The Agunah Crisis: Jewish Women Chained by Divorce Law

A Woman Waiting

Picture a woman — let’s call her Sarah, though that is not her name. Sarah has been civilly divorced for three years. She has a court order granting her custody of her children. She has moved on with her life in every legal and practical sense. But in the eyes of Jewish law, she is still married.

Her ex-husband refuses to give her a get — the Jewish document of divorce that, under halakha, only a husband can grant. Without it, Sarah is an agunah: a “chained woman.” She cannot remarry in a Jewish ceremony. If she enters a relationship and has children, those children will be classified as mamzerim — a status that, under traditional Jewish law, bars them from marrying other Jews for ten generations.

Sarah’s ex-husband knows all this. That is why he refuses. The get has become a weapon — a tool of control, of leverage, of cruelty disguised in the language of religious law.

This is the agunah crisis, and it is one of the most painful intersections of ancient law and modern life in the Jewish world.

What the Law Says

Jewish divorce law is rooted in the Torah and elaborated in the Talmud. The basic framework is this: a Jewish marriage is dissolved when the husband writes and delivers a get — a document of divorce — to his wife. The get must be given willingly; a forced get is invalid.

This last point is crucial. Because the get must come from the husband’s free will, there are limits on how much pressure can be applied to compel him. A get given under physical coercion is generally considered invalid. This creates a structural imbalance: the husband holds the power, and if he chooses not to exercise it, the wife has few options.

The rabbis of the Talmud were aware of this problem. They developed various mechanisms to pressure recalcitrant husbands, including social ostracism, financial penalties, and — in some cases — physical coercion. The medieval authority Maimonides ruled that a rabbinical court could order a husband beaten until he said “I am willing” to grant the get, on the theory that his true will was to do the right thing and the beating merely helped him overcome his evil inclination.

But later authorities, particularly Rabbenu Tam in 12th-century France, restricted the use of coercion, arguing that a get given under excessive pressure was invalid. This more stringent position has dominated Ashkenazi practice ever since, making it harder for courts to force a husband’s hand.

The Scale of the Problem

Nobody knows exactly how many agunot there are worldwide. Estimates range from hundreds to thousands. In Israel, where the Orthodox rabbinate controls all Jewish marriage and divorce, the problem is institutional. A woman who wants a Jewish divorce must go through the rabbinical courts, and if her husband refuses to cooperate, the courts’ enforcement power is limited.

In the diaspora, the situation is different but not necessarily better. Civil courts can grant divorces, but they cannot compel a get. A woman can be legally free under secular law and still chained under Jewish law. Some countries — including New York, with its 1992 “Get Law” — have passed legislation designed to create pressure on recalcitrant spouses, but the effectiveness of these laws is debated.

The agunah problem affects women across the Orthodox spectrum. It is not limited to ultra-Orthodox communities, though the consequences may be most severe there. Any Jewish woman who cares about her halakhic status — who wants to remarry in a Jewish ceremony, who wants her future children to be accepted without question — is vulnerable.

Why Husbands Refuse

The reasons men withhold a get vary, but they tend to fall into patterns:

Leverage. The get becomes a bargaining chip in divorce negotiations. A husband may refuse the get until his wife agrees to unfavorable terms regarding custody, property, or financial support. This is get abuse — the deliberate weaponization of religious law.

Control. Some men withhold the get as a form of ongoing domestic abuse, maintaining power over a woman who has left the relationship. The get refusal extends the dynamics of a controlling or abusive marriage beyond its end.

Spite. In some cases, the refusal has no strategic purpose — it is pure vindictiveness. The husband wants his ex-wife to suffer, and the get provides him with the means.

Leverage against the system. Occasionally, a husband who feels wronged by the secular divorce process — believing he received an unfair custody or financial settlement — refuses the get as a form of protest against the legal system.

Modern Solutions and Their Limits

The Jewish community has developed several approaches to address the agunah crisis:

The Halakhic Prenuptial Agreement

The most successful innovation has been the halakhic prenup, developed by the Beth Din of America and championed by rabbis across the Modern Orthodox world. The prenup is a legally binding agreement, signed before marriage, that creates financial consequences for a spouse who refuses to participate in the get process. Specifically, the husband agrees to pay his wife a daily sum (typically $150) for every day the couple lives apart without a get.

The prenup works because it creates genuine economic pressure without technically “coercing” the get. The Beth Din of America reports that in virtually every case where a prenup was signed, a get was eventually obtained.

The challenge is adoption. While many Modern Orthodox rabbis now require or strongly encourage prenups, they are far from universal. In ultra-Orthodox communities, prenups are rare. And of course, a prenup cannot help couples who married without one.

Community Pressure

Organizations like ORA (Organization for the Resolution of Agunot) use public advocacy, community pressure, and rabbinic mediation to persuade recalcitrant husbands. Their tactics include public demonstrations outside a get-refuser’s home or workplace, synagogue announcements, and social media campaigns.

These efforts can be effective — the social consequences of being publicly identified as someone who chains his wife are significant. But they require the community to care, and not every community does.

Rabbinical Court Power

In Israel, the rabbinical courts have the theoretical power to impose sanctions on get refusers, including imprisonment. In practice, this power is used inconsistently. Some judges are aggressive about enforcing get orders; others are reluctant. The system is slow, and women can wait years for resolution.

Annulment Debate

Some rabbinical authorities have explored the possibility of annulling marriages retroactively — declaring that the marriage was never valid, thus freeing the woman without a get. This approach has Talmudic precedent (afkinhu — “they uprooted the marriage”) but is considered extremely controversial. Most Orthodox authorities reject annulment as a general solution, arguing that it undermines the institution of marriage and opens the door to abuse.

Conservative Judaism has been more willing to use annulment as a tool. The Conservative movement’s Lieberman Clause, introduced in the 1950s, was an early attempt to address the problem by including language in the marriage contract that gave the rabbinical court authority to intervene. More recently, Conservative batei din have annulled marriages in cases where a get was unreasonably withheld.

The Human Cost

Behind every legal argument and halakhic debate, there are women whose lives are on hold. Women who cannot move forward. Women who watch their youth pass while waiting for a document their ex-husbands refuse to sign. Women who fall in love again but cannot remarry. Women who choose to have children outside of marriage and live with the knowledge that those children’s status is compromised.

The agunah crisis is not an abstract legal problem. It is a human rights issue within Jewish law, and the Jewish community’s response to it reveals something important about its values. The tradition that commands us to pursue justice, to care for the vulnerable, to repair the world — that tradition must find a way to free the women it has chained.

The work continues. One get at a time.