I read today’s Daily News‘s piece on how difficult it can be for Orthodox Jewish women to get a get, i.e., a religious divorce, from their husbands. Their husbands can hold them indefinitely in marital limbo.
These women may be divorced by our civil standards but not by Orthodox standards, and women without a get can’t get married again in Orthodoxy or if they do it’s considered illegitimate, as are their children from such a marriage.
“By Jewish law,” says the Daily News, “only men have the power to end a religious marriage.”
These women are appropriately called agunot, that is “chained women.”
I’m supposed to feel sorry for them, sorry that they have conceded sovereignty to men they don’t even like anymore.
I’m not sorry for them. They’ve chosen to remain slaves to ancient religious laws. I think they’re nuts. The only intelligent, sane solution is to leave a religious cult that can inflict this kind of torture upon them.
So women: it’s time to leave Orthodox Judaism, maybe at the same time you leave your unwanted Orthodox Jewish husband. If you’re shaking off one set of chains, why not shake off the rest of them?