January 26, 2006 nrg-Yahadut (Maariv’s Internet Site)
for the Hebrew:
A Perfectly Ordinary Story
A perfectly ordinary story about a woman who feels that the rabbinic courts --for a period of 19 years! --supported her husband’s relentless efforts to destroy her life. These are the years that an ordinary woman would spend nurturing her home and building her family. It could happen to you.
By Rivkah Lubitch
Once upon a time there was a perfectly ordinary woman who married a perfectly ordinary man (though stubborn, stingy, and violent), who raised a perfectly ordinary family. Because the husband had turned her life into a living hell, the woman, in a perfectly ordinary way, asked for a divorce. The rabbinic court, in a perfectly ordinary way, recommended that the couple try to “restore the marital harmony” between them. After 12 years in court, the court ordered the husband to give the woman a Jewish divorce (a get), but the husband, in a perfectly ordinary way, refused. In exchange for the get , he demanded that the woman agree to dismiss all the decisions of the family court that had disposed of their marital property and to have their case reopened and reheard by the rabbinic court. The rabbinic court thought this was a perfectly ordinary request, since even a man who tries to murder his wife in a perfectly ordinary way and who owes her hundreds of thousands of shekels is entitled to a hearing “in accordance with the laws of the Torah.”
And so it came to pass that the woman understood with her perfectly ordinary mind that she would not receive her get in a perfectly ordinary way. And so the woman agreed that the rabbinic court reopen and rehear the cases that already had been heard and decided by the family courts. After she received her get, the woman petitioned the High Court of Justice to try to reinstate the family court decisions despite her agreement to reopen them, but the High Court threw out her claim, causing her further grief and embarrassment.
The rabbinic court in a perfectly ordinary way became angry with the woman (how dare she appeal to the civil courts!!) and it “suspended” her divorce license, an act that most people, in a perfectly ordinary way, have no idea what it means. And so it came to pass that in a perfectly unordinary way, a woman who received her get in a perfectly ordinary way, and had in her possession a perfectly ordinary divorce license, became a wife whose “divorce is suspended” and is “forbidden to marry other men.” For six more years.
At a certain point, in a perfectly unordinary way, the Supreme Rabbinic Court decided that the woman had been subject to enough harassment (19 years !), and even , perhaps, beyond that which would be perfectly ordinary for such a perfectly ordinary woman. And so it came to pass, in a perfectly unordinary way, that the court decided that it was about time to declare that the get that the woman had received 6 years before had been perfectly ordinary and valid and kosher, for all intents and purposes.
In a perfectly unordinary way, the woman managed to keep her wits about her for all those years, and in a perfectly unordinary way, she still observes the Jewish commandments. In a perfectly unordinary way, she managed to raise a beautiful family, to support them and to marry them off- may it be with good luck and the blessings of the Almighty. However, in a perfectly ordinary way, the woman feels that the rabbinic courts had supported her husband’s relentless efforts to embitter and destroy her life-- for 19 years!--years that a woman in a perfectly ordinary way would spends building her life and nurturing her family. In a perfectly ordinary way, anyone who knows the story of this woman feels perfectly unordinarily towards the rabbinic courts that allowed this perfectly (un)ordinary story to happen.
The perfectly ordinary lesson to be learned by this perfectly (un)ordinary story is that it could happen to any Jewish woman who is married in a perfectly ordinary way to a Jewish man, and who, in a perfectly ordinary way, files for a divorce in an Israeli rabbinic court.
Rachel Avraham (her real name) filed for a divorce in 1987 when she was 36 years old. In 2006, when she was 55 years old, her story finally ended and the court declared that “she is free to marry other men.”
