"He screwed up my life, put me through a nightmare in divorce. Do you know what a nightmare is? So worse. He behaved like an animal. After we were in the rabbinate, I went back to the house and threw all his gifts straight into the trash. I only kept one thing and sold it - the engagement ring. Nothing good came out of it, except for a coin worth 10,000 shekels, for which he also took a loan."
And you have no sentiment?
After all, you lived together for 7 years, I asked Vared, 38 years old, who lives in Bat Yam.
Her answer was unequivocal, and let's say that, as they wrote in the press of old, the kind of responses that "the paper does not tolerate".
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Remove and sell.
Is it that simple?/ShutterStock
The prestige of the marriage status in Israel is in accelerated decline.
There is a lot of talk about the ease with which couples break up the family unit, but if until a few years ago most women kept the engagement ring after the divorce, then today the reality is different - more and more women are selling the symbolic ring, according to the testimony of many jewelers and diamond dealers we spoke with.
Evidence of the developed market can also be found on Google - countless questions, proposals from commercial parties and a very alert discourse that has developed in recent years.
"I don't know if it's a purely financial matter, or a desire to destroy tangible signs of the relationship, but I'm telling you that there were weeks last year, that twenty percent of the women who entered my store came to sell an engagement ring," notes Yahloman, who works at the stock exchange in Ramat Gan.
Dor Rosen, who is engaged in trade and sells jewelry and diamonds, explains that this is a considerable increase in this phenomenon: "The market has become very sophisticated in recent years, there are many offers to sell rings on social networks, but no one will write that it is an engagement ring. With every introduction, there is still A taste for a flaw."
Gal Herat, CEO of the Diamond Factory company that designs and manufactures diamond jewelry, adds: "There are cases, especially when it comes to a blue or red diamond, that the value of the stone has increased and she is very surprised by the price we sold it for." According to him, in a simple designated procedure, it is possible Today to clean the diamond, which gives it a new and shiny appearance.
Is the diamond worth it?
Come on, sell/canva
In general, from a halachic point of view, it is not the man's duty to purchase an engagement ring for his fiancee, but only a commandment to give a modest wedding ring as part of the chupah ceremony.
Where and how did this practice take root?
For this you need to flip through the pages of history: in the Middle Ages and early days of New England, the Puritan leadership forbade women to show off and wear ornaments and jewelry.
The problem is that those engaged and married women still had to wear an external sign that would indicate that the woman was a man's wife and they used to wear a kind of thimble which was a Puritan substitute for expensive rings, which often became a ring.
At the beginning of the 20th century, after the great depression in the USA, the diamond corporation 'De Beers', which controlled the entire diamond trade in the world, was stuck with inventory. As a solution, he came up with a campaign with the slogan 'Diamonds are forever', through which, among other things, he was able to instill The concept that an engagement ring without a diamond is worth nothing." Even in Israel before the establishment of the state, there was a tradition of engagement rings, but the diamond thing came from the USA," explains historian Dan Adrat.
And what about selling engagement rings, after the divorce?
I asked.
"This custom also infiltrated us from the USA.
In Israel they did not behave like that.
You surprised me when you told me it arrived here."
"I sold all the gold necklaces, earrings and the engagement ring and bought a whole wardrobe with the money.
I lost 10 kilos after the divorce, and all the old clothes, I threw away.
A new beginning," says 31-year-old Nofer from Kiryat Malachi, who divorced about a year ago after five years of marriage. "My sister gave me the idea, who did exactly the same thing.
She only kept the watch.
Everything else - she sold and bought furniture for the apartment.
Her right."
By the way, the phenomenon did not remain only within the boundaries of the secular sector, but permeated the ultra-Orthodox sector as well. "It doesn't happen every day, but it does happen.
Women come to me and ask to sell the ring they received," notes a jeweler from Bnei Brak. "Look, to begin with, there are currents in the ultra-Orthodox sector, the most extreme of them, in which it is not customary to give an engagement ring at all, for reasons of modesty, but the majority buy," he adds, "even without Money is obtained to buy an engagement ring.
It's a foreign custom, but also a status symbol.
If you ask me, it's terrible in my eyes to sell such a ring, but it gives me a living."
"A gift is a woman's property"
Terrible or not?
This is already a question of personal position.
What is certain is that the Halacha gives a green light to this.
"From a halachic point of view - it is kosher that the property given to the wife by the husband, before and during the marriage, is her property and she may sell it after the divorce," explains Rabbi Binyamin Hamra, the chief rabbi for Syrian Jews. According to him, the issue becomes complex, when it comes to a situation in which a ring The engagement gave her and after that, she withdrew from her decision and canceled the wedding.
By the way, for those of the readers who want to prevent a situation in which the woman sells the ring after the divorce, by including it in the property that will be divided between the parties in the divorce proceedings.
Attorney Dekla Feda, an expert in family law, explains: "A gift given to one of the parties, such as jewelry, should be considered a finished gift, the purchase of which has been completed for a long time, and unless a condition has been placed on the gift, and therefore the return of the gift should not be ordered, and it is not part of the joint property of the parties, it is recommended to draw up an agreement Fund and include these matters as well.
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