I know these people personally:
Susan Rosenfeld's marriage wasn't what you'd call romantic. She was thrown up against a wall, doused with a bucket of cold water in bed, and, toward the end, became her husband's punching bag. "Since I wear long sleeves, no one really knew," she says. Looking back, Ms. Rosenfeld regrets keeping the abuse a secret. But "in the Jewish community, you don't call the police on your husband."In her mid-30s, Ms. Rosenfeld hopes to remarry and build a new life for herself. But as an Orthodox Jew, a civil divorce is not sufficient. For Ms. Rosenfeld to be officially released from her vows, her husband has to grant her a Jewish bill of divorce, called a get. The document, which certifies the termination of the marriage--the Aramaic text declares "you are hereby permitted to marry any man"--not only allows women to remarry, but ensures that future children will not be deemed mamzerim (bastards able to marry only other mamzerim).
Two years have passed and Ariel HaCohen, Ms. Rosenfeld's husband, has refused to grant her the get. This makes Ms. Rosenfeld an aguna--literally, an anchored woman--trapped in a dead marriage.
Read the whole thing. And get angry. Really angry. Ariel (and I want to word this carefully) is behaving like a jackass. There are no children. There are no assets to which he's entitled. They've been separated for years.
I would venture that 90% of the rabbis in America want a smoothly functioning solution to this problem. But in a system that works by consensus, progress comes at the pace of the most reluctant. Remember, if a significant minority of rabbis don't accept the validity of the divorce, and if those rabbis' opinions carry weight in the orthodox world, then having such a divorce could end up being as useless as not having a divorce at all.
Sometimes the law is impotent, even American law is impotent. But in a system that had to essentially abandon legislative activity 1900 years ago, there ought to be room for some sort of judicial innovation.
