‘Matir assurim,’ a hostage by any other name: Agunot in the shadows of October 7
For years, I thought about agunot who are mesuravot get, women trapped, held captive in marriages against their will, married to spouses who refuse to grant a get, not only on International Agunah Day, but each morning when I recited the blessing, matir assurim, to “free the captives”. But, the world changed on 10.7. Matir assurim has new meaning. I never imagined I would be thinking about actual […]
Woman says she was ‘degraded’ by rabbinic court’s order to wear a cloak to cover up
A social worker who arrived Wednesday to assist in a divorce hearing at the Haifa rabbinic court said she was told to cover herself with a cloak because her workplace attire was deemed not modest enough to appear before the panel of judges. Tami Gross told Channel 12 she felt degraded and humiliated by the […]
Celebrating our marriage by preparing my divorce
“Maybe his pupils aren’t responding because of the sedation”. My blood ran cold. I was sitting in the cardiac intensive care unit of Shaare Zedek hospital, at my husband’s bedside. Two days earlier, he had suffered a sudden cardiac arrest after a game of squash. Multiple shocks had been necessary to restart his heart during […]
Woman freed after being ‘chained’ in her marriage for 22 years
“After more than two decades of living “chained”to her husband, a woman identifying as Tamar was granted a divorce this week, a more bitter than sweet end to one of the more drawn-out cases of divorce-refusal in Israel, according to the organization that represented her through much of her legal proceedings. “There is great joy […]
The reckoning of an Orthodox feminist
“When asked to define myself, I usually rattle off my list of labels, my identity salad. Human. Mom. Wife. American. Israeli. Religious-Zionist. Activist. Liberal. Orthodox-Feminist. ADHD… Although the Orthodox-feminist movement began before I was born, I did not identify with it until I was an adult. I didn’t know there were others questioning the status […]
Ties that chafe: Israel’s stagnant marital system leaves thousands trapped
“When Elina Bardach-Yalov, a Knesset member for the Yisrael Beytenu party, wanted to get remarried in 2009, she was shocked by the hoops she was forced to jump through by the Israeli rabbinate. After all, she had married through the Israeli rabbinate in 2000 in a marriage that ended in 2006 with a religious divorce […]
10 years ‘chained’: Oshrat’s freedom might depend on a pedophile
From the article: Discovering that one of the witnesses at her marriage is a convicted pedophile seemed like the breakthrough Oshrat needed to be free of her unwanted marriage. Now, at a critical juncture for Oshrat’s case, the Beit Din will decide whether to re-evaluate her argument that the marriage she has been fighting to […]
High Court rejects petition seeking to decriminalize marriages outside rabbinate
