In the time of the Gemara, a man was able to commission a get and throw it in his wife’s yard. Whether or not she wanted the divorce, she was divorced. In the eleventh century, Rabbeinu Gershom prohibited a man from divorcing his wife without her consent or against her will. Three centuries after this decree, Rabbeinu Asher (the Rosh) explained the ban: “Because he saw the generation unbounded and degrading daughters of Israel by ‘throwing the divorce,’ and so he decreed to equalize the power of the woman to the power of the man.”
The Rosh clearly understood the dangers women face when powerless in their divorces, and that the only way for women to be protected in this process is to reinstate a power balance. Centuries later, the Jewish divorce process is still largely unequal. While there are some men whose wives refuse to accept a get, we estimate (based on data and years of experience) that about 90 percent of people being extorted and abused in exchange for their religious freedom are women.
As activists in this field, we have seen just how dangerous the power imbalance in Jewish divorce can be. Beyond the power imbalance between husband and wife, there is an even greater power imbalance in Jewish divorce that often goes unmentioned—that between the parties who are divorcing and the dayanim (judges) who are facilitating the divorce. This has proven to be the most precarious dynamic of them all. Parties who seek the service of a beit din to commission a get have reported experiences ranging from unprofessionalism to malpractice.
“…the rabbi teams up with the man and manipulates the situation in a subtle way so the woman doesn’t realize what trap she’s falling into. Rabbi B attends my ex’s simchas, yet he insists on being the dayan over me and he is the arbitrator legally.”1
And while this dynamic has the potential to impact both men and women seeking a divorce, women are at a greater risk of being hurt by this dynamic because of existing gender dynamics within the Orthodox community.
A Problem Difficult to Prove, Thus Difficult to Fix
The lack of transparency in Jewish divorce proceedings makes the intrinsically distressing process of divorce even more painful, and makes the problem difficult to address and solve.
“I am a Beis Yaakov Israel graduate. I teach Torah professionally. I am fairly fluent in most Jewish matters. I walked into the get with such little knowledge which made me even less empowered in a situation that was already marked with so much vulnerability.… My rabbi tried very hard to convince me not to divorce. And I lived with an abusive spouse who then hurt my children and only then did I have the courage to leave.”
A woman entering a beit din for her get rarely has any idea of what to expect. Is she allowed to have support? Representation? Will she be asked to give up money in exchange for her get? Custody? How much expense would the Jewish divorce process add on top of the secular divorce? What does the actual get ceremony look like? Do all get ceremonies look the same? For many women, the cost of a divorce can be crushing, especially for mothers who are financially dependent on their exes. For some, the financial cost of divorce alone is reason to stay in a broken or abusive marriage. Those of us working in Jewish divorce have seen and shared stories about women who, at best, have slipped through the cracks, and at worst have been abused by the system in the name of halakhah.
“Most horrific experience I ever went through. They were biased towards my ex-husband simply because he was male. They completely disregarded his abusive behavior and problematic parenting and tried to coerce me to give him the children full time in exchange for granting me a get. Wouldn’t wish my experience with the beit din on my worst enemies.”
Until now, information about individual batei din has been anecdotal. Many batei din do not have websites, and those that do rarely put things like the costs or timeframe for a divorce into writing. When asked for details and statistics, they either claim to not have them or give random numbers without evidence. Someone starting the divorce process often has nowhere to turn for answers except to those who have already been through it.
Even experiences within the same beit din can vastly differ. For example, one woman reported paying about $1000 for her get while another said she paid nearly ten times that in the same court. The cost of the divorce was completely determined by the beit din, with no clarity from the outset. This does not take into account reports of dayanim and askanim (community members who try to resolve issues “in house”) being paid off for settlements, a practice we know to be far too common.
A woman walking into a beit din for her get often has no idea what to expect.
These discrepancies, as well as the pain women reported due to their treatment by dayanim, led us to examine the process and try to determine where things go wrong. To do this, and to seek out real data, we created and distributed surveys in Hebrew, English, and French all across the Jewish world.
As the responses poured in, it became clear that there was no standard operating procedure to be had in the global rabbinic court world. Practices were all over the place. We found many areas that could be easily improved with minor tweaks or even changes to a website. Some pain points need more attention, but it was clear that sunlight and suggested best practices could start the way toward a less painful Jewish divorce process.
Taking a cue from the world in which we live, where we rely on user reviews for everything from which headphones to buy to which restaurant to try, we used the data from the surveys to create a website where the information we gathered was available to everyone.
A “Yelp” for Jewish Courts
Think of Rate My Beit Din as ‘Yelp’ for Jewish courts. Rate My Beit Din2 is a user-based site that reviews Jewish divorce courts in 11 countries, 52 communities, and three languages. To date, we have over 450 surveys with ratings on over 50 batei din, and the site is growing. At the outset we aimed to bring transparency to an often confusing process by arming users with information in areas of concern, including the pricing of the get, the average time for divorce, whether a beit din allows conditions to be demanded for a get, and the professionalism of beit din staff.
We also compiled best practices and pinpointed areas for improvement, offering dayanim and courts clear, practical insights that have already contributed to meaningful progress in some courts. Small things like quicker response times, having a glass of water and tissues available at proceedings, displaying costs on a beit din’s website might seem insignificant but can make a big impact on one’s experience. Our guide to best practices is based on feedback from many people who have navigated this process, as well as the case workers who have supported them.
The site contains information on the get process, user reviews, best practices for batei din, and a new professional evaluation section where professionals can review courts based on their experiences. These reviews hold tremendous value, as they reflect a non-biased evaluation based on multiple cases by those who are in rabbinic courts regularly. In addition, there are “badges” that can be earned by courts whose members take specific training or that make specific changes to their procedures.
Rate My Beit Din is the first site to collect and aggregate data on the Jewish divorce process as well as on individual courts. Beyond transparency for clients, we now have an unprecedented view into the Jewish divorce process on a global scale. We are able to identify trends and issues and are gathering hard data to properly analyze get refusal and the agunah crisis.
While Rate My Beit Din may seem relevant only to the Orthodox community, its impact is far broader. In Israel, all Jewish marriages under the Rabbanut—whether Orthodox or not—require a halakhic divorce, making the platform essential for every Jewish woman in Israel who is currently married or may marry in the future. Additionally, many non-Orthodox couples who choose a halakhic marriage also require or prefer a halakhic divorce. Thus, the platform’s reach extends well beyond Orthodoxy. Every Jewish woman is a potential agunah. Every Jewish person should be armed with the information they need to choose the right beit din for their Jewish divorce.
It is on all of us to ensure that the systems used by the Jewish community have standards, fair procedures, and are run with professionalism and justice. The community has the power to demand transparency and to hold responsible those who do not fulfill their duty. Rate My Beit Din is a tool toward ending the horrors of get refusal and restoring balance and dignity in the Jewish divorce process, something our Sages fought for. We know it can work; we have seen it in some of the reviews on our site:
“My case required the dayanim to travel as my abusive, violent ex-husband was missing for 2 years having left my country and told me that he won’t give me the get ever. The dayanim found him in prison in another Argentinian city. The dayanim located him, and convinced him to give me the get and our children’s custody. He disappeared again the day he had to sign the get but the rabbi involved the local police and located him and convinced him to sign. I was delivered the get by proxy.”
Rate My Beit Din is the first site to collect and aggregate data on the Jewish divorce process as well as on individual courts.
“The rabbis did not make me appear at the same time as my ex-husband, they were kind and explained the process and answered any questions I had during the get process.”
“For such a sad ordeal, the Dayanim at the London Beit Din were extremely kind and showed compassion.”
Please use, share, and talk about the site. The more we do, the more the system will need to listen.