“Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem”

The Israeli feature film “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” released in 2014 created a quiet storm of outrage over the men-only Jewish religious divorce law. “Gett” was made by sister-brother writers-directors Ronit and ShlomiElkabetz, and starredRonit, one of Israel’s leading actors. Israel’s 2015 Oscar entry for best foreign-language film, “Gett” was screened in the U.S. to rave reviews and horrified audiences. Among the Jews in Israel, a religious divorce in a rabbinical court (beit din) is the only one divorce available, and women are powerless to sue for divorce as civil divorce does not exist. The film however riled up Israelis to the point of pressuring the annual conference of Israel’s rabbinical judges to view the film in a private screening and quite expectedly the legal advisor to the rabbinic courts, refused to admit that the film — that depicts in agonizing detail the last two years of Viviane Amsalem’s five-year struggle to get her husband to give her a gett — a Jewish divorce

decree — in no way reflected what happens in the real-life courts.Advocating for change, filmmaker ShlomiElkabetz wanted DVDs of “Gett” distributed to Orthodox women, and he perceived the implementation of civil divorce as the answer to Israeli women’s powerless condition.If a Jewish husband refuses to divorce, or if he disappearsin war or otherwise, the wife becomes an “agunah,” i.ea woman “chained,” forever unable to remarry. This is true for Jewish divorces outside Israel too but elsewhere, civil marriage and divorce follow the law of that particular land. Even when a husband agrees to the divorce, his agreement may be based on the extortion of concessions from his wife. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, professor of law at Bar-Ilan University and director of the university’s Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women, however argued that the ‘inferior-status’ of women in Israeili society cannot go away with the release of a film as the mentality of discrimination  is deep-seated.This national mentality, embedded in marriage and divorce law, makes it possible to set women’s rights aside as less important than issues of national security.Incidentally, Israel is the only Western country receiving a grade of zero on the “Freedom of Marriage World Map” published by the Israeli nonprofit Hiddush. With no civil or interfaith marriage or civil divorce, Israel’s score of zero puts it in the company of Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Congo-Kinshasa, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.The institution holding out fresh hope is the International Beit Din (IBD), headed by highly respected Orthodox rabbi Simcha Krauss in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York City. The independent IBD, which heard its first case in August 2014, is dedicated to finding acceptable ways to free these ‘chained’ women.