In some ways, it’s a cause for celebration: an aguna for 18 years is finally released by a religious court. On the other hand, despite the fact that an Orthodox beit din has annulled the marriage, that decision has no effect whatsoever – none! – upon her legal status in Israel. Doesn’t that violate the principle that the decisions of a valid beit din are accepted, even if other rabbis disagree with the ruling? What does this tell us about the pitfalls of the religion-state mix in Israeli law? And what can each of us do to fix these problems? Join Anne, Rachel, and Shoshanna to find out.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post Magazine, June 7, 2018
“Women’s voices have been generally missing from the great Jewish discussion that takes part within our communities. For millennia, the corpus of both Jewish law and thought has included the perspectives and outlooks of men alone. Today, we are witnessing an important renaissance, allowing us to benefit from the distinctiveness and singularity that women bring to the table. I believe that their voices allow us to view many of the pressing issues facing Judaism today from a fresh perspective. I believe that anyone who took part in this significant Shabbat, and went to hear one of the women who spoke throughout our various communities, was indeed impressed by the need for female Torah erudition.”
Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig
So said Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig, who teaches at Midreshet Lindenbaum and is the rabbi of the Netzach Menashe community in Beit Shemesh. His congregation hosted Dr. Penina Neuwirth for Shabbat Dorshot Tov, which, in April, saw 80 women Torah scholars take to podiums in Orthodox synagogues across Israel. Dorshot Tov, and the extent to which it has grown and is supported by so many Orthodox rabbis and communities, is a testament to the increasing acceptance of women’s Torah leadership in Orthodoxy.
This communal acceptance is a result of a number of factors unique to Israel, which together create an atmosphere of opportunity for women’s leadership. Many are the individuals, institutions, and organizations who are working to make women’s Torah and leadership a normative part of Judaism and Israeli society. This piece is the first in a series that will look at the phenomenon of women’s leadership, meet the women at the heart of this shift, and explore why this movement is good for the Jews.
While there is no shortage of female teachers or lecturers, and there certainly are and have long been female scholars, the opportunity to shape Jewish law and policy has been largely closed to them. Men studied the law and men made the law.
However, the past three decades have seen a major shift in women’s access to Torah study, with numerous institutions providing women with deep education in Jewish law. Moreover, in Israel, innovative trailblazers are constructing creative positions in which women can apply this knowledge.
What has led to this shift? Some claim that it is born from the need for women in leadership positions, for the benefit of both the community and women themselves.
Yael Rockman, Executive Director, Kolech
Yael Rockman, executive director of Kolech, a prominent Israeli Orthodox feminist organization, and initiator of Dorshot Tov, explains: “In general society, women are analysts and judges. For religious people, Judaism is a huge part of our lives. If we prevent women from fully participating in Judaism, we create a reality where a woman can fully express herself and serve her community in her secular life, but is stifled Jewishly. This kind of dissonance is unhealthy and won’t last. For a thriving Jewish community, we must resolve this tension. There is room for women leaders. We need to give them ways to participate in the community. Otherwise, we will lose the next generation.”
Indeed, institutions such as Matan, Beit Midrash Harel, Midreshet Lindenbaum, Midreshet Ein Hanatziv in Ma’aleh Gilboah, and Nishmat — to name a few — all boast programs that teach women Jewish law at high levels, and provide certification after rigorous testing. Women’s midrashot, the women’s educational counterpart to the men’s yeshiva, are packed with hundreds of young women studying Jewish texts, weaving themselves into the legacy of Jewish discourse.
Those familiar with the debate surrounding women’s scholarship and leadership in the Diaspora (specifically on the question of Orthodox women rabbis) may be surprised by the flourishing of women’s opportunities in Israel. It is important to note that there is a significant difference in the approach to and acceptance of women’s learning and leadership in Orthodoxy in Israel as compared to the United States. A number of factors lead to this different reality.
First: the model of leadership. In the Diaspora, the position of rabbi is often pastoral. In that capacity, he — for in Orthodox circles, the rabbi is virtually always male — is often a communal leader who heads a synagogue, is paid by the community, and serves as the address for the community’s questions and advice. His wife, by virtue of being married to the rabbi, is often included as an unpaid adjunct of the position and is often expected, depending on her skill set and availability, to host, give classes, spiritually advise her female congregants, attend life cycle events, and be a visible and active part of the community.
In Israel, however, for most religious Jews, the synagogue is simply where one goes to pray. Religious social life in Israel is not centered around the synagogue, the way it is in the Diaspora. There may or may not be a designated rabbi who gives sermons from the pulpit, but rarely would everyone in the congregation turn to him for guidance. His position is not a full-time one, except perhaps in shuls that purposely implement the Diaspora model.
The difference in leadership models between Israel and the Diaspora means that not only is there far less competition for the pastoral rabbinic roles, but also the communal structure is not at risk of upheaval when women step up to play a role in communal leadership.
Women learn in the Beit Midrash
The second major difference is that there is no separation between religion and state in Israel. Many public, state-funded positions in Israel have primarily been open to those who have been ordained. These positions include city rabbis, spiritual guidance of educational institutions, rabbis of hospitals, heads of religious councils, rabbinic court directors, rabbinic court judges, kashrut supervisors, army chaplains, and many more.
And while rabbinic roles in the Diaspora affect only those within the local and larger Orthodox community, in Israel, the lack of separation of religion and state means that marriage, divorce, conversion and even burial are government services. Each aspect of these services has far-reaching influence on women’s lives and yet, because they fall under the realm of “religion”, women have had no opportunity to influence them.
Until recently, all of these positions had been closed to women — regardless of whether the positions were rabbinic or clerical and administrative in nature. Because these positions are state-funded, however, they are subject to Israel’s civil law, which explicitly outlaws discrimination.
Enter Israel’s NGOs that use Israel’s civil law to open doors for women in religious and communal services. Through strategic discrimination lawsuits filed with the Supreme Court, they have forced the state rabbinical courts and Ministry of Religious Services to open certain positions to women. These include kashrut supervisors, rabbinic court advocates, rabbinic court directors and, in the latest turn of events, legal advisors to the the rabbinical courts. The position of legal advisor is particularly influential, since rabbinical judges must not issue rulings that contravene Israeli law. Legal advisers review and insist on changes to important and precedent-setting rulings.
These efforts to increase women’s representation in religious services have born fruit: putting women in positions of influence has improved not only the rulings that emerge from the rabbinic courts, but even their functionality.
In 2013, a new law, stating that at least four of the 11 seats on the committee to elect rabbinic court judges must be filled by women, changed the dynamic of this committee. The appointed women fought against the corruption, nepotism and political deal-making that had been rampant. The real difference, however, came with the appointment of rabbinical court advocate Dr. Rachel Levmore, whose vast knowledge of Jewish law and passionate commitment to agunot led her to spend hundreds of hours vetting potential candidates. As a result, the committee succeeded in electing 22 new judges after nearly eight years of dysfunction and stalemate in which no new judges were elected.
Since Dr. Levmore’s tenure ended in 2016, however, the committee has once again devolved into a stalemate of politics, with no new judges elected, causing a backlog in cases and prolonging the suffering of those whose cases gather dust. Her story suggests that while having women on committees changes dynamics, having learned women on committees changes practice.
The role of rabbinic court advocate was one of the positions previously open only to men. This meant that a woman seeking divorce was often the sole woman in the room with six men, two of whom were her direct opposition. In 1991, Ohr Torah Stone (OTS), a network of Modern Orthodox educational institutions, approached the Chief Rabbinate about the need for women advocates but was promptly turned down. It wasn’t until OTS went to the Supreme Court that a Knesset bill amended the law to allow for women to practice as advocates in the rabbinical court. When the first class of toanot graduated from the Monica Dennis Goldberg School for Women Advocates, the Rabbinate contested their credentials, and OTS again took them to court. Finally, in 1994, the Rabbinate recognized the program and its graduates.
According to Dr. Levmore, women’s experiences in Israeli courts improved dramatically when women were introduced as halakhic and legal representatives. “When women hold official positions, the concerns of those women who appear in court are more likely to be heard.
Now, nearly 30 years later, the Rabbinate refers cases to Yad La’Isha, an Ohr Torah Stone organization that employs toanot who represent women denied a divorce, in recognition of their professionalism and competency.
As women’s participation in the elite committees and courtrooms bring about trickle-down change, others are changing the way women engage with their own religious practice from the bottom up.
In 1988, Matan opened its doors; it began with five women studying around a dining room table and soon had 90 women studying the Bible and Talmud. In 1997, Nishmat, The Jeanie Schottenstein Center for advanced Torah study for women created the Yoetzet Halacha program to train women in family purity laws. Until the advent of this program, religious women would take their very intimate questions to a rabbi. The creators of this program, Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbanit Chana Henkin, did their utmost to gain acceptance and approval for the program, to great success. When yoatzot came on the scene, thousands of women who practice family purity began turning to these women experts who not only understood the laws, but understood the female experience first-hand.
Initially, both toanot and yoatzot faced opposition, despite the need for their services. But, social change develops at its own pace, and now yoatzot and toanot have become entrenched in mainstream Israeli communities. With time, people are growing used to seeing women as scholars and even decisors of Jewish law.
Perhaps the largest contributor to this normalization is the breadth of opportunity for women’s learning here in Israel. Hundreds of women study Jewish law in high-level programs, some of them passing the same exams administered to men by the Rabbinate.
Recently, the Susi Bradfield Women’s Institute of Halakhic Leadership (WIHL) at Midreshet Lindenbaum certified two women as Manhigot Ruchaniyot and Morot Hora’ah, qualifying them to advise on matters of Jewish law and serve as spiritual leaders to the Jewish people. After successful completion of the five-year program and rigorous written examinations, these two women join six others who completed the comprehensive training in high-level halakhic curricula addressing kashrut, Shabbat, family purity, mourning, marriage, fertility and more.
While far from being widely accepted, certification of women as halachic decisors is not as controversial in Israel as in the US. Moreover, rabbis acknowledge that Jewish law does not preclude women as leaders. Rabbi Nachum Rabinovich, head of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe in Ma’aleh Adumim, writes in Mesilat Levavchem, a work of Halachic-philosophical essays, that according to the majority of halachic authorities, there is no halachic problem with women serving as judges and therefore no problem with them accepting other leadership roles.
Rockman echoes this sentiment. “The challenges for women leadership aren’t in halacha, they are in the system. Girls start learning Talmud at a much later age, if at all. Their education in Judaism diverges at a certain point. There are no full time Yeshivot for women. In addition, women are locked out of many positions and cannot easily make Torah learning into their profession. Then there are the social barriers, people are not used to seeing women in leadership positions, and they oppose it without knowing the halachot. This is one of the reasons we initiated Dorshot Tov and other programming, to bring the scholarship of women to the wider Orthodox community and to help these women find professional positions.”
This is the power of visibility and representation. Communal leaders become such because their authority, expertise and leadership are recognized by the community who adopt them as their guides. As more women become increasingly visible in these roles, people will begin turning to them at higher rates, as many are already doing now.
Undeniably, the existence of women leaders and scholars enables women to better practice and engage with their Judaism. Also undeniably, women’s informed involvement forces the system to acknowledge women’s needs and experiences, and take them into consideration when operating in practice.
In the next part of this series, we will meet these game-changing women and explore just how much they have already done to benefit Jewish and Israeli society, and how much farther we still have to go.
There’s a new get refuser in town. Two weeks ago, the Haifa Rabbinic Court issued a ruling to publicly shame a man who has refused to give his wife a Jewish divorce for the past two years, and put him in cherem, a social sanction involving public and private excommunication from communal life. The court’s edict instructs the community not to speak to him, conduct business dealings with him, count him for a minyan in synagogue, call him up for the Torah, offer him food and drink, and the like.
In order to dissolve a Jewish marriage, a man must deliver a formal bill of divorcement — the “get” — to his wife, and refusing to grant one leaves her chained to the marriage indefinitely (a chained woman is colloquially known as an agunah).
In the past two weeks since this most recent shaming campaign went public, the man tried to defend his recalcitrance by countering that his wife was alienating him from their children. Since then, the religious community in Israel has been dissecting the couple’s divorce to death. Who is the real victim? Who is the real bad guy? Being reasonable people, we all want to hear “both sides of the story” before casting judgement, so we pry, gossip, and expose the intimate details of this couple’s custody battle and property disputes. There are young children in the picture.
Everything escalates. The woman still doesn’t have her get.
We need to stop publicly prying into the nitty gritty of people’s marriages and divorces in agunah cases. It doesn’t help, and it legitimizes get refusal.
Here is why:
When it comes to trapping a person in a marriage against their will, it doesn’t matter if the husband is evil/wonderful or if the wife is evil/wonderful. Women deserve freedom because they are people, not because men are evil. You don’t earn the right to be free by being a perfect victim, nor do you earn the privilege to abuse someone by being a perfect victim.
Exposing the details of marital breakdown or custody battles as a way to see who is the “good guy” in the story implies that get refusal is a legitimate tool that is warranted under certain conditions, so it is our job to determine if those conditions have been met. It sends the message that, if she had been really awful to him, then she deserved it. Or if he’s been dealt a really bad deal, then he can use the get as a weapon to extort what he needs. It says that freedom is not a given for a woman; it is something she is entitled to only if she is found to be the more virtuous party. But here’s the thing: denying a person freedom by refusing a get is never warranted, the same way that other domestic abuse is never warranted.
Agunot are not fodder for publicity stunts and they are not damsels in distress. They are women, people, who have the right to be free regardless of anyone’s character appraisals of them or of their husbands.
Originally published in the Times of Israel by Rachel Stomel
I was going to be the Minister of the Environment. That’s the answer I gave my parents when they asked me my plans for moving from New Jersey to Israel at age 22.
I believed it. And why not? I had a degree in Environmental Studies and was accepted to an MA program at Hebrew University. Living in Israel was the dream; doing what I could to make it better was the plan.
As it happens, within a few weeks, I met my husband-to-be on the beach in Eilat (during a marine biology course!) and, well, five kids and three transatlantic moves later, I am not the Minister of the Environment.
What I have become is a product of my environment: a reluctant warrior, an accidental activist.
For the past ten years, I have lived on the front lines of religious extremism in Israel, and I have seen it slowly take over both communal and political institutions.
Had I moved to moshav in the Galilee, instead of Beit Shemesh, I’d likely be happily sipping coffee on my porch, watching the sunset, knowing nothing about women being erased from publications, girls relegated to the back of the bus, the struggles of women as they try to leave marriages, or the alarming health statistics of Haredi women.
“The Orthodox community is sliding towards extremism, and the first victims are women.”
But I didn’t, and I do. And having stood at the side of an aunt, as she slogged through the misery that is divorce through the Israeli religious court, fighting to be freed from the man who had left her and her children, and having cried and begged the court’s judges to do better, but instead seeing papers “lost,” promises broken, and apathy unhinged, I have become someone who knows too much to hold her tongue.
And so, I began to write. I wrote about agunot, women chained to failed marriages like my aunt, and about the failings of the system. I wrote about women’s images being censored, and about how girls in my neighborhood were being spit on. I wrote what I saw and how I felt and that we must do better.
At that time, I continued to seek help for my aunt. I turned to anyone I could find: lawyers, activists, MKs, rabbis, rabbaniot, legal advocates. Everyone I met introduced me to someone else.
The more I learned, the more I wrote, and the more I wrote, the more I understood.
In the end, I came to perceive a systemic problem in Judaism—the Orthodox community is sliding towards extremism, and the first victims are women.
The sign in the photo above is one of several similar signs in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, a neighborhood populated by some of the most extreme sects of Judaism.
It proclaims that all women who enter the area must be modestly dressed — and spells out what that means. The graffiti underneath it echos the sentiment.
“What is the big deal? It’s just a sign. Ignore it,” people say.
But it is not just as sign. It is a symbol of control. It is a rallying point. It is the justification for violent behavior. It is a designation of turf and power.
In this neighborhood, a self-designated “Committee for Purity” decides what images and words may be published. They, and others who follow their lead, levy threats against publications and businesses, and assault those who get in their way. The committee has intimidated local businesses so thoroughly that no locally produced publication depicts women of any age. The local health clinics and banks won’t portray women, making for some disturbing promotions of women’s health featuring only boys and men for whom the same services are irrelevant.
Modest women have been called “shiksa” and “prutza.” Some of us have been spit on as well. Teens walking to their volunteer Shabbat programs have been pelted with garbage, diapers, and even bottles. A teenager cut a woman’s head open with a rock because he didn’t like the way she was dressed.
“It is not just as sign. It is a symbol of control… It is a designation of turf and power.”
It may start with women, but it never ends there. IDF soldiers have been attacked by Haredi men and boys. Women and children call the Israeli police “Nazi,” and garbage bins and tires are burned in the streets.
If the extremism were simply a phenomenon of a small group, it might be possible to ignore. But it is not — how can it be, when it exists on the political level as well?
Of the two Haredi political parties, neither allows women. Though they claim to represent the women of their community, no Haredi MK even attends the committee on women’s health (which is indeed relevant to the women of their community). The lack of representation and of listening to the needs of women has real-life consequences. Haredi women die 30% more of breast cancer than other women, and their life expectancy is 8th out of 10 lowest, compared to Haredi men’s 2nd place. I have been accused of hating Haredim because I have written about these statistics. But I’m speaking out on behalf of the Haredi women; with no Knesset presence, who will fight for their health if we don’t make the situation known?
In the Israeli religious courts, women seeking divorce are too often sent back to abusive husbands, with the judges’ reassurance that they won’t be beaten as long as they don’t ask for a divorce. Agunah cases wait endlessly on the docket, get extortion is not only allowed, but actively encouraged, as the easiest way to achieve a halachically acceptable divorce
“This is not Judaism and this is not Halacha.”
This is not Judaism and this is not Halacha. Anyone who tells you differently is at best ignorant. Much can be done to reverse these injustices without touching Halacha. Changing court practices — even how long it takes for a case to be heard — would eliminate much suffering. Get extortion should be outlawed. Evidence suggests that when women are brought into the process, as advocates, or even as administrators, divorce cases are resolved more quickly and more easily in than the current system.
The trend in Judaism is to circle the wagons, but no one notices those trampled under the wheels.
My conclusions, from all that I’ve seen, is that women have become afterthoughts. Women’s needs are considered after, and so long as they do not interfere with, those of men. Women’s perspectives are not sought out when it comes time to make decisions or establish policies, which means that, very often, women’s perspectives are not taken into consideration. The effects are devastating—on both women and men.
This is not the Judaism I know and love. My religion has been hijacked and I want to take it back. It is not easy. I have seen it repeatedly — how extremism gets worse when no one stands against it. But we must.
Until I move to that moshav in the Galilee, this is where I’ll be: working to get Judaism back on track. Writing, protesting, collaborating with others to resist policies that harm those the Torah is meant to protect. I invite you to join us.
About The Project
The Jewish Week and “The Layers Project” have collaborated to bring you the series, “Hidden Reflections, Revealed: A Communal Introspective on the Thresholds of Orthodox Femininity.” This is the fifth installment in the series that will contain images and essays that serve as a communal cheshbon hanefesh (accounting of the soul) on the topic of several women’s issues in Orthodoxy. Read the rest of the series here, and look out for the next installment on The Jewish Week. For more personal stories and ‘in-depth insights into the lives of Jewish women,’ check out “The Layers Project” on Facebook. Images created by Shira Lankin Sheps, founder of “The Layers Project.”
Zvia Gordetsky has waited 17 years to be free of the man who prefers jail to granting her a divorce. Her case is unusual because unlike what happens too often, the religious courts did nearly everything they “should” do, and still she is not free.
Normally in Israel, where the religious courts have power to punish withholders, a woman only waits for a get because the court did not order the husband to give her one. In this case, within six months of asking for a divorce, the religious court ordered Zvia’s husband to grant it. When he refused, they told him he would be put in jail. He showed up to the next hearing with a packed suitcase, ready to move into prison. Since then, he has been offered the chance to grant the divorce — and leave prison — every six months. His response is: “They won’t break me.”
That the “system” worked as it should and Zvia — who told me her story personally — is still chained, has made this case shocking to those who are used to tragic stories of get abuse. That Zvia has chosen the desperate act of a hunger strike for her freedom makes it clear that she feels everything else has failed.
To mark International Agunah Day (on Taanit Esther) – which Chochmat Nashim would like to rebrand: #NoAgunahDay – Anne, Shoshanna, and Rachel hash out the plight of chained women who have been denied a Jewish divorce, potential solutions, and how shul-and-state excaberbates the systemic community problem.
