Rabbanit Leah Sarna, the IBD’s director of public education, said, “We have just received our 405th application but our cases are ramping up rapidly. So in the first couple of years we’d see 10 to 13 cases a year. This year we’re on track to see a hundred cases.”
Last week she and the beit din’s executive director Rabbi Barry Dolinger were in the UK to discuss its work with lawyers, activists on behalf of agunot and rabbis. While here, “we’ve been approached by four or five women,” Rabbanit Sarna said. “We’ve just received 20 applications from other European countries in the last couple of days.”
In its time, it has handled around 15 cases from the UK and it liberated one British women by dissolving the marriage. There are a number of steps a bet din can take – for example, if the witnesses to a marriage are subsequently found not to have complied with the halachic requirements, the union can be retrospectively annulled.
There are other grounds for invalidating the marriage – if a spouse has kept back important personal information from their prospective partner, which may count as a form of deception. “We had case where she knew he had criminal record in a different country but he told her a certain story about what that was about and then we discovered it was about violent crime she had not been aware of,” said Rabbanit Sarna. “Something like that he had hidden from her. Or enormous debts we sometimes see or involvement in crime rings - those that are the type of things.”
She notes that the Mishnah also cites various grounds of unreasonable behaviour where a husband must release his wife; if he denies her eating a favourite fruit, or wearing a particular perfume or going to visit her father. These are examples of abusive behaviour which provide precedents for rabbis. “When the Mishnah says he is required to divorce her, that isn’t a suggestion, that is a requirement that can be enforced by a court,” she said.
But diaspora batei din, she believes, have internalised the sense that they “have no power”. And therefore rabbinic courts can fall back on trying to negotiate a settlement that can lead to the husband extracting more favourable financial terms than he might have gained from a secular court in return for the get.
But as the IBD website makes clear, it does not countenance “extortion” or attaching conditions to a get.
The International Beit Din 's director of public education and media: Rabbanit Leah Sarna[Missing Credit]
Since 2000, in the UK a judge may withhold a secular divorce if there is an impediment to remarriage for either partner eg by refusing to give or accept a get. More recently and dramatically, get denial can be considered a form of coercive control under the criminal law: at least one Jewish man has been convicted under the new law and others have caved in and granted a get before trial.
But rabbis here have warned that the new criminal provision could prove a double-edged sword - on the grounds that if a man gives a get only under threat of prosecution, he may be considered to have done so involuntarily, which could invalidate the get; a woman should consult a beth din first.
For the IBD, rabbis should be prepared to recognise get refusal as a form of abuse that tradition frowns upon. And diaspora batei din should take a cue from the rabbinical courts in Israel, which have the authority of the state behind them. “They stressed that psychological violence is often more harmful than visible violence, which is what coercive control is about,’ Rabbi Dolinger explained. “It is about understanding the extent of suffering that happens when a person’s basic autonomy is taken away.”
While as a last resort the IBD may be willing to dissolve a marriage when there is an halachic option, its practice is follow what is most important to a woman. For example, the decision to dissolve a marriage may not be respected by the religious authorities of her home community - therefore she might not want to countenance that route.
Rabbanit Sarna points out that in the majority of cases where a woman is freed, a get is obtained. The IBD’s approach is “collaborative” and it tries to work with other batei din in reaching a successful conclusion.
“We see change happening within the United States,” she said. “Places that five years ago never would have worked with us now are on the phone with us every day.”
According to Rabbi Dolinger, “The classic attitude was let’s do everything for agunot and adopt a lenient opinion if we need to because of the level of suffering… We can always find a stringent opinion that would cause a problem to any particular solution but that is not supposed to be the orientation. We are supposed to find a solution.”
Top image: seeking solutions: the International Beit Din in session
