It took 12 years for the Jerusalem district rabbinical court to officially declare the obvious: A. was a “sarvan get,” a recalcitrant husband who was holding his wife, Tziona hostage by refusing to grant her a religious divorce, and Tziona was an aguna, bound in marital chains by a cruel and stubborn husband for over a decade.

Tziona first left her husband after discovering that he had been committing adultery. At first, she agreed to try and patch things up, but when her efforts proved unsuccessful she sued for a divorce. Her husband refused to participate in the court proceedings, didn’t show up for hearings, and refused to pay any form of child support, leaving Tziona to raise their three children alone. She sank deeper and deeper into debt – and depression. “To be an aguna is like being in prison,” she explains. “I couldn’t begin a new life. I couldn’t enter into a new relationship; no serious man wants to be with a married woman who can’t contemplate having children. My resources – financial and emotional - were completely depleted, ” she recalls.

Earlier this year, she learned of the Yad L’isha Legal Aid Center and Hotline, and her case was taken on by rabbinical court advocate Vardit Rosenblum. Vardit’s first order of business was to lodge a formal complaint with Supreme Court Justice Tova Strasbourg-Cohen, the Public Commissioner of Judicial Performance, protesting the attitude of the rabbinical court toward Tziona. Strasbourg-Cohen accepted Vardit’s criticisms and sent the rabbinical justices a harshly-worded reprimand; Vardit pleaded Tziona’s case in front of a newly formed panel of judges, and a mere five months later they handed down a declaration that A. was a recalcitrant husband against whom sanctions must be imposed. Four short days after the court designation, with the threat of prison time now hanging over him, A. finally agreed to grant Tziona her get – the key to her freedom.

Vardit explains that the first panel of judges could have – and should have - implemented the same sanctions measures against A. years ago. “Their perspective was skewed,” she relates. “They were resistant to label him a recalcitrant husband. When dealing with a court like this the first thing you must do is take action to move, but Tziona had no resources and no representation, so the case dragged on for twelve years. It’s simply unfathomable.”

In another case this month, the Center successfully imprisoned a man who had been consistently refusing to release his wife from the bonds of a failed and abusive marriage. What makes the case unusual is the age of the recalcitrant husband; at 82, he is the oldest “sarvan get” in the country. Civil attorney and rabbinical court advocate Batsheva Sherman, the director of the Legal Aid Center, handled the case: “It sounds terrible that we locked up an ailing, elderly man,” she acknowledges. “But we’re talking about an uncommonly cruel person. Forty-four years ago he married 18-year-old Geulah, a woman 20 years his junior – although he lied to her about his real age. Eventually, he left the marital home and had children with another woman, but consistently refused to divorce Geulah according to Jewish law. She is now 62 years old and she deserves a chance at a normal life, even if the best years are behind her. All of these years she spent behind bars – now it’s his turn.”

Tamar Yosef, the Center’s most recent divorcee, understands what it feels like to be abandoned, even while remaining locked in a marriage; her husband, Meherto, disappeared two years ago and was discovered to be living in Ethiopia, the couple’s native country. “When he first left, I felt so empty,” she says, “like a flower pot without a plant, without soil.” Tamar might not have found the necessary strength to raise her two sons, continue social work studies and fight for a long-distance get, had not a friend pointed her in the direction of Yad L’isha. Devorah Brisk, of the Center’s Tel Aviv office, represented Tamar in court and finally, on February 12^{th, the Tel Aviv rabbinate authorized a document signed by Meherto in the presence of witnesses in the lobby of the Addis Ababa Hilton. “I am free,” says Tamar. “I prayed it would happen before Passover, so I could celebrate freedom with all my heart.”}

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