N.C.J.W. Asks Rabbis to Modify Jewish Laws Causing Hardships for Women

Rabbinical authorities were called upon by the National Council of Jewish Women to reinterpret ancient Jewish religious laws which bring hardships to women in matters of divorce, remarriage and inheritance. A decision to support a worldwide drive for the modernization of women’s status under Jewish law was adopted here at the three-day meeting of the NCJW’s executive committee. The drive was launched in London last month by the International Council of Jewish Women, which represents 500, 000 women in 19 countries.

Jewish law stipulates that only a husband can obtain a divorce. According to a report to the executive committee by Mrs. Frank Cohen, chairman of the NCJW’s committee on the Status of Women Under Jewish Law, a significant number of husbands refuse to grant a religious divorce even though the marriage has been dissolved in civil law, or insist on a monetary reward for granting the religious divorce, or are unable to consent to it because of mental illness.

Women whose husbands have disappeared may be barred from remarriage, Mrs. Cohen explained, because Jewish law makes no presumption of death after a certain number of years. She reported that the Orthodox rabbinate, which regards the law as unchangeable, has relaxed traditional interpretations to free these "chained wives" to remarry only in cases of disappearance arising from the Nazi holocaust.

Jewish law also requires that a childless widow marry her late husband’s surviving brother or be freed by him to marry another in a ceremony known as Chalitza, in which she throws a shoe at him. Women have been forced to wait years until child brothers-in-law reach the age of 13, when they become qualified to undergo this ceremony. NCJW is seeking to ease woman’s plight when the man cannot free her because of his age or distance, or when he unreasonably refuses to give Chalitza or demands a monetary reward in exchange for it.

While Mrs. Cohen stressed that "cases of hardship and tragedy occur in our country as well as elsewhere," she noted that American Jewish women are better off than their sisters in Oriental countries where religious minorities live under the laws of their own religions. In calling for support of the drive among American Jewish women, Mrs. Joseph Willen, president of the National Council of Jewish Women, said that "the anomalies of these family laws increase the temptations and excuses existing today for young people to forsake the traditions of their fathers."

The Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement believes, that a pledge which it added to the marriage contract 15 years ago has proved to be an effective solution to problems of religious divorce. This stipulates that should the couple receive a civil divorce, husbands and wives are required to carry out a decision of the rabbinical court concerning religious dissolution of the marriage. Reform rabbis consider divorce a civil, not a religious function, and will remarry a woman without requiring religious divorce, Chalitza or a religious court’s presumption of a husband’s death.