Woodmere turns out for agunot

Tears coursed down her face as she detailed a history of deception and physical and emotional abuse and her fears of her ex-husband.

With determination and the help of ORA (the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot), she was able to break the chain that bound her and escape with her two children with a get, a Jewish divorce.

A husband’s withholding of a get is “a form of domestic abuse,” ORA Executive Director Rabbi Jeremy Stern told more than 40 women who attended a Young Israel of Woodmere sisterhood meeting last Sunday night.

“There are no two sides to every story in abuse,” he said. “Get refusal is never justified. It’s never justified to not give a wife a get when the marriage is over.”

ORA assists agunot in obtaining a get by helping them navigate the Jewish and civil court systems, providing emotional comfort, rallying public support, and mustering social, communal, financial and legal pressure to resolve each case with the issuance of a get.

Stern said the group, founded in 2002 by college students working out of a dorm room, gets as many as 200 calls and deals with about 50 cases a year. He said it has assisted in the resolution of 212 cases to date.

ORA’s first step is to attempt to “resolve the conflict amicably,” he said.

In one type of case, the woman turns to a beit din (Jewish court), the husband refuses to appear before the court, and the beit din issues a seruv (finding) that he has “refused to comply with halacha. That is all the beit din can do.”

A second type of case is more complicated, when the beit din process fails or stalls.

Stern said any Jewish man can call himself rabbi and a recalcitrant husband can assemble a “beit din” of three friends. Further, no one can be forced to go to any beit din.

Another option in setting up a Jewish court is a zeblah, an acronym of Zeh Borer Lo Echad, in which each party chooses one judge and jointly choose a third. “It’s very messy, and they can be dealing with a corrupt beit din.”

Husbands have a variety of reasons for withholding their wives’ gets, including money, blackmail or extortion (“how much is it worth to you for child custody”). It could be out of spite, they hate the wife so much they don’t want her to move on with her life; or they “love her so much they don’t want to let go.”

Behavior that in the past was condoned as “boys will be boys” is today recognized as harassment and that shift has to apply to divorce, said Stern.

It should “not be tolerated in our community not even if it’s a brother or son.”

Stern and ORA are advocating halachic prenuptial agreements, saying that they are “found to be 100 percent effective.” They endorse the saying that “friends don’t let friends get married without a halachic prenup.” They suggest that every rabbi should officiate at weddings only if a halachic prenup is signed.

Stern said friends should refuse to accept a kibud (honor) at a wedding if the couple does not sign a prenup.

A prenup is a form of insurance, he said, pointing out that people have car insurance in case of an accident, not because they want an accident.

It should be seen as a reinforcement to mutual love where a husband should say to his new wife, “I love you so much and care so much that I never want to hurt you,” that even in the worst of times we should not let our worst inclinations take hold of us.

“It’s a stigma we have to break.”

For more information visit getORA.org