Lesbian relationships are forbidden under Jewish law but generally bear
no punishment and are not viewed as severe violations, unlike homosexual
sex or heterosexual marital infidelity, which both carry severe
punishments. Even so, the rabbis equated the purported affair with heterosexual infidelity, which carries the biblical death penalty, forced the woman to accept a divorce and denied her alimony.
In A First For Israel, State Rabbinic Court Denies Woman Alimony Based On Alleged Lesbian Affair
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
An Israeli haredi state rabbinic court in Rishon LeTzion has awarded a husband a get (religious divorce), ruling that his wife’s purported affair with her female supervisor was tantamount to heterosexual infidelity, the Jewish Press reported today based on a report on the Yedioth Achranot website Mynet.
Lesbian relationships are forbidden under Jewish law but generally bear no punishment and are not viewed as severe violations, unlike homosexual sex or heterosexual marital infidelity, which both carry severe punishments. Even so, the rabbis equated the purported affair with heterosexual
infidelity, which carries the biblical death penalty, forced the
woman to accept a divorce and denied her alimony.
The couple had been reportedly married for more than 10 years and had 2 children.
The husband alleged that at some point during the marriage, the wife began an affair with her female boss at work. His wife denied having the affair, and claimed her relationship with her boss was only a friendship.
Even so, the husband insisted on ending the marriage.
Both the rabbis and his wife asked that they start couples therapy to try keep the marriage alive for the couple’s sake and for the sake of the children, as well.
The husband agreed to try therapy and the couple started attending marriage counseling sessions. But the husband alleged that his wife continued her lesbian relationship. In response, he said he gave up on the marriage and started seeing another woman.
After more than four years of trying to resolve the couple’s differences, last week the rabbinic court decided that there was no point in continuing to try to save the marriage, and it finalized the couple’s divorce.
But in what is being viewed as a groundbreaking ruling, the court also rejected the wife’s request to receive alimony, using her alleged lesbian affair as grounds to do so – something that would seem to lack support in halakha.
It is not clear what precedent, if any, was set by the rabbinic court’s ruling.
Was its rejection of the woman’s request for alimony really recognition of lesbian relationships as equivalent to heterosexual relationships with regard to infidelity and religious divorce law?
Or was the rabbinic court only punishing the wife for reneging on her promise to honestly work on healing her marital relationship?
While that is yet unclear, a rabbinic expert told the Jewish Press that the wife will probably be forced to sue her ex-husband in secular court in order to get child support if the rabbinic court’s ruling rejecting alimony also absolved the husband of any financial responsibility for the for the couple’s two children.
[Hat Tip: Yochanan Lavie.]