Mor met her former husband when she was 20 years old. “We were very young and grew up together,” she said. However, when the young couple started to debate whether to have a child, she started having doubts, and eventually decided she wanted to part ways. Mor’s nightmare began when she discovered that in order to get divorced she needed her husband’s approval.
“He didn’t want the divorce,” she said. “We tried to go to mediation, but he was not open to the conversation. In order for him to agree to go to the rabbinate and say he wants to divorce me, I had to give him everything, including the apartment we bought together. He was not willing to give up anything. I was left with nothing in order to gain my freedom.”
Mor’s experience in the rabbinical court was “very traumatic,” she recalled with tears in her eyes. “The rabbis didn’t make eye contact with me and didn’t speak to me. What I said or wanted was meaningless. They were very aggressive and spoke very poorly of me because I initiated the divorce. Only after he said there was no chance of reconciliation did they approve the divorce.”
Orit Lahav, CEO of Mavoi Satum – a non-profit organization that provides legal and emotional support to women who have been refused a Jewish divorce, or get, said: “The Chief Rabbinate and rabbinical courts are official institutions in Israel that openly and explicitly oppress women. Once a woman is registered as married in the State of Israel, her ability to choose whether she wants to remain married is handed over to her husband and three more religious judges, who are, of course, male, and only they can decide whether to release her from the marriage.”…
