Schechter News | In the Media

Agunot get their voice on dayanim appointment board

By Orly Halpern

Sharon Shenhav is out to get them.
Or, rather, to get them out.
Or, maybe, to keep them from getting in.

Shenhav has just been chosen - to her own surprise, as well - as one of the two representatives of the Israel Bar Association to the 10-person Committee to Appoint Rabbinical Judges (dayanim). Twenty-five Israeli women's organizations lobbied for her to become a member of the committee, and now she'll sit on it with nine men, most of whom are themselves religious.

"It's exciting," says Chicago-born Shenhav, trying to conceal her obvious elation.

Her goal: to persuade her fellow committee members to choose the men who will be the best dayanim from the standpoint of Israel's women - and to keep others away.

"Best for women" means, first and foremost, dayanim who will help women whose recalcitrant husbands have refused to give them a divorce. According to Jewish law, a woman is not divorced until the man gives her a get (formal permission to divorce him). If he refuses, she must remain married to him (a status referred to as being an agunah), even till death.

"Jewish law does provide solutions to force the husband to give a get," states Shenhav, who looks younger than her 62 years. "Israeli civil law also has provided sanctions such as closing his bank account, revoking his driver's license and his professional license, confiscating his passport and credit card, and sending him to jail. But the dayanim don't use them. I plan to ask dayanim candidates what they will do if the husband refuses to give a get."

There are two levels of dayanim chosen by the committee. For the local rabbinical courts, the committee must select men who have never been dayanim before. The committee also chooses dayanim from lower courts to sit on the High Appellate court.

Shenhav, an observant Jew who wears pants, has impressive experience in dealing with women's rights laws, and is a recognized expert on marriage and divorce in Jewish law - which is why women's organizations, secular and Orthodox alike, lobbied on her behalf. Until the present time, she has also served as the director for the International Jewish Women's Human Rights Watch, whose main goal is to help agunot around the world. Two of her cases involve Afghani women living in Israel whose husbands are both still living in Afghanistan.

"The problem of agunot is a uniquely Jewish women's issue which exists wherever a Jewish community exists. We approach it as a human rights violation," she says.
Shenhav was also a member of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Shenhav completed her bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Chicago, where she worked five years as a social worker in the area of child welfare, and then went on for her master’s degree in law. “I was one of three female students in a class of 300. My fellow male classmates hissed when I spoke When grades came, I was second in class and everyone wanted to be my study partner.” She later completed a doctorate in law at Georgetown University. While interested in working in women’s rights,”I was before my time and worked instead in civil rights,” she says.
In 1979, Shenhav immigrated to Israel with her husband and two children. She created the legal department of the Na’amat women’s organization, where she worked for 14 years, and quickly found that most of her cases involved divorce.

One of her few victories, she says, was over an abusive husband who had refused to give his wife a divorce after 11 years and then was jailed for killing someone. “He said ‘Why should my wife be free if I’m in jail?’ I told the dayanim to have him put in solitary confinement. They agreed and he gave her a divorce just based on the threat.”

Her complaints don’t stop with the dayanim’s refusal to punish recalcitrant husbands. They also lack knowledge in civil law and make harmful decisions: “Most dayanim haven’t even done a matriculation exam, not to mention go to university. How could they write a ruling? [Their] rulings are hard to understand and that makes them difficult to enforce and tough to appeal.”

“The problem is not Jewish law,” she adds. “I’m attacking the kind of rabbis who are selected by the committee and are serving as dayanim.

Within the issue of the divorce, are three thorny areas which, according to Israeli law, fall either under the jurisdiction of family courts or rabbinical courts, depending which are approached first. These are: marital property, child custody and maintenance payments. Shenhav explains that women favor the civil court while men prefer the rabbinical one.

In many cases, she says, the dayanim don’t have the knowledge to make proper decisions on these issues. “Their narrow background in life limits their understanding of the world around them. A dayan could make a bad custody decision because he didn’t understand the testimony of a child psychologist. In civil law, rulings shall be in accord with the best interests of the child, which means that not necessarily the parent who is more religious should receive custody. That parent may be a pedophile or a thief. A father who is sexually abusing his children should not be getting custody.

“Moreover, studies show that decisions on maintenance are consistently lower than those made in civil courts under similar circumstances,” says Shenhav. “Dayanim who have never bought a pair of children’s shoes in their lives should not be deciding what the woman’s maintenance budget shall be.”

Because ultra-Orthodox men almost never come into contact with women other than their mothers, sisters and wives, they are unable to relate or communicate with women, who are half of the people that enter their courtrooms. She says: “They are not understanding of nor sensitive to women. Most people coming to court to get a divorce are secular and they don’t understand their lives or problems.”

Shenhav says that the fact that she comes from America, where the system of justice and fairness toward women is more ingrained, has prepared her for fighting for women’s rights. The decorum, mutual respect and equality one sees in the American courtroom are not evident in a rabbinical courtroom where “people shout and scream. It’s like a free-for-all, a circus.”

Another problem is the lack of a disciplinary board for dayanim, as for civil lawyers: “You often go and not all of them have shown up and then you don’t have a panel and the case is postponed. I’m going to do as much as I can to see that a disciplinary procedure is set in place.”

Shenhav realizes her power is limited, but declares: “It’s going to be a real challenge. I am an advocate and I will use every possible tool to persuade my colleagues to vote as I do. A woman should not have to wait twenty years for a get while her child-bearing years fade away. I’m going to bring it up at the meetings. My colleagues won’t like to hear it and if they don’t do anything about it, the media is going to hear about it.”

“Don’t forget I represent over 30,000 lawyers, over one million women from women’s organizations and, as the only woman on the committee, I represent women, which is over half of the population. Not just Sharon Shenhav.”