Freeing 'agunot': A lawyer's fight to help free Jewish women denied divorce

Shir Lavi Znati, a lawyer, is a happily married young woman with three young sons. So it was hard for me to understand why she had become obsessed with the plight of women whose husbands refuse to give them a get (a Jewish divorce document) without which they can never remarry and start a new family.

“I always felt a great need for justice,” she explained. “I found it morally wrong to use the Torah to make women suffer or for revenge. I was always sure that God never meant for it to be used that way.”

Years earlier I had told her the story of my two brothers in World War II, who were in the Royal Australian Air Force. My younger brother, Athol, aged 21, while flying over Tobruk, was shot down by German field marshal Erwin Rommel’s forces. His plane and his body were never recovered. My older brother, Phil, was married when he was sent off to war in Papua, New Guinea. Our rabbi (Jacob Danglow) persuaded him to leave a get for his wife in case the same tragedy were to befall him. Fortunately, it was never needed.

The struggles of Jewish women denied divorce

In Israel, in view of the number of young married men who fall in battle and whose bodies are not recovered or who were taken captive, their fates unknown, leaving behind agunot, who can never remarry, Lavi Znati is now trying to persuade the IDF to do a similar thing, with the aim of having married soldiers leave a deed of authorization to grant a divorce in their name in cases of head injury, where the man cannot grant a divorce, or is missing in action.

Her first success in freeing an aguna was in 2019. The husband of Yehudit [not her real name] flew to the US 13 years ago during their divorce proceedings, without giving her a get, and leaving her with a three-year-old son. Yehudit was in her early 30s and secular. She took a partner but could not marry him. She didn’t understand that she couldn’t enter into another relationship because, according to Halacha, she belongs to another person.

Through the husband’s brother, Lavi Znati managed to contact him in America. For six months she telephoned him regularly, using her combined skills of legal and social work [to confer with him].

“I tried to understand him – why he had a need to keep her a prisoner,” she said. She sensed his need for acknowledgment – that he was not a bad father, even though he’d left. He finally admitted that he had done the wrong thing, came back to Israel, and granted the get. He remet his son, now aged 16, and began to renew his relationship with him. So he also gained something significant in his estimation.

On August 5 of this year, the Religious Services Ministry proposed that get-deniers be punished by means of sanctions, such as losing their driving licenses and passports. The beit din’s law was problematic for many women, as it did not go far enough. Thanks to an organization called Mavoi Satum, through very hard work Lavi Znati and her colleagues managed to procure a better solution. She addressed the Knesset and was listened to very politely. Out of 120 Knesset members, only six voted against it.

The new law applies to every get-denier regarding the punishment with which the husband can be sanctioned. Financially, he must pay the wife for every day that he refuses to grant the get. His name can be posted on social media as a get-refuser. People can be told not to allow him into their synagogue; not to do business with him. He can even be jailed and his livelihood taken away. He can lose his credit card, and his bank account can be sealed. He cannot own shares in a company.

MY FINAL question to Lavi Znati was how she was educating her young sons with regard to women. She told me about her three-year-old son telling her about his day at kindergarten:

“He said, ‘I knocked over a little girl’s tower that she’d built. But it was okay. I gave her a kiss afterwards because she was crying.’ I sat him down and explained to him that it was a cruel thing to do, after she had worked so hard to build it. And that he should not have kissed her without her permission.”

I hope Lavi Znati’s three little boys will grow up with her sense of justice and compassion.

(Full disclosure: Lavi Znati is my granddaughter.) 

The writer is the author of 14 books. dwaysman@gmail.com