This is a double issue of the JOFA Journal. The agunah crisis is of such import that we wanted to include many more articles than usual covering more subjects to better inform our readers. We hope you will take the time to read through it all.
JOFA recently sponsored an ad that over 850 individuals and organizations signed in support of agunot. We pledged our efforts to work throughout the coming year to alleviate the suffering of victims of get refusal. We also urged rabbis and the entire Jewish community to use all legitimate halakhic means at our disposal to prevent the emergence of new agunot. As I spoke to people urging them to sign the ad, I realized how little was understood about the agunah problem. So many I spoke to were under the impression that when a husband is incapacitated, a Jewish court can issue a divorce. That, of course, is not the case. People did not know that there is no halakhic impediment to a recalcitrant husband having sexual relations with another woman, even fathering children, and in some cases marrying while never giving a get. These options, of course, are not available to the woman who has been refused a get.
We could write a book of stories about women whose lives have passed them by while waiting to obtain a get. A few of these stories have been incorporated in this issue. Seven years, eleven years, twenty-eight years. Some women had to pay exorbitant fees to obtain their divorce. Others had to relinquish the right to see their children. Does anybody hear? Does anybody care?
Judaism teaches us to live by God’s commandments. V’chai bahem—“and we shall live by them.” The lives of these women are unlivable and intolerable. Solutions have been proposed. You will read about them in the following pages. But we cannot get a consensus of rabbis to agree on any one of them. How can this be resolved?
As a first step, we are urging rabbis to refuse to perform marriage ceremonies without a signed pre-nuptial agreement. It will not help the agunot that currently exist, but hopefully, it will deter the emergence of new ones. It is a first step.
When I am feeling discouraged, I think of what one rabbi said to me recently— “Every one wants to hit a home run to score a run. But four singles also bring in a run.” So we will try to look for small solutions to a big problem, and hopefully, one day, it will be solved.
Does anybody hear? Does anybody care? We do. And we hope you will too.