L.O.
COMBAT VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Busting the old boys' club
by SHARON SHENHAV, THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 30, 2004
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It's no secret that many Jewish women suffer when they seek to obtain a religious divorce. Too often, greedy, vindictive
and abusive husbands refuse to free their wives from unwanted or nonexistent marriages.
Anat Zuria's recent award-winning film Sentenced to Marriage (Mekudeshet) vividly portrays the anguish of three Orthodox
Israeli women who were not only victimized by their husbands, but also humiliated and discriminated against by the
dayanim or religious court judges who heard their cases in the rabbinical courts.
As a lawyer who represented hundreds of women in the rabbinical courts in the 1980s and 1990s, I heard painful stories
from clients whose lives had been virtually destroyed by injustice rampant in the Jewish divorce process.
I appeared before several dayanim who were sensitive, creative and courageous, making every effort to free agunot -
women who need divorces but can't get them and are left in religious limbo.
Sadly, however, I was witness to many more instances where dayanim treated women petitioners, as well as their female
lawyers, with a disdain bordering on hostility.
Unlike the civil courts, where almost half of the judges are now women, the rabbinical courts remain one of the few
male-only bastions in Israeli public life today. Only Orthodox rabbis can be appointed to serve as dayanim.
After decades of publicly voicing my criticism of the functioning of the rabbinical courts, I was recently given the opportunity to
"do something about it."
In December 2002 I was elected by the Israel Bar Association to be one of their two representatives on the 10-member
Commission to Appoint Dayanim. (The commission, established by statute, is chaired by the minister of justice and includes
the minister of religious affairs, the two chief rabbis, two dayanim from the Bet Din Hagadol, two MKs and two representatives
of the Israel Bar Association).
My election was preceded by energetic lobbying on the part of 25 women's organizations which formed a coalition, ICAR
(International Coalition for Aguna Rights). It includes Orthodox women's organizations, Conservative and Reform movement
organizations, and large secular women's groups.
The coalition members had tried to block the appointment of dayanim they considered insensitive to women's claims of
injustice, inequality and discrimination in the rabbinical courts.
But despite public demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns to members of the commission and a petition to the Supreme
Court sitting as a High Court of Justice, they failed to prevent the appointment of an unsuitable dayan to the Bet Din Hagadol
in the fall of 2002.
Deciding to try a new strategy, the women's organizations concentrated on bringing onto the commission itself women
who were knowledgeable about the plight of agunot and could represent women's concerns.
They decided to propose two women lawyers as candidates for election as Bar Association representatives to the commission.
When the bar's Committee on Rabbinical Courts chose to support my candidacy, as did the president of the bar, Dr.
Shlomo Cohen, my colleague Dafna Bustan withdrew her candidacy in order to increase my chances of being elected.
She then contacted all her supporters on the bar's Central Committee, which elects the representatives, and asked them to
vote for me. As a result of this generous act, I was duly elected. ICAR also tried to convince the Knesset to elect at least one
female MK as their representative to the commission, but the Knesset elected two men from religious parties, Nissan
Slomiansky from the NRP and Eli Yishai from Shas.
So what, if anything, has changed since I became a member of the Commission to Appoint Dayanim?
The first reaction came from the media.
Immediately upon being elected I was bombarded by requests for interviews on TV, radio and in the Hebrew and English
press. There was great interest in the fact that, for the first time, a woman supported by women's organizations had been
elected to the commission.
Declaring that since women represent at least half of the petitioners in the rabbinical courts women's voices must be
heard in the process of appointing dayanim, I emphasized that as women could not serve as dayanim, it was vital that
women's issues become part of the discussion of candidates' qualifications.
Furthermore, in Israel today women are approximately 52 percent of the population; women's organizations represent
a majority of these women; and almost half of the 40,000 members of the Israel Bar Association are women.
Therefore, I emphasized, despite the fact that I was the only woman on the commission, my constituency was in fact larger than
that of any of its other nine members.
During the last six months, as the commission prepared to choose six dayanim to fill open positions in regional rabbinical
courts, I have been overwhelmed by telephone calls, faxes and letters from leading rabbis, dayanim, judges, lawyers,
MKs, relatives and friends of candidates - all trying to convince me that their candidate is "good for women" and has a
proven track record in assisting women whose husbands are recalcitrant.
Then, surprisingly, a second woman joined the commission.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed Absorption and Housing Minister Tsipi Livni, a trained lawyer, to fill the position of
Minister of Religious Affairs.
Tsipi and I have worked together to bring women's concerns and issues to the interviewing process of the 150 candidates
as well as the evaluation process.
The commission met on November 22 at the Ministry of Justice to select six new dayanim. Despite four hours of intense
efforts to reach agreement, we found ourselves deadlocked.
My aspiration is that judges be selected who have served in the IDF, or provided some other public service; and that they
have a university education.
From now on, all dayanim understand that women are watching them with critical eyes.
The writer, director of the International Jewish Women's Rights Project,
was formerly legal adviser to Na'amat.
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