MO Woman

Enforceability of the Pre-Nuptual Agreement

Gil at Hirhurim asks whether or not pre-nups work?

Two great resources on the pre-nuptual agreement from past JOFA Journals which address this issue:

1. My friend Michelle Greenberg Kobrin wrote an article discussing what makes the pre-nup enforceable in court (since at that point it had not yet been tested in court).

2. I have heard Rabbi Yonah Reiss of the Beit Din of America say (about two years ago) that the pre-nup has not yet been tested in court because it has effectively stopped many cases before reaching the courts. Meaning, the threat of the possible enforcement of the pre-nup by a secular court was enough to resolve those particular agunah cases.

Rachel Levmore, a rabbinic court advocate, also has an article outlining how the pre-nup is used to prevent "get-refusal." Moreover, she cites Rabbi Reiss in a footnote saying:

Rabbi Yonah Reiss, in conversation with me in 2004 verified that, to his knowledge, in every case of a couple that had previously signed a pre-nuptual agreement and later came to divorce, there was a get.

On Female Judges

In the Sept. 26th issue of The Jerusalem Report you can find Susan Weiss' thoughts on why it is crucial that there be female rabbinic court judges in Israel:

A judiciary that precludes women from the bench cannot be fair, impartial or empathetic to the pain of women who appeal to courts for justice.

Susan Weiss is the founding director of Yad L'Isha, an organization which has been working to free agunot through the help of toanot beit din (female rabbinic court advocates), and has also founded The Center for Women's Justice.

New Agunah Resources

A Guide to Jewish Divorce and the Beit Din System was just published on the JOFA website. It is impressive and thorough and will hopefully be a useful resource for couples, families, educators and rabbis involved with Jewish divorce cases. Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

JOFA’s aim is to work with husbands and wives, rabbis and communities so that men and women can enter into marriage with security. In the event of the dissolution of a marriage, we would like to see the incidence of iggun (the state of being an agunah) eliminated. We take this idealistic stand knowing it will take some time to alleviate such a major problem. Until that time, JOFA’s goal is to help educate the community about the divorce process and iggun and particularly, to help litigants in a Jewish divorce make informed decisions as they proceed through the beit din (rabbinic court) system.

They have also published a beit din comparison grid to help provide information on the practical differences between different batei din. For now the list is limited to batei din in the NY Metro area.

This Ta'anit Esther Think of Agunot

This past week The Jewish Week and The Jewish Press featured an ad organized by JOFA, calling upon the Jewish community to think of the suffering of agunot on Ta'anit Esther. The ad was meant to raise awareness about the agunah problem, suggest actions which people can take to help agunot and also remind agunot that they are not alone. The ad included over 600 names of individuals, institutions and organizations. You can view the ad through the JOFA website.

On Agunot

A renewed effort to help agunot seems to be spreading across the Orthodox community. Last week The Jewish Week reported on the significance of one Jerusalem judge's ruling strongly in favor of an agunah who has waited 12 years for a divorce. Recently, the film Mekudeshet, about the suffering of agunot in Israel, was shown in my community. Somehow, the filmmaker brought a camera inside the beit din. The film has it's drawbacks - everything said by the dayanim is dubbed by male actors, and viewers are forced to watch the walls of the beit din for long periods of time, since the rabbis could not be filmed, which can be a bit tedious. However, the stories of the agunot themselves were incredibly moving, and the role of the toanot beit din (female rabbinic court advocates) inspired hope and provided much needed support for the suffering women. Both the film and the article emphasized that one of the major obstacles to improving the situation for these women is the batei din and the judges, whose symapthies for the most part lie with the men, much to the disadvantage of the women who come before them.