BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

WOMEN REFUSE? Why do I have a feeling this is a skewed poll. Only 69 aguhnot? What about the ones who are silenced? Hushed up, shamed or verbally, emotionally, financially and or physical threatened? Sorry - my b.s. radar is going off on this one. Poll: More women refuse divorce than men Rabbinical Court combats claims that thousands of Jewish women are refused divorce; poll reveals there are only 69 agunot currently living in Israel Neta Sela More Jewish women refuse to give divorce then men, a poll released by the rabbinical courts' management titled: "Why is the couple not yet divorced?" revealed on Tuesday. According to the poll, there are 190 Jewish men refused divorce in Israel, which make up 20 percent of the open divorce files; as opposed to 180 women who are refused divorce, and constitute 19 percent of the open files. There are currently 942 open divorce files in Israel's rabbinical courts, and the survey was conducted among a sample of 346 of these files, ...

Women protest plan to expand power of rabbinical courts During a recent trip to one of the conferences held across the U.S. and Canada recently on tackling domestic violence, I had an interesting dialogue with some Jewish women about the problem of Agunah - or "a chained woman." It came down to some feeling that the male-dominated religious leaders in Judaism were furthering the abuse by invalidating the women asking to leave the marriage. Almost all said rabbis they knew would minimize the man's abuse or cheating and tell the women they had to stay & "work it out." Of course it only got worse. The answer to this problem lies in our leadership taking a hard, long and honest look at the needs of these women. Keeping the family together is good - but not when one member puts their needs above the family or has a personality disorder that is making that impossible. Indeed, it hurts the family more when a civil break would help heal wounds and restore sanit...