BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

I know that some of my Orthodox friends are going to call or write me now and tell me I don't understand. Maybe I don't. But I do know what abuse is. So was the husband mentioned below abusing his wife because of her infertility? Abuse and marital problems are big issues when there's infertility. Infertility can cause severe depression, acting out and other serious problems in the woman. So because she wasn't breeding it was o.k. to treat her poorly? And not giving a woman a Get. Making an Agunah out of a woman. Talk about misogyny and control. These are things I don't think I want to understand. By ANDREA PEYSER AND you thought you had trouble committing. Thirty years after divorce became all the rage in America, the pastime is catching on like wildfire in the kid-rich, ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where getting a "get" is the new black. So says psychologist Daniel Schonbuch, who thinks divorces (known in the community as "gets") are th...

THE AGUNAH AND A SUMMARY OF POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Breitowitz The problem of the agunah -- the "chained" or "anchored" wife -- is a serious one, though it is not as prevalent as many Jewish feminists maintain. The term "agunah" appears in the Talmud primarily in connection with a husband who disappeared or was missing in action. While such agunot (plural of agunah) certainly exist in this day and age as well (consider the Holocaust or the Israeli soldiers who are MIA's), the primary use of the term today refers to a woman who cannot obtain a religious divorce (a "get") even after her marriage has been civilly terminated and hence is prohibited from marrying others. Husbands sometimes withhold such a divorce out of malice or spite or an attempt to extort money or concessions in the areas of child support, custody, visitation, or marital property. Whatever the reason, the withholding of a "get" can be a source of great ...

By Wency Leung An ex-husband is challenging a Canadian Supreme Court judgment that has been heralded as a major boost in the global cause for Jewish women's stronger religious divorce rights. The woman in the case doesn't think he has a chance. After nearly two decades of legal battles over her right to a religious divorce, Stephanie Bruker, 59, thought she'd finally settled a case that has been heralded as a breakthrough for other observant Jewish women who have become "agunah," or "chained," and unable to remarry after seeking a divorce. In December, in a landmark ruling for the intersection of civil and religious law, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered Bruker's ex-husband to pay $47,500 in damages for the years he denied giving her a religious divorce, called a "get," after swearing to do so as part of a civil divorce agreement. But in a last-ditch effort, Bruker's ex-husband is asking the Supreme Court to rehear the case, according...

MORE MISOGYNY & STUPIDITY AGAINST ABUSE VICTIMS I read these and think, what were these rabbis thinking? Were they thinking at all? Obviously not. Just look at the results. This must stop. NOW. Rabbinic Rally Against Alleged Get Abuse By Shlomo Greenwald Jewish Press In what was billed as a rabbinic rally, about 40 people staged a protest outside the Brooklyn home of Rabbi Shlomo Blumenkrantz, whom the protesters claim has been enabling men to withhold gets from their wives and use extortion against them, as well as helping to obtain heter meah rabbanim for the men, all of these in ways that run counter to halacha. (Heter meah rabbanim is permission, based on the agreement of 100 rabbis, for a man to marry a second wife, circumventing the longstanding decree against a man marrying more than one wife.) At the rally were Rabbi Hershel Schachter, a rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University´s rabbinical affiliate RIETS, Rabbi Kenneth Auman, rabbi of the Young Israel of Flatbush and a past ...

'WHIPS', 'CHAINS' and AGUNOT Josh over at ParshaBlog has a great post today about agunahs; commenting on an article in today's Wall Street Journal . I carried the article in full over on my abuse victims & survivors blog. Sultan Knish gave a wonderful comment and I hope you all take a minute to go check it out as well as read the whole article. I am grateful to him for his post . While I am not technically an agunah there are aspects of my agreement with my childrens' father that keep me "chained" and which he exploits and 'beats me over the head' (figuratively) with. I endure for the well-being of my children. I consider my comfort of little consequence when it comes to my children. Besides I am the adult. But, I do have empathy for these women. Making an Orthodox woman an agunah is, in my opinion, a blatantly disrespectful form of misogyny and yes, ABUSE. AGUNAH INTERNATIONAL has this to say about the agunah problem: It is tim...