Divorce for Jews

When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her; then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. --Deut. 24:1

In the Jewish religion, a husband may divorce his wife at will; "some uncleanness in her" has even been interpreted to include bad cooking or fading looks. It has been up to the rabbis to hobble the tempted with rituals and restrictions. One device dating back at least to the 5th century B.C. is the Kethubah (literally, "what is written"), a contract by which a Jewish husband must make provision for any wife he divorces. In about A.D. 1000, Germany's Rabbi Gershom ben Judah banned polygamy for Jews of the Western world and decreed that if there were no overt offense (such as adultery) by one of the marriage partners, no divorce could be granted unless the wife agreed.

Last week Orthodox Jewish leaders, meeting in Atlantic City for the annual convention of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, were agitated by a brand-new effort to make divorce more trouble than it is worth. Dr. Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of Manhattan's Jewish Theological Seminary and leader of the Conservative Jewish movement in the U.S.,* announced the formation of a new marriage court, to which all couples in Conservative congregations must henceforth bring their marital problems for adjudication and possible settlement before taking divorce proceedings. Couples who ignore the new body or fail to follow its recommendations may have to pay heavy fines or else leave the congregation.

But to the Orthodox rabbis, the Conservatives' new body was an unwanted and unnecessary growth on the smooth perfection of the Law. Said honorary Union President Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein of Manhattan's West Side Institutional Synagogue: "Regardless of the well-meaning intention of those who initiated the attempt ... it is a departure from traditional procedure and practice accepted by the bulk of Jewry, and it should not and cannot be recognized by the loyal adherents to Judaism."

Leaders of Reform Judaism, well to the theological left of the Conservative branch, have for the most part abandoned Kethubahs and other impediments to divorce in favor of "moral suasion." They consider the Conservatives' change--the first such major innovation to be attempted in nearly 1,000 years--as "academic."

*About 40% of the U.S.'s estimated 5,500,000 affiliated Jews belong to Conservative congregations, which stand between the religiously strict Orthodox Jews (4%), who insist on the letter of the law, and the Reform Jews (20%), who have changed the letter considerably (e.g., work on the Sabbath permitted, no hat worn in the synagogue, etc.).

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