The Knesset Committee Honors International Agunah Day

The Jerusalem Post discusses the Knesset Committee’s discussing the issue of  Jewish women who are not granted a divorce by their husbands which enables them to remarry. It is International Aguna Day on the day of the Fast of Easter and the controversy is considered a “world wide Jewish problem.” Aida Touma-Silman argues that Israel needs civil marriage in order to free women because they should be not subject to their husband’s decision of being forcefully married. Women are often threatened by their husbands, in order for the husband to give their wife a divorce he must obtain all joint assets and eliminate all child support. Zionist Union members Revital Swid and Cohen Paran wonder when rabbinical courts will make the initiative to stop the agunot issue and when will they take disciplinary actions toward the husbands who do not want to provide gets. Rabbinical courts did promise that by Passover they will begin visiting men who were sent to prison for not providing a get for their spouse. Now in modern times, there are pre-nuptial agreements which are becoming very popular. It is all in hope that it will reduce the aguna problem in about 10 years as according to Rabbi Jeremy Stern. 

In the Jerusalem Post the article failed to mention the purpose of holding a meeting on International Aguna Day. The article said that it held the meeting in honor of the day but lacked to mention what they hoped to achieve. In the Jerusalem Post, Yael Cohen-Paran suggests rabbis to use annulment in cases which the husband refuses to divorce their wife. In My Jewish Learning they argue the complexities that arise from laws governing annulment which the rabbinical court does not want to partake in. The Jewish Press continued on to state that victims are not only the wives involved but can effect their family members, community and even the Rabbi trying to resolve the problem. The author failed to make the connection to why the Knesset Committee associates International Aguna Day to the fast of Esther. At the end of the Jerusalem Post the author points out that Rabbi Jeremy Stern predicts that with the popularity of halachic prenuptial agreements there will be a decrease of an aguna problem within Orthodox Jews in the US. In the Jewish Press it mentioned an effective “Post-nuptial Signing Party” for the prevention of get - refusals at Efrat. The Jewish press argues that in both the US and Israel the best way to prevent being an aguna is signing a halachic prenuptial agreement.

The writer for the Jerusalem Post was in favor of the agunot getting divorces by quoting members of the meeting that have been personally effected. The author did not provide any statistics to prove the amount of women undergoing this problem in Israel. The quotes the author used were always suggesting the committee with solutions to end the problem either through annulments, civil marriage or publicity shame. When he would mention the rabbinical court he would use negative comments provided by the committee. He quotes an anonymous aguna that referred the feeling of being in front of the rabbinical court as humiliating. He writes her account of being an aguna and the blame she received from the rabbinical court making them seem malicious. He also ends the article with giving an example of the progression of the rabbinical court administrator visiting the husbands placed in prison for not providing a get which does not seem as productive.