The distorted claims of National-Religious (modern-orthodox)
women's groups that have joined Reform circles to wage a
joint campaign against the Rabbinical botei din and
the dayanim who act in accordance with halochoh, on
account of the alleged "thousands of agunos" and
"ongoing foot dragging in resolving their plight" have been
exposed as grossly exaggerated and misleading and in fact,
altogether groundless. This is the picture that emerges from
a statistical study recently carried out by the management of
the Israeli Rabbinical Courts.
The study shows that at present approximately one-hundred-and-
eighty women are being denied divorces by their husbands and
approximately one-hundred-and-ninety men are in a
corresponding position i.e. they want to get divorced but are
being prevented by difficulties originated by their wives.
Thus, more men are being denied divorces than women.
Hundreds of divorce proceedings that were filed in the course
of the two years 2005-6 were examined for the study. Results
show that nine-hundred-and-forty-two of the couples who filed
for divorce in this period have not yet ended their
proceedings in the giving of a divorce. Some sixteen thousand
new divorce files are opened in the Rabbinical Courts
annually.
The cases where divorce proceedings have lasted over two
years were further analyzed to reveal the different causes
for the delay. Also examined were the numbers of wives being
refused a get and of those who have been deserted,
both in Israel and abroad, with the aim of rebutting the
unfounded claims of abovementioned groups against the
Rabbinical botei din. (Yated Hashavua carried
an in-depth feature on this subject.)
Research into the causes of lengthy divorce proceedings
yielded the following results. Thirteen percent of the cases
have not yet been concluded with the granting of a get
because of financial disputes between the couple. Nineteen
percent of the cases are due to the husband's refusal to give
a get. Twenty percent are due to the wife's refusal to
reach agreement about the get. In five percent of the
cases husband and wife were reconciled and abandoned the
divorce proceedings, though their case was still open as an
unresolved divorce. In eleven percent of the cases the
beis din affirmed the agreement and authorized the
get but the couple did not show up for the actual
delivery of the get. Eighteen percent of the cases
were neglected by the couple (that is, they did not follow
through in the rabbinical courts) and underwent
administrative closure according to the law, while in three
percent of the cases the couple were given a day for the
actual divorce at the beginning of 2007, but had not carried
it out at the time of the survey.
In an attempt to determine the number of agunos among
the hundred-and-eighty women who have not yet received a
get, a register was prepared of all the cases of wives
whose husbands have disappeared either in Israel or abroad,
where the management of the Rabbinical Courts has engaged
private investigators to trace the husbands, or appointed an
emissary to find the husband and persuade him to give his
wife a get.
The results show that out of sixty-nine women whose husbands
have disappeared, forty-five traveled abroad, twenty-three
have gone missing in Israel, while in one case a husband lost
consciousness in an accident. There are another one hundred-
and-eleven cases where husbands' whereabouts are known but
they refuse to give a get. Nineteen of these men live
abroad and ninety-two are in Israel. The total of one hundred-
and-eighty is far less than the National-Religious women's
groups have been claiming for the past few years.
Dayanim and rabbonim point out that the results of the
survey again show the efforts made by the dayanim to
conclude divorce proceedings between a couple as swiftly as
possible where no possibility of reconciliation exists and a
parting of ways is inevitable. "The fact that in an
overwhelming majority of cases proceedings end in a very
short time and only in about one percent extend for over two
years — and even there the causes are usually monetary
disputes that can be resolved through arbitration and
compromise, or the couple's having let matters slide —
shows that the dayanim work with efficiency and
determination that are unmatched in the parallel system of
[secular] Family Courts."
It should be noted that the dayanim of the botei
din are under constant attack from the National-Religious
women's groups and their Reform "partners," who do not balk
at presenting false information, as Yated Ne'eman has
shown in the past. These groups aim to institute changes in
halochoh and achieve the appointment of dayanim who
will work to change halochoh and "bring it into line" with
the norms of secular Israeli society.
Dayanim who we spoke to said that while these groups,
who wield the plight of agunos as a weapon in their
battle against halochoh and against the botei din and
the dayanim who conform to halochoh, have spoken in
spurious terms of "hundreds of thousands of agunos and
wives who are being refused a get," this is not their
worst crime. Most serious of all is the fact that "the women
from these groups who act as rabbinical pleaders or as
advisors to women are not willing to reach any compromise in
the course of the proceedings. They want to exhaust every
possible adversary procedure to the very end, while showing
utter disregard even for the feelings of the woman involved
and certainly for her children."
In addition the dayanim pointed out that every single
instance of either a husband's refusal to give a get
or a wife's to accept it, is a source of worry and
sleeplessness for them, while they try to find ways to
alleviate the suffering of the couple and their children. The
dayanim make every effort to conclude the proceedings
and to minimize the damage to the parties and to their
children, caused by the break-up of the family.
