By Joel H. Cohen
NEW YORK — The movement to eliminate or at least liberalize laws and customs relating to a get – a divorce document that an Orthodox Jewish husband may grant to or withhold from his wife seeking an end to their marriage – has enlisted a surprise adherent: President Trump.
“Trust me, nobody cares about women more than I do, or feels for them in the way I do,” he tweeted. “I’m a hundred-and-ten percent in favor of what they’re doing to liberalize (I can’t believe I used that word) divorce.”
The get issue is not like the joke about the man saying his wife makes all the small decisions (“where we live, how many kids we have, where they go to school”), and he makes all the big ones (“how to deal with North Korea”). No, when it comes to divorce in certain circles, it’s exclusively the husband who decides whether or not to grant his spouse a divorce.
Some husbands have withheld a get in order to extort money from their spouse, or to win custody of their children, or just out of spite. ‘SHAMEFUL,” the president tweeted.
Even if she has obtained a civil divorce, the wife is not considered divorced without a get. A wife denied a get by her husband is known as an agunah, a “chained woman.” Should she remarry without the get, she’d be considered an adulteress, and any children of that new union would be regarded as illegitimate
In some instances, a wife can sue for divorce through the rabbinical court known as the Beth Din, which, should it find the husband’s refusal unjustified, can rule the marriage annulled.
In Israel, a reluctant husband can lose his driving privileges or be jailed, but not in the USA. Here, some groups, such as the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA), organize public shamings in support of the women, such as staging protests in front of a husband’s home and office, and urging his community and synagogue to keep him out,
In a development gaining popularity, Halachic pre-nuptial agreements are being employed to offset the effects of any potential later get controversy.
Over all, the movement to alleviate the get problem seems to be gaining steam. Some want the whole get principle to be abolished; others are calling for wives to have the power over issuing a get. Still others say let divorce approval be the prerogative of either the husband or wife.
Protests are being organized all over the country, and marchers are readying signs with such pun-like slogans as “Get/Going/Gone”…”Get/Lost”…and “The GETting is no longer good.”
An organizer of one protest march denies any such invitation was ever made, but Trump said “I would love to accept the invitation to be grand marshal of the D.C. protest parade, but I’m too busy with Syria, North Korea, jobs, fighting fake news organizations and slime ball mud-throwers.”
“But we’ll see. And, believe me, nobody knows more about marriage – or divorce — than I do,” President Trump tweeted.
Asked at a news briefing how she could reconcile the president’s current stand supporting wives seeking religious divorce with his history of alleged mistreatment and harassment of women, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “We’ve been over this a million times. President Trump is, and always has been, a champion of women.”
According to an unconfirmed report, Trump had considered getting the National Enquirer to buy agunot stories (but not print them) as a way of compensating them for their husbands’ intransigence. But there were too many.
So instead, at the suggestion of national security advisor John Bolton, he plans to issue an executive order banning Orthodox husbands from withholding divorce documents from their unhappy spouses, and threatening the unmoving males with incarceration.
Hearing this, a reporter from a Jewish newspaper asked rhetorically at a press briefing, “What ever happened to the principle of separation of shul and state?”
To which press secretary Susan Huckabee Sanders said, with just the hint of a smile: “Get over it.”
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