The Day of Sorrow, which began on the day of the fast of Esther, is gloomier than ever this year.
This year we will celebrate this day out of a reality in which women in Israel face the greatest threat to their rights, status and future since the establishment of the state.
In the field of personal status, marriage and divorce, legal discrimination against women by force of law has existed in the State of Israel since its foundation.
The state preserves legal control in this area for religious law, which is patriarchal and based on an unequal perception between the sexes.
This is reflected for Jewish women in the absolute control that the husband has over the right to leave the marriage.
This situation leads to a daily reality where men can abuse the power they have in order to obtain concessions from the women in exchange for a divorce or refuse to give a divorce.
Weakening the position of the Supreme Court, turning it into a conservative court that tends not to interfere in the decisions of the religious courts, means a clear meaning for Agona and those who refuse to get a divorce - a serious injury.
It is true that the Supreme Court cannot allow a woman to anchor herself, but it can help and has done so in the past in several cases.
The High Court of Justice prevented the President of the Great Rabbinical Court from annulling a ruling of the Regional Court that freed a woman from her marriage to a husband who had become a "plant" (the Aguna Misfat case), the High Court ruled that the transfer of the authority to discuss custody matters to the Rabbinical Court as part of the extortion of a divorce is void, the High Court of Justice The HC ruled that the woman cannot be forced to litigate in the rabbinical court in matters of property and custody by means of binding a divorce suit when the actual husband refuses to divorce. Without the intervention of the High Court in all the examples cited above, the situation of those women would have been immeasurably worse.
But beyond weakening the power of the High Court, the coalition agreements contain legislative proposals that will seriously harm women: an amendment to the law that allows abortions on the grounds of religious belief, which will allow business owners not to provide services to women, anchoring in legislation segregation on the grounds of religious belief at cultural events, nature reserves, higher education institutions and routes training, expanding the authority of the courts for civil matters, even though this is a value that excludes women from judging and this is only a partial list. All of these convey a sharp message of the current coalition against women's equality and when the value of equality is not the value that guides the House of Representatives, the chances of seeking solutions for the agonites and the refusal of divorce in the religious arena are small if not gone
We, at the Rakman Center, together with other organizations, will continue to fight for those who are enslaved and refuse to get a divorce in the religious and civil system, we will continue to look for partners and partnerships wherever possible even where we least expect to find them for the sake of changing reality.
We are in an election year for new chief rabbis in Israel.
The chief rabbis are very important in marking the path and mindset of the rabbinical courts.
Therefore, we call on all those who take part in the selection of the chief rabbis - elected and elected by the public, rabbis and aspirationally female rabbis, to put at the top of their considerations in choosing the appropriate candidates only those who have demonstrated in their practice a striving for the release of agonism and divorce refusals, halachic courage to find halachic solutions to situations of agonism and refusal, and of course only those who are equal Towards women is part of his teaching.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
If you found an error in the article, we would appreciate it if you shared it with us