The halakhic system of ketubah and get was designed to protect the woman. Unfortunately, the laws of gittin have turned into a life sentence for many women in untenable marriages. We cannot hide our heads in the sand. Divorce today, even in the Orthodox Jewish community, is an growing reality, and we have a responsibility to help ensure that Jewish women undergoing divorce will not suffer in the future as many have suffered in the past and are suffering now.
Failure to solve the problems associated with Jewish divorce is a phenomenon that hurts more than the affected women and their families; it also hurts Judaism. Claiming inability to help women who are married to criminals and abusers is not congruent with the principles of hesed and rachamim which we associate with Jewish law. The protection of men who flout Jewish law is a perversion of Jewish law. Given the facts of low Jewish birthrate and depopulation by the Shoah, it is self-destructive to have women chained in dead marriages during their child-bearing years. Furthermore, when a get is not given, it leads the community to forbidden gossip. Some women leave a halakhic life and bear children while still married to their husbands, thus creating mamzerim; others remain in the fold and endure a life of punishment. Something must be done—for the sake of each agunah and for K’lal Yisrael.
The JOFA Agunah Task Force sees the agunah issue as a community problem. It takes the position that in order to make progress in solving it, we must work from the “top down” as well as from the “bottom up,” an approach suggested by Bar-Ilan professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a pioneer in the study of Israeli family law. “Top-down” includes actions and initiatives by rabbis and decisors to solve the problem of iggun. “Bottom-up” speaks to the education of the Jewish community and grass-roots activism and advocacy on behalf of agunot. Both strategies are needed. Hopefully, rabbinic authorities will respond to community concerns by finding and implementing halakhically acceptable solutions.
This issue of the JOFA Journal is devoted to sharing current thinking on various aspects of the agunah problem and possible solutions.