinic courts sole jurisdiction over matters of
marriage and divorce of Jews who are residents or citizens.
Rabbinic
judges can sanction recalcitrant spouses in a variety of manners: cancellation
of a driver’s license; termination of a professional license, such as that of a
doctor or lawyer; limitation of a bank account; annulment of a
passport.
Rabbinic judges can even imprison a man who refuses to obey
their ruling to divorce his wife. Furthermore, he can be placed in solitary
confinement by order of the court.
IF THE situation is so good, why is it
so bad? Why does the aguna problem still exist here? The answer can be found by
examining Jewish authority in the past and in the present.
In the early
part of the last century, the American Jewish community also used the most
“modern” means at its disposal to free agunot. The New York based Yiddish
newspaper, The Forward, regularly published the “galeriye fun farshvundene
mener” – gallery of vanished husbands – listing names and photos of men who had
disappeared, leaving their wives as agunot.
While rabbis and the
community leaders truly believed that they were doing all they could to end the
suffering of agunot by searching for the wayward husbands, that level of effort
no longer suffices.
Today the laity is more educated than ever. The ease
of accessing information and the level of understanding of complex Jewish laws
is constantly on the rise. Mobility between communities has never been easier,
thus any individual can distance himself from a rabbi he doesn’t like or retreat
from community life altogether. Certainly in the Diaspora and even here, the
more sophisticated or stubborn an individual, the more difficult for the rabbi
to exert any authority. This engenders a fear among rabbis of losing believers
if they exert authority.
Additionally, the factor which weighs most
heavily on the rabbinic establishment is the possibility of exerting too much
pressure, which would produce a coerced get. That get is invalid, bringing about
dire consequences.
A woman remarrying on the basis of a coerced get would
be committing adultery, as she is still a married woman. What is more tragic is
that children born of the second union would not be able to marry freely within
the Jewish community.
While the rabbinic courts are to be commended for
keeping up with the latest methods on their website, that technology is no more
than a modern version of The Forward. Nothing has changed. A husband still has
the power to refuse to give his wife a get.
What remains to be done is to
return to Jewish law to resolve the problem. The rabbis would do well to heed
the declaration of Rabbi Shimon Ben Tzemach of Algiers (1361-1444) who, when
grappling with a difficult case of get refusal and fearful of the consequences
of a coerced get, said (Tashbetz II, 8): “We are not collectors of reeds in the
lake. As for issues which are dependent on reasoning, the judge has naught but
what his eyes can see.”
He meant that the rabbinic judges of each
generation must resolve the aguna problem from within the development of Jewish
law. It is incumbent upon the rabbis not to leave the problem frozen in time.
Today’s rabbinic judges must shoulder the responsibility to actually neutralize
the power of the recalcitrant husband.
There are processes within Jewish
law which provide for rabbis to abrogate the power of the husband to turn his
wife into an aguna. One example which has been mandated by the Rabbinical
Council of America is the signing of prenuptial agreements for the prevention of
get refusal. Once that particular solution has been implemented by rabbis here,
the rabbinic courts will be able to do away with the “wanted” list as they will
have truly implemented the declaration displayed on their site: “They are to
judge the people with equitable justice” (Deuteronomy
16:18).
International Agunah Day is marked yearly on the Fast of Esther,
Thursday this year.
The writer has a PhD from Bar-Ilan University, is a
rabbinical court advocate, coordinator of the Get-Refusal Prevention Project of
the Council of Young Israel Rabbis and the Jewish Agency, and author of Minee
Einayich Medima on prenuptial agreements for the prevention of get refusal.