Things that you may not have known about family law in Israel.- It is all run by the religious courts
- this means that if you are Muslim you are under the jurisdiction of the sharia courts, Christians under church courts and Jews to the rabbinical courts (beit din)
- This means that Catholics cannot get divorced in Israel
- This also means that if you don't have a religion then you can't get married in Israel (though this is changing)
- For Jews, the only option is an orthodox court, reform and conservative streams do not get any recognition.
- The courts are also mainly populated by ultra-orthodox (haredi) judges.
Some of the quirks of this system for Jews include
- the option for men to take a second wife but never for a women to acquire a second husband
- the power of divorce to be completely in the hands of the husband
- that if a woman refuses to sleep with her husband he now has grounds for divorce and no longer has to pay her the ketuba money.
- a woman can however explain her reasons for not sleeping with her husband but they better be good
- a not good enough excuse is simply not wanting to, a good excuse is that your doctor told you not to while you are undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.
- that if you try to escape the system by having a civil marriage in Cyprus the rabbinate will still recognize that marriage and you will still come under their jurisdiction for a divorce.
- that you can be barred from marriage in your own country simply because you are a divorcee or a convert and your fiancée is a Cohen
- or you can be barred from marrying any other Jew if your mother was married to somebody else other than your father when you were born.
- the trouble is you won't know that you can't marry anybody because the black list is not publicized and there is no course for appeal or revocation of that status.
- that even if you try to protect yourself by signing a pre-nup the rabbinate will say that this contract led your Get to being not of your husbands free will and hence invalid.
- that basically the way for a woman to get divorced in Israel is for her to give up on her right to property and maintenance and children in exchange for the Get.
This is the system that I hopefully will be working in one day.
I suppose there's a lot of work to do.
2 comments:
I'd rather just the government get out the entire business of marriage. And I mean every government on earth. I don't see what business it is of any government on earth, what I do in my own bedroom with my own significant other. Why legalize homosexual marriage, when we can just get rid of civil marriage altogether?
If I have my druthers, I'd like to avoid both the civil government and the Rabbinate when I get married: private qidushin, private business incorporation to be able to file joint taxes and such, qidushei tenai so that she doesn't need a get if I refuse to grant her one, etc. etc.
Hello! I found your blog looking at the links on George's :) I enjoyed this post, and wish you the best of luck with fixing a rotten system.
But if I may, can you please clarify where you are getting your information from for the first three of your "quirky" points? Polygamy is illegal in Israel, and poygyny has been illegal in Ashkenazi Judaism since the takanah of Rabbeinu Gershom in the 11th century. I don't know how long polygyny has been outlawed by Sephardim, but they were certainly already forbidding it by the 20th century. (Not so, many Mizrachim, but Israel only allows their men to keep the wives/concubines that they already have.)
Secondly, Rabbeinu Gershom also made it impossible to divorce a woman against her will. Are you suggesting that this ban has been repealed?
Finally, and I ask this one especially because I am unfamiliar with this side of Jewish law, are you telling me that a refusal to have sex is grounds for a divorce? I've not learned Masekhet Ketubot in the Bavli, but the Mishna only stipulates at as grounds of divorce for the woman, and that is what I saw in the Rambam as well.
Not looked into this in any real depth, so you'll have to enlighten me. In more positive news, Israel does take very strong measures against recalcitrant husbands who don't grant their wives a gett, but the system could definitely be improved a great deal nonetheless.
Thanks for the post.
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