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 Press), Dr. Noa Shashar of Sapir Academic College in Israel, has written an absolutely fascinating book that details the plights of agunot from the time of the Khmelnytsky uprising to 1850.

While agunot today are a somewhat rare occurrence, in the period she writes of, wars, persecution, accidents, and natural disasters, as well as travel along dangerous roads, the possibility of assuming a false identity, and conversion to Christianity, all made agunot not uncommon in the least.

The book details the lives of agunot during 1648-1850 and the men who brought about this situation. It traces the states of these widows, whose husbands were nowhere to be found. This includes husbands who were killed while away and never discovered, those who left to find a better life, leaving their families behind, and more.

Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll of Chochmat Nashim has written extensively about women whose marital rights have been abused by their husbands and the courts. Far from being a new phenomenon, the book documents cases in which the agunah was extorted. In cases of halitzah, brothers-in-law who were well-versed in halacha exploited that knowledge to delay the halitzah process, leaving the woman a veritable agunah, and to postpone it for financial gain.

It’s not just that these agunot were vulnerable to monetary extortion; the book details how many of these agunot were extorted by men who pretended to be their long-lost husbands. While it may be hard for us to comprehend, it was quite difficult for many of these women to identify their husbands, or those who pretended to be their husbands, after being away for many years.

In the absence of technological means for ascertaining a person’s identity, people had to rely on memory. This made it easier for impostors, since those who remembered were prone to their own wishful thinking or to manipulation, whether in favor of the imposter or against him.

Life for the agunah in Europe was a horrifying existence. With little recourse, often little money, and even less leverage, these agunot found themselves on the fringes of society and alienated from the broader community.

Shashar has written a fascinating and engaging work that depicts a dark period in Jewish history.  This is a compelling and important book, and she sheds light on a topic rarely written about, yet extraordinarily significant.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)