The woman discovered that her husband was secretly having an affair
– with a man. In fact, she didn’t just discover her husband was having
an affair – she caught him red-handed in the act. And then she
immediately filed for divorce. But the husband refused to give it to
her.
Updated at 6:24 pm CDT
Rabbis Jail Bi-Sexual Husband After Ten Years Of Get Refusal
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
An haredi couple in Israel were uneventfully married for more than five years. They conceived two children. And they were, at least as far as outsiders and the wife knew, a normal happy couple.
Then, the Jewish Press reports based on a report in Ynet, the woman discovered that her husband was secretly having an affair – with a man. In fact, she didn’t just discover her husband was having an affair – she caught him red-handed in the act. And then she immediately filed for divorce. But the husband refused to give it to her.
The state rabbinic court ruled that the husband should grant his wife the divorce, but he refused, instead using the withheld get to extort her. He demanded that she forgo the damages awarded her by the rabbi-judges, and she did. He demanded better visitation with the children than the rabbis had awarded him, and she agreed.
But he still refused to divorce her.
For ten years, the woman languished as the rabbis refused to use any of the tools at their disposal to punish the recalcitrant man.
The woman so despaired of getting her divorce that she and her attorney had talked about going to a private rabbinical court to ask for an annulment of the marriage on the grounds that she had been deceived by her husband at the time the marriage took place when he hid his true sexual orientation from her.
If the private rabbinic court agreed and annulled the marriage, she still would be considered married under Israeli law. But under halakha, she would no longer be an agunah and she would be permitted to marry another man. But this still would have left her with legal and halakhic entanglements that could – and probably would – have dogged her for the rest of her life.
Then on Tuesday, during a discussion of a different issue related to the case, the long-suffering wife’s attorney, Batya Kahana-Dror, asked the state court's rabbis to arrest the man and jail him until he gives his wife her divorce.
Unexpectedly, the rabbi-judges agreed.
They called police and had the husband arrested – the first sanction issued against the man in ten years.
This may be the only time a rabbinical court has ordered an arrest of a recalcitrant husband in a divorce case before first trying the lighter sanctions at its disposal.
The woman’s attorney Kahana-Dror told Ynet that she regrets “the fact that the court does not use the arrest sanction often enough. It's illogical [not to use it], unreasonable and it contradicts Halacha.”
She also pointed out that prison is the most effective way of convincing recalcitrant husbands to give their wives a divorce.
“Ninety-five percent of [the men who refuse to give their wives a get] are ready to give a get after [spending] a few nights in the Russian Compound [Jerusalem’s city jail] or in Abu-Kabir [jail in Tel Aviv]. It works remarkably well.”