These stories prove the Rabbinate can be pressured into reversing rulings that trap women in marriages long over. Now we know what we have to do
By Susan Weiss and Rachel Stomel
Published in the Times of Israel Blogs
25, 2021, 10:16 AM
“Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Shushan, and fast for me. […] When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16).
Queen Esther, the heroine of the Purim story, succeeds in averting genocide for the Jewish people, but there is one person she cannot save: herself. Our tragic heroine remains trapped in an unwanted marriage for the rest of her days. The Fast of Esther, which falls the day before Purim, is therefore commemorated as Agunah Day. An agunah (plural: agunot) is a woman held in marital captivity by a husband who refuses to release her with a religious writ of manumission, known as a get.
To those of us fighting for agunot, Esther’s choice in calling for a public fast before she stood up to state power is not incidental. It is strikingly strategic and has become more instructive than ever. Like Esther, we see today that women’s struggle for justice directly hinges on communal solidarity. Three recent agunah cases demonstrate how critical a role that public support plays.
The first case is the matter of Shira Isakov (her real name), whose husband almost hacked her to death, literally, and would have succeeded but for her screams and the kindness of neighbors. After the murder attempt, Israeli doctors and dentists rallied to reconstruct Shira’s body and mouth. Shira sued for her release, a get, in rabbinic court. Her husband refused to free her. A media uproar ensued and the public erupted in fury. In response, the rabbinic court scrambled to Shira’s aid, making a great show of flexing its muscles to secure a get for Shira and inculpability for itself in just a matter of days.
Read more in the Times of Israel >