Despite best intentions, not all marriages work out. In the US, divorce rates were lower in general in 2021, but higher among 50+. In many cases, including traditional Jewish law, the legal system still favors men when it comes to divorce proceedings, and this bias goes back to biblical days, and today’s chapter in The Book of Words. An important invention is presented, but still in their husband’s hands:
כִּֽי־יִקַּ֥ח אִ֛ישׁ אִשָּׁ֖ה וּבְעָלָ֑הּ וְהָיָ֞ה אִם־לֹ֧א תִמְצָא־חֵ֣ן בְּעֵינָ֗יו כִּי־מָ֤צָא בָהּ֙ עֶרְוַ֣ת דָּבָ֔ר וְכָ֨תַב לָ֜הּ סֵ֤פֶר כְּרִיתֻת֙ וְנָתַ֣ן בְּיָדָ֔הּ וְשִׁלְּחָ֖הּ מִבֵּיתֽוֹ׃
“If a man takes a woman and becomes her husband, and she fails to please him because he finds something obnoxious about her, he writes her a book of seperation hands it to her, and sends her away from his house; “
The ‘book of separation’ - a document, really, seems to be an original invention for a literary people keen on making sure the words capture the legality of this dissolution -on economic grounds. Biblical scholar Dr.Eve Levavi Feinstein writes on how this verse is formative to the evolution of Jewish legal traditions:
“Most of what we know about divorce in biblical Israel comes from Deuteronomy 24:1–4...Although this passage does not legislate how divorce is to be enacted, the descriptions of divorce embedded in it shed light on the norms in Israel at the time when it was written.”
The key features that show up here become the status quo until quite recently- divorce is initiated only by the man; it involves a ritual and a written text, handed to the wife in a particular ceremony of their last formal exchange, and - there is a wide range of motivations for his demanding divorce. Perhaps too wide. What’s ‘something obnoxious?’ The Hebrew term ‘Ervat Davar’ might have sexual connotations but it could really be anything. Maimonides famously mentions bad cooking as a plausible cause.
Even Jesus wondered about this and in his famous sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:31–32) he offers a radical amendment to this law:
“I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery..’(NRSV translation)
The Torah leaves the man’s many motives for divorce , but, like other readers over time, Jesus limits the options to infidelity. Perhaps trying to make life easier for women who rely on their husbands, love or not, for survival and protection? Only adultery is reason enough for divorce.
How does that play out these days?
While a lot has evolved over time, much has not and still should. Levavi Feinstein brings attention to the ways Jewish law changed over time and continues to do so, if slowly, bringing more than male voices and needs to this sometimes inevitable Ritual of Separation, whether yearned for, or not:
“Deuteronomy does not actually legislate that a man may divorce his wife for any reason. That is simply an assumption made by this passage, presumably on the basis of prevailing practice. Nevertheless, whether it is being legislated or assumed, the implication of the verse is that unilateral divorce of a wife by a husband without cause was a possibility.
If so, this would have been a serious problem for women in antiquity, who, without husbands to provide for them, could be in a very precarious economic position. Deuteronomy repeatedly lists widows among the economically disadvantaged members of society whom Israelites are instructed to care and provide for; it may have been worse for divorcées.
..The rabbis instituted regulations in halakhah (Jewish Law) to protect women from the precarious position in which divorce placed them. Perhaps the most notable is the requirement of a marriage contract (ketubah) allowing a divorcée to keep her dowry and any property she brought into the marriage as well as providing her with continued financial support.
However..halakhah ultimately supported the most lenient interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1, allowing a man to divorce his wife on virtually any grounds. More important, it still left men with greater power, since only they could initiate divorce. In modern times, with the advent of civil divorce in Western countries, this has left religious Jewish women vulnerable to becoming agunot, “chained” to husbands who refuse them a religious divorce after the couple is civilly divorced.
Particularly in the Orthodox world, this has become the contemporary ethical challenge regarding divorce, with various solutions such as halakhic prenuptials and conditional marriages as just two of many creative attempts to rectify this millennia-old inequity.”
Beyond this biblical precedent, and the specific Jewish-halachic context, we have to keep on improving the ways we handle and honor all forms of separation, all rites of divorce, with the appropriate and sensitive rituals, words of consent and respect, silence of empathy, and soothing sounds of beyond-separation support. Dissolution deserves its dignity, just as love gets is fancy welcome mat.
All week long, through this week festival, echoed in the chapters coming up in the Book of Words, other rituals will emerge, marking life’s up’s and down’s, all sacred transitions.
Happy Holy Days of Huts.
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Grateful for this post.