More women get-refusers than men? Rabbinic courts distort the facts

The court’s faulty stats blame get refusal on the very women who await divorce, and not the real culprit: the court itself

By Nitzan Caspi Shilony
Published in the Times of Israel Blogs
FEB 17, 2017, 2:39 PM

For years, Naama suffered harrowing physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband, the father of her two daughters. When she filed for a get (bill of Jewish divorce) in the rabbinic court, never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that the process would take years. But although five and a half years have passed, her husband still refuses to grant her a get, which would release her from the marriage. And the rabbinic court? Well, they haven’t been able to decide whether Naama deserves a get or not. Absent a rabbinic court decision obligating her husband to give her a get, Naama is not considered an agunah (woman chained to a dead marriage), nor her husband a get-refuser. She does not factor into the statistics released by the rabbinic court this week, which reported the numbers of recalcitrant men and women.

In case you missed it: on Tuesday, February 14, the rabbinic court announced its findings with great fanfare: More women withhold religious divorces than men! To understand this outrageous piece of PR, let’s take a look at some key facts that might come as a surprise to those unfamiliar with the world of rabbinic courts.