Imagine investing in a business; the partnership sours, but the freedom to begin anew depends on your ex-partner honoring his obligation to sign your walking papers. This scenario best describes what confronts a Jewish woman when a marriage is over: a man must give his estranged wife a *get a religious divorce decree, without which…
Divorce is almost always presented as a prickly topic, one that imbues it survivors with bitterness and regrets. And so when I first heard about The Huffington Post’s new section devoted to divorce, I expected ranting. But most of the contributors on the site appear to be reasonable and sincere grown-ups — a mixture of…
Us Weekly announced today that pop starlet Christina Aguilera and her husband, tribe member Jordan Bratman, have separated after nearly five years of marriage. “They were very much in love. But over the last six months, it became clear they were more like friends than husband and wife,” an unidentified source close to Aguilera told…
Punk movement’s Jewish roots are hardly a secret and have long been explored. But a punk band that creates music videos to promote the importance of freeing agunot — women tied to unwanted marriages because their estranged husbands refuse to give them a get, or a religious divorce — is something new. An under-the-radar band…
How badly do women want to be married? This is a question that has been asked from the Talmud to The New York Times, and the answers can be counterintuitive. Tav l’metav tan du m’lmetav armelu. “It’s better to lie with another body than to lie as a widow.” (Babylonian Talmud Kiddushin 7a) This Talmudic…
As a woman, I sometimes feel like I’m in a catch-22. I want to bring attention to issues concerning women, but I also want men to pay attention. When women are doing all the talking, we run the risk of marginalizing ourselves, of turning our ideas into “women’s stuff.” By inviting men to speak about…
“Rachel” an ultra-Orthodox mother of 12 living in Jerusalem, got divorced this week. It’s cause for celebration for two reasons. First, this grants her much-needed freedom from her severely violent and erratic now-ex-husband, a man who viciously controlled, manipulated and abused her and her children during the marriage and separation. But the real jubilation is…
One of Israel’s most influential Orthodox rabbis has ruled that women may read — and write — the Scroll of Esther. In a Torah class on Saturday night, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef challenged the mainstream Orthodox view that the Scroll of Esther, which both genders are obliged to listen to on the upcoming festival of Purim,…
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