This piece was submitted on Friday, January 31, 2014. The event took place on Sunday, January 26.
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When a couple gets divorced, the husband must provide the wife with a get (Jewish writ of divorce). If he refuses to grant her this document, she remains “chained” to the marriage, unable to re-marry. A woman in this situation is called an agunah.
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Something incredible happened last Sunday night.
Three Modern Orthodox synagogues in St. Louis– Bais Abraham Congregation, Young Israel of St. Louis, and Nusach Hari-B’nai Zion– joined together to sponsor an event to raise awareness about the plight of agunot and to encourage couples to sign the halakhic postnuptial agreement. Featuring keynote speaker Rabbi Yona Reiss, Av Beit Din (Head of the Rabbinic Court) of the Chicago Rabbinical Council and former director of the Rabbinical Council of America, the event highlighted the abuse suffered by women in the Orthodox community when their husbands refuse to give them a get, whether to use it as leverage in the divorce proceedings or merely as a conduit to exert power.
On Sunday we came together as a community. We recognized a communal problem. And we worked together for a communal solution.
The halakhic prenuptial agreement – or postnuptial agreement, for those like myself who were already married without signing the prenuptial agreement – is currently the best solution to prevent future agunot. The agreement outlines that in the event of a divorce, the couple agrees to resolve any disputes related to the get before the religious court (in our case, the Beth Din Zedek Ecclesiastical Judicature of the Chicago Rabbinical Council) and that the husband obligates himself to support his wife in the amount of $150 per day, adjusted for inflation, from the time that they cease to live together as husband and wife for as long as they remain religiously married.
Thirty-one couples signed the postnup document on Sunday night, and another twelve who were unable to attend the event committed to signing the document.
Keren and Gabe Douek will be married for ten years this August. They attended the event with their four-year-old son Joel and two-month-old son Oliver in tow. “It is so painful to read stories of husbands abusing their wives and keeping this last element of control over them by refusing to give the get,” Keren said. “The postnup is a concrete step we can take towards a real solution, instead of just sharing an article on Facebook. I’d like to believe that I would never need my postnup, but Gabe and I felt very strongly that signing one is the right thing to do.”
Annabelle and Ken Chapel also signed the document. “I’m very fortunate. I’m going to be married sixty years,” said Annabelle. “But there are women who are not so fortunate and it is not fair that they are held hostage. This is a way of showing solidarity.”
Though there are eighty-six additional individuals who now have extra legal protection in their marriage, it is really all of our marriages that are now stronger and, indeed, our entire community that benefits. Together we took a stand. Together we shifted the communal norm. Together we declared that we refuse to allow our rituals of marriage and divorce to become a mechanism for manipulation.
Together we said that even one agunah is one too many.
I invite you to join us.
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If you’d like to sign your own post-nuptial agreement, click here for the text that this group used or contact jofa@jofa.org for more guidance.
Click here for information about halakhic prenuptial agreements and various resources for agunot.
agunot
Pronounced: ah-goo-NOTE, Origin: Hebrew, literally “chained,” an agunah (plural is agunot) is a woman whose husband will not grant her a Jewish divorce decree.
Av
Pronounced: ahv, Origin: Hebrew, Jewish month usually coinciding with July-August.
