Man Jailed for 30 Years for Refusing Wife a Get

An 80-year-old man who has already spent 30 years in prison for refusing to grant his wife a religious bill of divorce has ignored fresh appeals made by a panel of seven rabbis to reverse his position.

The man, Yihye Avraham, told the rabbis this week that he would rather stay in jail than free his wife from marriage by granting her a get, or religious divorce.

“Can’t do it, can’t do it. Go away,” Avraham told the rabbis, according to the Yediot Achronot newspaper.

Jewish law stipulates that both husband and wife must agree to a divorce, although only a man can actually give the get. Jewish law allows imprisonment as a method of last resort to put pressure on a stubborn spouse.

Avraham’s 64-year-old wife, Ora, first applied for a divorce after 12 years of marriage. “His behavior was abhorrent. He treated me like chattel,” Ora said in an interview published in Yediot.

The couple were married in their native country of Yemen when Ora was 12 and Yihye was 28. She bore him two daughters, but he berated her and abused her for not bearing sons.

When Ora left her husband at age 24, the couple was already living in Israel. Yihye consistently refused to grant her a divorce and was sent to prison in 1962.

Israel follows religious law in matters of marriage and divorce and Yihye was duly ordered to remain behind bars until he granted his wife the get.

Avraham has refused all these years and, due to his age, he is now being held in the hospital wing of the Ayalon prison in Ramla.

According to Yediot, the panel of seven rabbis who called at the prison hospital this week promised Avraham his freedom, a fancy apartment and religious blessings.

One of them even sang melancholy Yemeni songs to soften the old man’s heart. But to no avail.

“Go away. Leave me alone,” he said.

His wife commented afterwards: “He’s destroyed my life. May his name be destroyed. I haven’t seen his ugly face since 1967, and I hope to never see him again.”