Promoting divorce with children and without serious cause: Writing a new ending for Masechta Gittin

Guest Post:

It is understandable that someone who wants out of a marriage would be happy (at least temporarily) upon believing that they are “free.”  But Barbara Sofer misses the irony in her unqualified assertion that “Joy spread throughout the Jewish world” upon the news that one such woman is “free.”  [http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/The-Human-Spirit-Free-at-last-but-how-336906]  Really?  Perhaps for those in the “Jewish world” who reject Jewish laws, customs and traditions deemed inconsistent with the values of the 1960s counterculture in which a woman’s right to divorce is absolute and the devastating effects of divorce on children are irrelevant.  In contrast, Chazel’s final word on divorce at the very end of Masechta Gittn [90b] concludes that the destruction of a first marriage is so tragic that even the mizbeach sheds tears (R’ Elazar) and that G-d despises the perpetrator of such action (R’ Yochanan).  And the Gemara is particularly forceful in decrying divorce where there are children involved (for example, Eruvin 41b and Pesachim 87b).

But some in the Jewish world apparently believe the Gemara’s approach to be outdated, and have written a happy new ending to Masechta Gittin in which mourning is replaced by pure joy, and condemnation by legitimization: “Though marriage can offer a rewarding path to personal growth, it is important to remember that it cannot provide a secure or permanent status. Many people will make the decision between marriage and singlehood many times throughout their life. Divorce represents part of the normal family life cycle. It should not be viewed either as deviant or tragic, as it has been in the past. Rather, it establishes a process for ‘uncoupling’ and thereby serves as the foundation for individual renewal and ‘new beginnings’.” [A distillation of “modern” high school and college textbooks by Barbara Defoe Whitehead, “The Experts' Story of Marriage.”]
The women in both “agunah” cases much discussed on this blog and in the general media would have each received a get long ago if they been willing to be reasonable regarding custody arrangements, or at least acted in good faith. Instead, they, and the rabbonim backing them, have decided to turn their cases, which could have been and should have been treated as private matters, into very public debates (carried out in the likes of the New York Post, New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) about completely uprooting Jewish Law and tradition regarding the role of family and the fundamental definitions of marriage and divorce.

Even if one believes that these women should not have been expected to stay in marriages that they wanted out of for whatever reason, it is hard to see any reasonable argument that either had what are generally considered serious cause (domestic violence, substance abuse, infidelity, or even an unwillingness of their spouses to work on their marriages) to destroy their families, especially given that each had just been blessed with a child. Rather, after being married for a year or two, they found themselves being miserable post-partum and felt incompatible with their spouse. Indeed, that is the whole point. They have chosen, with the encouragement of the rabbonim backing them, to become poster children for the worldview that the decision to divorce should not be regarded in Judaism as deviant or tragic, but as the foundation for a woman’s absolute right to seek individual renewal and new beginnings. And each must have full custody of the children because her decision to divorce must not come with unwanted consequences such as recognizing that the children should be allowed to have significant relationships with their fathers.