Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch writes that the methodology for divorce must mirror that for marriage. Just as a man must give his wife an object and take her into his home, he must also be the one to formally sever the relationship. This forms the basis for why, according to halacha, only the husband can initiate a divorce.

For the vast majority of cases, the system works. Yet when it fails, the woman becomes an agunah. An agunah (Hebrew for chained woman) is a Jewish woman unable to remarry under halakha because she has not received a formal religious divorce document, known as a get, from her husband. She is chained if her husband refuses to grant the divorce, is missing, or is incapacitated.

In The Marital Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850 (Brandeis University........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)