Riverdale–Almost a year after it was announced at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance Conference in New York last December 6, the International Beit Din, (at first named the International Agunah Beit Din) has begun adjudicating divorce cases, amd according to their statement will be “leaving no stone unturned in order to free the spouse from igun (a recalcitrant spouse).”
The suffering of the thousands of agunot (chained women) in both Israel and the United States has been long and hard, since recalcitrant spouses leave their secularly divorced ex-wives and children in limbo, unable to remarry within the Orthodox Jewish faith and unable to have more children for fear of having them labeled as mamzerim (loosely translated as bastards), who are generally cast out of the community.
Get-Mail, withholding a get from a wife or refusing to accept one from a husband, has been used to coerce the trapped spouse to hand over money, custody and anything else they could manage to get their hands on. The extortion is also used to continue control, abuse and suffering of the former spouse.
Rabbi Simcha Krauss, a lecturer at Yeshiva University’s Israel By Choice program for 20 years, and a former president of the Religious Zionists of America affiliated with Yeshivat Eretz HaTzvi in Jerusalem and former rabbi of the Young Israel of Hillcrest, agreed to serve as the head of the court last year. He said at the time, “I am not a revolutionary, and I understand that halacha moves slowly but it’s been too slow. It’s time.”
That time is now as news of the opening of the IBD has spread.
“My initial reaction is ‘Finally! Mazal tov! Kol Hakavod!’” said Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA). “I think that other solutions have been proposed, such as the halachic prenuptual agreement, but not everyone is signing it, and not every rabbi is requiring couples to sign it before marriage. This will cut through the steel chains that have been binding women as agunot for far too long. This is the halachic way that JOFA and its founders have been fighting for in order to put an end to the agunah crisis. The time has finally come for justice to be instituted in our batei din.”
History has shown that any new effort that asserts halachic expertise and authority must, if it is to be accepted as authoritative, be carefully assessed by rabbinic authorities of the highest order. As a recognized halachic authority, Rabbi Krauss said that the plan is to eradicate igun. “I call it a war on igun. Our intention is to be aggressive about igun. Our intention is to be transparent about igun and the tragedy it is, and also about how we solve cases.”
How the IBD handles its activities will be closely watched and universal acceptance of its decisions will be dependent upon the reasoning behind its decisions which, said Rabbi Krauss, will be made public (excluding any personal information of the participants).
That other halachic scholars will be able to study the decisions will influence the IBD’s acceptance as Elana Maryles Sztokman, award winning author, sociologist, educator and activist told JLBC, “This initiative has the potential to help release many women–that is, if the judges have the courage to use the solutions that are available within halacha, and have the fortitude to withstand the abuse of their rabbinic colleagues that is likely to follow. As we all know, the time for finding a systemic solution to the agunah problem is well past due, and countless women have been suffering needlessly due to rabbinic foot-dragging and fearfulness. Hopefully this initiative will offer a different model of rabbinic leadership, one in which compassion towards human suffering is the primary Torah value, as it should be.”
One of the present problems facing agunot is that an igun may go to another beit din, continuing his extortion before granting a get. Rabbi Krauss said it would problematical to do anything. Because of the separation of Church and State, the IBD cannot force an igun to grant a get.
Rabbi Asher Lopatin, president of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, said that while this is true, his understanding is that the IBD will use well-established halachic procedures to enable women to get out of their marriage even if the husband goes to another beit din. “I don’t think that will be a way for husbands to avoid their obligations or a way for them to be keeping their wives as captives.”
However, while exorbitant fees had been used in the past by some discredited batei den to strengthen igun control despite rulings from civil courts, Rabbi Krauss said that no fees will be charged for the IBD to hear a case and the decisions will be enforceable in civil courts.
Rabbi Lopatin said when a beit din acts as an official arbitrator, such as in the case of a pre-nuptial agreement, the decisions are enforceable in civil court. He said that under certain conditions now, the decisions of beit din are enforceable in secular court. However, “The most pressing need is not civilian enforcement. It’s to release women from their religious, halachic marriage.”
Forty years ago such a need had been the bane of the existence of Jeanette Friedman, Editor-in-Chief of this newspaper. “I was an agunah for seven years, and it was only because of Reb Moishe Feinstein that I was finally freed. He sent me to court to get my divorce first, something unheard of. He wanted men who refused to give gets to be held in contempt, and that is what happened when it was written into the divorce decree. But the ruling was overturned on the grounds of separation of Church and State.
“It amazed me that lesser mortals overruled a posek like Reb Moishe. So when that didn’t work, he crafted the law with NY Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver that became known as the Silver Get Law. I have been waiting for this court to open for more than 40 years, and so have others. It is only a pity that Rivka Haut, z’l, one of the first advocates for agunot I met back in the late 60s, did not live to see this happen. She was unfortunately nifter last summer. She would have been very happy to see her dream come true.”
“Without this beit din, women and children will continue to be pushed off the derech. This beit din is needed, for mothers, sisters, aunts, and cousins, and I am grateful for those who had the courage to finally make this happen.”
As to the reception the IBD has been given among the Modern Orthodox and the Harredi, Rabbi Krauss said he believes that so far it has been welcomed and soon, every decision the IBD makes will be put up on its website without violating privacy. “We hope to continue. We didn’t come to compete with anybody. We didn’t come to throw anybody out of business.” Rabbi Krauss said, “Whoever needs us will find us. And they will find us responsive and friendly and wanting to help alleviate igun.”
Rabbi Shumel Goldin, the rav of Ahavath Torah in Englewood and honorary president of the Rabbinical Council of America (the RCA) told JLBC, “Generally when two people go to a beit din they agree that the beit din is serving as an arbiter and they sign an arbitration agreement. What makes it enforceable in American law is the agreement. If they’re dealing with a situation where both parties are willing to give the authority to the beit din to determine its ruling then they are voluntarily signing over their rights to the beit din. That’s like any arbitration agreement which is enforceable in civil court. If they’re going to be dealing with a situation where one of the parties is unwilling to be party to their deliberations, then I don’t think it can happen.
“If they are going to be activists in this area–which is an extremely, extremely important area and one that needs to be addressed–they must operate in a fashion that will achieve broad consensus. It’s really a question of whether decisions that are promulgated by this court will be accepted by the mainstream or not. There will always be those outliers at either end of the spectrum. There is a broad Jewish community and what you want to do is achieve acceptance within the broader Orthodox community.”
Goldin continued, “I have great respect for Rabbi Krauss. I know him personally, but there’s really nothing I can say because I don’t know what their parameters will be and I don’t know whether or not the decisions they make will receive acceptance in the broader Orthodox community. When it comes to something as important as this and as critical as this, the success of the beit din is going to depend on their ability to achieve consensus from the broad halachic community. It’s one thing to have differences of opinion when it comes to Shabbat or Kashrut. Obviously there will be differences of opinion and you follow your rabbi and you rely on the rabbi that you feel is appropriate. When it comes to issues of Jewish identity and marriage and status, what you do not want to do is create a situation in the community where people will not be considered married by half the community. You want to come up with solutions that will work but at the same time will receive broad consensus.”
He continued: “Any solutions that we can come up with that will mitigate the plight of agunot, I welcome. But they have to be real solutions and they have to be solutions that will help rather than hurt. I have no opinion until I see the product of their effort. I commend them for making an effort to solve what has proven to be a very difficult problem in the Orthodox community and one that causes great pain to people and any effort to mitigate such pain is laudatory but the judgment concerning this particular effort is still out.”
Susan Aranoff, an agunah activist pioneer who worked along side Rivka Haut and Honey Rackman for decades, told JLBC: “I wholeheartedly support the IBD’s courageous efforts to use all available Halakhic remedies to free agunot. Their plan to publish piskei din (rulings) should help rally community support for their efforts and strengthen the hands of rabbis who may be called upon to officiate when these former agunot remarry. The suffering of agunot who are chained to dead marriages and victims of Get extortion is a moral crisis for Orthodox Judaism.”
Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for the Agudath Israel, the umbrella organization for haredim, declined to comment as he felt he didn’t know enough about the beit din and their workings.
Among those who were contacted but were unable to comment were Blu Greenberg a founder of JOFA and author on women’s issues who is in Salerno. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, who posted the first halachic pre-nup on the Internet in the early 1990s, and the rabbi of Efrat, was not reachable in Israel before press time, and Rabbi Menachem Genack CEO of the Orthodox Union Kosher Division is in Venice.
By Anne Phyllis Pinzow
