Denying Your Wife A Divorce Can Get You Arrested In Israel
Image by Thinkstock
Updated, June 29
Non-Israeli Jewish women can seek a divorce in the Israeli rabbinical courts, including in cases where the husband refuses to grant one, under a new law passed by the Knesset.
The new government-sponsored law, which will extend the reach of the state-run religious legal bodies beyond the borders of the Jewish state, is designed to help agunot — “chained” women who have been refused a religious bill of divorce and cannot remarry under Jewish law, the Times of Israel reported.
The law will be in effect for three years. It was brought to a final vote after a controversial passage was removed, which stated the law would have applied to civil unions as well as Jewish religious marriage ceremonies. The softened government bill also placed limits on the jurisdiction of the Israeli religious courts in debating international cases, restricting their reach to the divorce itself, rather than other divorce-related matters, such as financial agreements and child custody.
The bill extends the option to seek Israeli rabbinical legal intervention to Jewish women whose husbands refuse to grant a divorce.
Under Jewish law, a marriage cannot be dissolved unless the man consents to give a get. Rabbinical courts cannot force a man to give his wife a get, but in Israel, they can impose harsh sanctions.
Update note: On June 29, this story’s headline was updated for clarity.
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
