LA Times After four years of marriage, Tamar Tessler filed for divorce, taking
her infant daughter and embarking on what she hoped would be a new
chapter of her life.
Today that daughter is 36 years old — and Tessler is still awaiting the divorce.
Her husband long ago moved to America, said the 61-year-old retired
nurse. But under Israeli law, she remains trapped in a defunct marriage
that her husband won't allow to end. She can't legally remarry, was
obligated as his spouse to repay some of his debts, and lost out on tax
breaks for single mothers even though she raised their daughter alone.
Tessler is one of hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of Israeli women caught in legal and social limbo
because of a law that leaves matters of divorce for all Jewish citizens
in the hands of a government-funded religious court.
The court, consisting of a panel of rabbis, bases its decisions on
the customs of Orthodox Judaism. The rulings apply to all Jewish
Israelis, whether they are Orthodox, Conservative or Reform, observant
or secular. And their authority even extends to those who married abroad
in civil ceremonies that were registered in Israel. Divorce for
non-Jews is handled by their own religious institutions.
Under the court's interpretation of Jewish religious law, a
husband's, or wife's, consent is necessary to end a marriage. As has
been the case for centuries, a Jewish divorce is not final in Israel
until men deliver handwritten divorce decrees into the cupped hands of
the women, who then must hold the paper aloft. A rabbi tears the
document, called a get, into pieces, which are then filed for record-keeping.
The rabbis can order a reluctant spouse, usually a man, to grant the
divorce, and Israel's parliament is considering a bill to expand the
court's power to apply pressure. But if a spouse refuses to undertake
the religious rite, the court says, it doesn't have the power to
dissolve the marriage.
Rabbis have upheld the need for consent even in cases where a man has
abused his wife, disappeared, lied about his sexuality or molested
their children. [...]
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