Improving the system from within: Advocates (l to r) Mariah Dayan, Dina  Raichik, Devorah Brisk and  Batsheva Samet.

The Monica Dennis Goldberg School for Women Advocates and its Yad L’Isha Legal Aid Center and Hotline leave no stone unturned in their dedicated representation of agunot and women who are being denied their freedom from unviable or abusive marriages. In addition to releasing individual women from their chains, OTS advocates are at the forefront of new educational, legal and political initiatives to create long-term change.

As part of its efforts to improve the Jewish divorce system from within, the Yad L’Isha Legal Aid Center and Hotline has been instrumental in the preparation and submission of a new Israeli law which will protect the assets of women in the process of divorce proceedings. The law, which states that mutually-owned marital assets must be released once divorce proceedings have commenced, is intended to replace a 1974 law stating that marital assets may be divided only after divorce or death. The legislation has already passed its first reading in Knesset.

“The old law is detrimental to women, because it means that a wife who owns half of the assets cannot exercise this right of ownership until a get is granted,” explains Yad L’Isha director, Batsheva Sherman-Shani. “The husband, who must grant a get to the wife, has access to the assets plus the ability to determine when the divorce will proceed. That gives a recalcitrant husband incentive not to grant the divorce, but to blackmail his wife to waive her rights in order to obtain a get.”

The new law will eliminate the power granted to the husband under the current system, ensuring that a wife will not be denied a get and be left penniless as a result of blackmail by her spouse.

Pre-Nuptial Agreement: A Woman’s Best Protection

Sherman-Shani adds that the law echoes the pre-nuptial agreement, recommended by Yad L’Isha for all engaged couples, which states that marital assets must be divided before divorce proceedings begin. “The pre-nuptial agreement is currently a woman’s best protection against financial blackmail by a recalcitrant husband in the event of a divorce,” she states.

As chairperson of the legal committee of ICAR – the International Coalition of Agunah Rights, of which Yad L’Isha is a prominent member - Sherman-Shani has played an integral role in wording the new law and guiding it through appropriate legislative channels. Working toward passage of the new law is part of the ICAR legal committee’s ongoing activity in initiating legislation and Knesset deliberations relating to women’s and children’s rights.

Yad L’Isha has also been extremely active in raising a public outcry against the recent appointment of 13 rabbinical court judges – out of a total of 15 – who were known to be particularly inflexible in their rulings. Working through ICAR, their campaign led to a High Court verdict that cancelled the appointments, and the activists are now carefully monitoring the renewed selection process of dayanim for the rabbinical court.

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