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OTS Newsletter - Fall 2008

Monica Dennis Goldberg School Graduates: Heading Off Disaster

While renowned for their success in helping women gain their freedom after many years from husbands who refuse to grant them a Jewish divorce, graduates of the Monica Dennis Goldberg School of Women Advocates often provide another critical service: preventing divorce cases from becoming long, drawn-out battles with ever-diminishing hopes for resolution.

Moriah Dayan, an MDG graduate employed in the school’s Yad L’Isha Legal Aid Center and Hotline, tells how she saw warning signs that a recent case could turn into protracted battle of a husband blackmailing his wife for financial payment in exchange for granting a get.

“Moshe and Dina S. had been married for just a year and a half when Dina left the house because Moshe was physically abusive,” Moriah relates. “While they originally filed a joint request for a divorce, Moshe soon reneged on this and began making financial demands on his wife.” After Dina turned to Yad L’Isha, Moriah’s first move was obtaining a court order to prevent the husband from leaving the country. “This angered him, because he works in high-tech and needs to travel frequently,” Moriah says. “As a result, he raised the financial stakes even higher.” In response, Moriah requested that a special hearing take place before his next scheduled trip abroad.

Backed by his family, Moshe refused to allow Moriah’s presence at the hearing. “I could have insisted on being there, but I chose to respect the husband’s wishes and do everything I could to end this case as soon as possible,” she explains. Instead, Moriah sat in a different part of the court, listening to the proceedings by cell phone and advising her client via SMS messages.

Moriah’s actions paid off: the hearing was tense, but no further confrontations took place and the get was granted. “Based on what I was taught, as well as on my experience,” Moriah maintains, “I can say with absolute certainty that this early intervention and even the compromise of sitting outside enabled Dina to avoid a nightmare of blackmail and years of suffering in chains.”

Fighting for Human Dignity and Freedom

When a Danish-born convert to Judaism and her sabra husband filed for an uncontested divorce in the Ashdod Rabbinical Court, it should have been a simple matter. Instead, the case was used as a launching pad for an attack on Rabbi Haim Druckman, head of a special system of alternative rabbinical courts established by the Israeli government in 1995 specifically to authorize conversions. The court ruled that the Jewishness of the woman and her children was in doubt and recommended that all Druckman’s conversion decisions since 1999 should be revoked. The court’s assault on Druckman and the backlash to its ruling sparked a nation-wide controversy about the nature and jurisdiction of the country’s rabbinical courts.

As the parent body of the Monica Dennis Goldberg School of Women Advocates and its Yad L’Isha Legal Aid Center and Hotline – which works to protect the rights of women seeking divorces within the rabbinical court system – as well as of the Susan and David Wilstein Conversion Institute for Spanish speakers, OTS is at the forefront of the fight against the abuse of rabbinic power for political means. In the belief that the conversion case has dangerous and far-reaching implications for all areas of life in Israel, OTS is one of 15 organizations that co-signed a petition filed with Israel’s Supreme Court of Justice asking that the ruling be overturned. The petition argues that with its decision, the Ashdod Rabbinical Court exceeded its authority and is violating the rules of natural justice and the principles of human dignity and liberty.

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