CWJ

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.

Catch Up

I will now endevour to catch you up on my life. There's been two shabbatot that I did not blog about but probably should.

The first was my shabbat away with my beit midrash, a program called hevruta. I've mentioned it before. So if you haven't been keeping track then I recommend that you trawl through my previous posts. It will be an educational and entertaining experience.

It was a lovely shabbat in Kibbutz Snir. It included a poiyke at like midnight. Which is cool, my only wish that we didn't sing Israeli pop songs from the 90s, since I was not a child in Israel at that time. On Friday there was a super fun hike which included walking through Druze villages and splashing through streams. Also the weather was beautiful. The shabbat itself was pretty standard; chulent, shiurim, tischim, flirting, etc.

My critique on the shabbat is that the beit midrash has all types of religious people in it. Even non-religious, ideologically secular people in the beit midrash. The shabbat however was totally orthodox. It made the environment less inclusive or pluralist. And being a leftish wanker I really like those things.

My last shabbat I was in Givat Shmuel (ie: Bar Ilan) with my friends who've made aliya. They are all very nice and it was a super pleasant shabbat. Am still happy that I'm not living there for the following reasons

1) wayyyy too many anglos. It's strange to be in shule and nobody speaks Hebrew

2) wayyy too many dosim. As a frummie myself I feel its fair for me to say that religos are dull.

But on a good note we had lunch with Belgians. I learnt the following things about Belgians

1) OMG they are exceedingly good looking - girls and boys alike

2) They speak French but are superior to the French b/c they also speak English and the secret language flemmish.

Lastly am letting you all know that I've started an internship. It's at the Centre for Women's Justice. My first point of work was to send a letter to Rabbi and Ms. Irving and Blu Greenberg (modox nerds should appreciate that).

Other than that my life is busy, I have an assignment due on halachic options for female rabbis and another one on the hakachic attitude towards fetuses. Both due over Purim. Poohead professors.

In that case I better get back to work.