Today, the Jewish world mourns a great loss: Rav Ovadia Yosef, a spiritual leader of the Sephardic community and founder of the Shaas Party has passed away. The Baghdad-born rabbi, who died at the age of 93, will be remembered as an active political player and major Torah scholar. And although not all of his…
Marriage and Divorce in the Jewish State: Israel’s Civil War By Susan M. Weiss and Netty C. Gross-Horowitz Brandeis University Press, 240 pages, $40 Until modern times, an agunah, a “chained” or “anchored” woman, was usually a wife whose husband had been lost at sea or killed on the battlefield; rabbis wrote circles around the…
A man imprisoned for refusing to grant his wife a divorce was transferred to a facility with harsher conditions, after the head of the rabbinical court asked prison officials to do so, in order to induce him to agree to a divorce. In September, 2012, S.A., a young, married father of four, was sent to…
More than two-dozen people protested last week in Norwalk, Connecticut against a Jewish husband, who refused to grant his wife a divorce, the Jewish Ledger reports. The demonstration, organized by the non-profit Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA), took place outside the hospital where the husband, Ephraim Ohana, works. Ohana is refusing to grant…
The tawdry spectacle of “get” refusal and extortion in Jewish divorce has made the rounds in both Jewish and secular media for decades. But the Jewish community now faces an historic opportunity. We have within our hands the data on which to base a plan of action to alleviate the plight of “agunot” and a…
For the first time, a state court has affirmed the constitutionality of a Modern Orthodox-sponsored prenuptial agreement meant to protect agunot — Jewish women “chained” by husbands who refuse to grant them a religious divorce. The agunah in this case, Rachel Light, may even be eligible to demand more than $100,000 from her husband under…
An ad in a Washington-area Metro station urges a congressional staffer to give his ex-wife a Jewish divorce decree. The ad, in the Wheaton station in suburban Maryland, features a photo of Aharon Friedman, who works for U.S. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), and urges the Silver Spring, Md., resident to “Give a Get Now!” A…
On a recent Sunday evening in Jerusalem, 25 married couples gathered to have both partners in each pair sign a “mutual respect contract.” The contract was created by three Orthodox rabbis at the behest of Mavoi Satum, a Jerusalem-based organization devoted to combating abuse of the Jewish divorce process. If the couple decides to divorce,…
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