ISRAEL
JTA
February 10, 2017
(JTA) – An Israeli woman who was denied a divorce by a rabbinic court on the grounds of documented domestic violence has appealed to the state’s attorney general.
The woman’s lawyers made the unusual appeal Thursday following the Jerusalem Rabbinic Court’s rejection of her divorce motion. Her husband had been convicted and imprisoned for 75 days for assaulting his wife last year.
In Israel, religious tribunals function as family courts. According to Orthodox Jewish law, divorce is only possible if the husband consents to it. Rabbinical judges in most cases cannot force husbands to give their wives a divorce, though they can impose punishments – including imprisonment and dispossession – on those deemed to be abusing their wives but not granting them a divorce. Such women are called agunot in Hebrew, meaning chained.
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