About a week ago, India's parliament passed a bill criminalizing the practice of instant divorce (triple talaq) in Muslim communities. The bill, known as the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill of 2019, says that any man who attempts to use the triple talaq is liable to face up to three years in prison.
According to a particular interpretation of Islamic law, a husband can divorce his wife by uttering or writing the word talaq (literally, "divorce") three times. No consent is necessary from the wife. Indeed, the wife doesn't even need to be alerted to the fact that her husband has divorced her.
As a Jewish woman, I'm grateful to the rabbis who prohibited such unilateral divorce. According to Halachah (Jewish religious law), a man cannot give his wife a get (bill of divorce) without her knowledge or consent, meaning that she must be alerted to the fact that she and her husband are divorcing.
The rabbis who crafted the laws of divorce were responding to the surrounding culture. They wrote a legal code that reflected the needs of the eras in which they lived and took steps to protect women from what they felt were unjust divorce practices.
Still, Halachah is greatly skewed in favor of men. Men have the power to give or withhold a get. And while their wives have the power to refuse a get, only men are able to move on to new relationships and have children within these relationships without significant halachic repercussions.
Jewish women don't enjoy the same privilege. They are routinely held hostage by vindictive husbands who refuse to give gets. Such women are called mesoravot get. They cannot continue their lives, form new romantic relationships, or have more children. The halachic penalties are harsh: Any children born by a married woman to a man who is not her husband are considered mamzerim (illegitimate) and are forbidden to marry within the Jewish community for 10 generations.
This summer, I'm interning at an organization called Mavoi Satum that provides legal representation and psychological support to women trapped in unwanted marriages. Today in Israel every Jewish couple must marry and divorce through the Rabbinate. Because of this restriction, there are women who are trapped in unwanted or dead marriages who cannot get divorced because there is no halachic precedent to deal with modern situations.
For example, one of the women represented by Mavoi Satum is married to a man who has been in a vegetative state for more than 10 years. She cannot remarry because her husband is still alive but she cannot divorce him, because he is unable to give her a get. The rabbinical courts have not done enough to try and save her. It's incredibly painful to meet her and understand that this woman may never again enjoy the partnership of marriage or have children because, over 1,000 years ago, when the laws of divorce were being written, it was impossible to imagine a comatose man living for so long.
Centuries ago, when the rabbis were constructing the laws of divorce, they went to great lengths to ensure that women were protected from the customs of their time. Today, rather than being protective and progressive, the halachic laws of divorce lead to immense suffering. Rabbis in our time need to work together to fix this problem. They need to come up with innovative halachic solutions that will save women trapped in situations that are no longer unimaginable.
