A Beith Shemesh resident was granted a divorce this week by her husband, who spent seven years on the run and 135 days in prison.
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Orly Vital received her get (writ of divorce) after nearly 14 years of efforts, including several months the husband spent in prison after being captured in Tel Aviv in a targeted manhunt.
Vital met her husband, Ronen, while studying in high school, and after several years of on-and-off dating, the two married. The couple had four children, but as the marriage deteriorated, Vital asked her husband for a divorce. For the next six years, Ronen refused her requests stating clearly that he would never concede to divorce without Orly agreeing to a series of financial demands.
At that point, Vital turned to Yad La'isha, an organization that represents women whose recalcitrant husbands refuse to grant them a divorce. With the case brought before the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court, Chief Rabbi David Lau ruled at the time on her behalf that if Ronen did not grant the get he would face immediate arrest. Ronen asked for a brief recess to confer with his attorney – at which point he fled the building.
An official warrant was put out for his arrest alongside a series of sanctions designed to force him to relent, but Ronen remained underground for the next seven years, abandoning the couple's four children, leaving Vital an agunah (Hebrew for "anchored") – a term used to describe the legal situation of a woman whose husband refuses to grant her a Jewish writ of divorce, rendering her unable to remarry.
According to Yad La'isha, in 2021 it received a donation of over 100,000 shekels specifically earmarked to fund the expanded services of a private investigations firm. Days later, the efforts paid off and Ronen was spotted in south Tel Aviv and subsequently arrested.
For 135 days he remained in jail but continued to refuse to release Vital, instead conditioning her freedom on impossible financial demands. When it became clear that those demands would not be met, on Tuesday, January 4th – nearly 14 years after the saga began – he signed the divorce papers.
Upon receiving her get, Vital expressed her deep thanks to all involved saying, "There's a well-known rule that you don't negotiate with terrorists and certainly not with those ones who are already behind bars and this must be the case with get refusers.
"I knew that this was a war that I needed to fight and to stand firm in the name of what is true and just against the world of lies I've been suffering from for over 14 years. I am so deeply thankful to God for bringing me to this day and to the team at Yad La'isha who never gave up, not even for a moment."
Pnina Omer, Director of Yad La'isha, said "Orly has reached the end of a story defined by struggle of many years that should never have needed to happen. We thank the judges led by Rabbi Lau who imposed the necessary pressures to bring this to a close. We will continue to fight on behalf of every aguna but we also recognize that we need to find a workable halachic solution that will bring an end to this deeply painful phenomenon that is harming so many women."
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