Each year, we speak about women who remain chained to marriages against their will. But it is important to distinguish between two very different realities.
In recent decades, we have made meaningful progress in addressing cases of get-refusal, where a husband refuses to grant his wife the Jewish writ of divorce that will set her free. The time it takes for the rabbinical courts to obligate a get has shortened dramatically, and sanctions against recalcitrant husbands are imposed more frequently. The courts have become more efficient and have refined their procedures, so that we are now able to resolve the vast majority of cases within two years.
Yet, paradoxically, even as the system has improved in handling cases of get-refusal, it has lagged in addressing the plight of “classic” agunot: women whose husbands have disappeared, fled the country, or are mentally unfit to grant a get. When there is no one to pressure, no one to sanction, the system stands nearly frozen. These women remain chained not because enforcement has failed, but because courage in halachic (Jewish legal) decision-making is needed. And in this arena, not much has changed.
To illustrate this, I have decided to go back in time, to share here the life stories of three classic agunot who came a decade ago to Yad La’isha, the legal aid organization I oversee, which is dedicated to representing and freeing trapped women from the chains of dead, unviable, or abusive marriages.
No breakthroughs in halachic rulings
There have been no breakthroughs in halachic rulings in the rabbinical courts, no new methods have been developed to permit women to remarry, no broader use of established halachic tools, and no leniencies in the laws of agunot. These women remain unable to move on, to pursue a new partner and a new life.
In 2016, Yad La’isha opened three complex cases for three Israeli women seeking our help. Some of the names are pseudonyms; all of the stories are real. In each of these cases, we pursued every option available to us, both in Israel and abroad.
Shira
When Shira first called us, she had been married for only four years. She had already been civilly divorced for an additional four years, but she still had no get, so she could not legally remarry. Shira’s husband refused to release her.
He understood that this single document was her ticket to freedom, and he had no intention of giving it to her.
Meanwhile, his mental state deteriorated. He left their home, cut off contact with the family, and moved into a tent on the street of one of the coldest countries in the world.
There were no joint assets, and no children. Only one thing Shira desired: to move on with her life. In 2016 we opened a divorce case for her. It is now 2026, and Shira still has not received a get.
Rachel
Rachel also came to us in 2016 with an extremely difficult life story and five small children she was raising alone.
“Ten years ago, I asked for a divorce,” she told us. Her husband was abusive, and she could no longer bear the severe violence toward her and the children. “I obtained a restraining order against him, yet he asked for shalom bayit – marital reconciliation. After one hearing in the rabbinical court, he simply stood up, walked away, and vanished, as if swallowed by the earth.”
No one knows if he is dead or alive. Ten years have passed, and Rachel is still waiting.
Dina
Dina also sought our help in the year 2016. She, too, had endured abuse. She returned to Israel with their two young daughters, while her husband remained in the United States. He promised to follow and to grant a get, but he never came.
Instead, he married another woman and fathered two more children, all while refusing to release Dina.
After 20 years of being chained, Dina was freed only when her husband was killed in a car accident. Her liberation came not through a court ruling, but through tragedy.
Under the auspices of Jewish law, a deeply troubling reality persists – one that any ordinary person would be horrified to confront. Women’s most basic right to liberty has been denied. Women who are deprived of partnership, intimacy, and the possibility of building a future. Women who are walking a torturous path without seeing light at its end.
How many more tears will be shed over a womb that will not carry a child, over a present and future cruelly stolen from them – Jewish women, imprisoned in marriages against their will? It is not only painful: it is a moral failure.
It is crucial to understand that the same halachic system which gives rise to these cases of agunot also contains within it the tools to resolve them. Throughout the generations, halachic authorities have developed mechanisms and carefully grounded leniencies for precisely such circumstances.
Yet today, in these most challenging cases, the rabbinical courts use these tools sparingly, if at all.
An unforgettable example is the case of Rebecca, whose agunah status was resolved by a rabbinical court after 18 years, only to be reinstated two months later. After the ruling’s details had been leaked beyond the courtroom – in contradiction to established halachic principles that one court may not overturn another, and contrary to the principle that a judge may rule only on what his own eyes have seen – outside rabbis and decisors exerted tremendous pressure on the judges to reverse their decision. After tasting the sweetness of freedom, Rebecca was returned to the hell of being an agunah.
The message to every judge in the rabbinical court system was clear: Hand down courageous rulings at your own risk. Imagine how much fortitude a judge must muster in 2026 in order to free an agunah in the face of such fierce headwinds blowing against him.
What will become of a woman whose husband is unfit to grant a get, or who has disappeared and whose fate is unknown? What will become of a woman when there is no husband upon whom to exert pressure, or when pressure simply does not work? What will become of her when the only path forward requires careful, courageous engagement within the halachic texts?
Do not say that their fate is a decree from Heaven. No – the decree is the result of human failure. Time and again, wise, knowledgeable rabbis – lovers of Torah and humanity – have indeed found ways to free agunot in cases where the establishment had raised its hands in despair. Could it be that today there is not enough rabbinic will?
Once again, it will soon be International Agunah Day – Monday, March 2, the day before Purim on the fast of Esther. Not much has changed. How many decades must pass before it does?
The writer is director of Yad La’isha, the Monica Dennis Goldberg Legal Aid Center for Agunot and Mesuravot Get (divorce-refused women), a division of Ohr Torah Stone.