Israeli rabbis ordered a woman jailed for refusing to divorce her husband. On Monday, Ha’aretz quoted the Rabbinic High Court as describing the unprecedented ruling as an effort to impose the same penalties on recalcitrant wives as on husbands. “We did a great deal of the freeing of women from their ‘agunot,’ ” Rabbinical Judge Shlomo Dichovsky said, using the Jewish legal term for wives denied divorces by their husbands. “To the same degree we must remember that a husband has human rights.” The Rabbinic High Court was closed for Passover, and thus confirmation of Sunday’s ruling was unavailable. Ha’aretz said the Belgian-born wife has the right of appeal to the Supreme Court against the prison sentence. According to the newspaper, she refused to grant her husband the divorce pending resolution of her $10 million lawsuit against him.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
