New York – New Religious Court Helping Jewish Women Obtain Divorces

New York – A new international religious court is officiating cases in an effort to free Jewish women trapped in failing marriages who cannot receive a get, a divorce document in Jewish law.

The Jewish Week (http://bit.ly/1ytdnse) reports the International Beit Din, was created in June, and is headed by Rabbi Simcha Krauss, a former pulpit rabbi in Queens and Religious Zionist of America leader.

The court, with support of various haredi colleagues in Israel, is interpreting Jewish law in new ways to obtain a religious divorce for “agunot”– women stuck in marriages with wayward husbands.

In Jewish law, women cannot remarry without a get, but there are ways for a husband to do so.

Many times, rabbinic authorities claim their hands are tied in granting a get due to the boundaries of Halacha, leading to husbands using extortion before granting a divorce.

Rabbi Krauss is introducing the legal concept of “get zikui” – annulling a marriage based on what is best for both the husband and wife.

According to Rabbi Yosef Blau, another judge on the panel and spiritual advisor at Yeshiva University, the International Beit Din will not use get zikui to the exclusion of other methods.

Rabbi Krauss so far has gained the support of two leading Israeli rabbis, including Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, a rosh yeshiva posek (someone who rules on issues of Jewish law), and chief justice of the Supreme Rabbinical Court of Jerusalem, and She’ar Yashuv Cohen, former chief rabbi of Haifa and president of its rabbinic courts.

This isn’t the first time someone has tried to amend the absolute right law of the husband and help the growing agunah problem. The late Rabbi Emanuel Rackman convened a beit din in the 1990s that issued divorces based on kiddushei ta’ot, a Talmudic concept for annulment, with the principle reason being the woman would never have married that man if she knew the husband would act abusively during the marriage.

Rackman was ultimately unsuccessful in his endeavor to get others to accept his approach.

Information taken from The Jewish Week