Israel’s haredi-controlled Supreme Rabbinical Court is about to do something that is for it a highly unusual step – publicly shame a man to try to compel him to give his long-estranged wife a Jewish bill of divorce known as a get.
Israel’s Haredi-Controlled State Rabbinical Courts To Publicly Shame Recalcitrant Husband Over Get Refusal
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Israel’s haredi-controlled Supreme Rabbinical Court is about to do something that is for it a highly unusual step – publicly shame a man to try to compel him to give his long-estranged wife a Jewish bill of divorce known as a get.
The rabbis plan to invite five senior academics to come to the court so the rabbinic judges can show them the man, who is their colleague, has refused to grant his wife the get she so desperately wants, Ha’aretz reported.
This is a significant step forward for the state rabbinical courts which, since they’ve fallen into haredi control, have become increasingly insensitive to women’s needs while taking inordinate amounts of time, sometimes many years, to use the tools at their disposal to free women chained to marriages they have long tried to escape. Some women have been left chained to abusive husbands who are extorting them for large cash payouts and better child custody arrangements while others have waited more than a decade before the rabbis finally decided to pressure their recalcitrant husband to comply with the religious court’s ruling and issue the divorce.
Under halakha (Orthodox Jewish law) women cannot marry or cohabit with another man until the estranged husband issues her get. Any children conceived by another man before receiving the get are defined as mamzers, bastards under Orthodox Jewish law. Known mamzers and their descendants are not allowed to marry ‘pure Jews,’ and the country’s haredi-controlled rabbinical Chief Rabbinate keeps a secret list of these unfortunate people and blocks their marriages.
All marriages, burials, divorces, and related lifecycle issues of Israeli Jews, no matter how secular those Israeli Jews may be, are by law controlled by Chief Rabbinate and its offshoots. There is no civil marriage in Israel.
The rabbinical courts have, on rare occasion, summoned extended family members of recalcitrant husbands in an attempt to shame him. But this will apparently be the first time that circle has been widened to include colleagues from work.
Israel’s secular High Court of Justice signed off on that move last when it ruled against the man’s petition to block it.
In response, the state rabbinical courts sent the High Court’s ruling to all rabbinical court judges with the following note attached: “The High Court of Justice has thus approved the practice of summoning relatives and people in the get-refuser’s environment — a practice the rabbinic courts adopt as a last resort — to obtain information and try to use the get-refuser’s associates to persuade him to give a get.”
If the looming meeting with the man’s academic colleagues doesn’t cause him to grant his wife her get, the rabbinical court said its next move could be to “publicly denounce” the husband – a somewhat controversial move because the more conservative wing of haredi rabbis generally opposes this type of public pressure placed on recalcitrant husbands for fear the get issued as a result would be viewed halakhicly as a “coerced get” and would therefore be invalid. The more conservative haredi rabbis, who dominate haredi life today, hold this view even though they also admit public shaming, excommunication in its fullest sense, and even beatings administered by rabbinic courts’ agents were all normal tools used by rabbis several hundred years ago to encourage recalcitrant husbands to grant their trapped wife a get.
So far nine different rabbinical judges in two separate haredi-controlled state rabbinical courts have ruled the man must grant his wife a get, and all fail to see any reason for his refusal to do so other than stubbornness.