30 FAMILY ADVOCATE www.shopaba.org
the date and location, and stating that the husband is hereby
divorcing his wife and freeing her to marry another man.
However, many of the laws surrounding the text are relatively
complex. e get needs to be specically authorized by the
husband and written by a qualied scribe. e names of the
parties must be spelled with painstaking exactitude, including
English names and nicknames that are subject to special rules
of Hebrew transliteration. Any mistake in the writing of the
names, location, or date, or any of the other verbiage of the
standard text of the get, could lead to the invalidity of the get.
Since the laws of commissioning, writing, and delivering a
get require special expertise, a qualied Beth Din (rabbinical
court) is typically needed to oversee the get process. e Beth
Din of the Chicago Rabbinical Council ociates between
fty and one hundred get cases a year, spanning all Jewish
denominational groups, including unaliated Jews.
e Chief Rabbinate of Israel publishes a registry of
recognized rabbinical courts for get cases, which includes the
Chicago Rabbinical Council and various other rabbinical
courts throughout North America. Performing a get through
a recognized rabbinical court ensures worldwide acceptance
of the validity of the get and the permission for the parties to
remarry according to Jewish law.
If a Jewish woman remarries without a get, her relation-
ship is viewed as adulterous according to Biblical law. Any
What Is Jewish Divorce?
When a divorcing couple is Jewish, a legal professional
representing either of the parties should be cognizant of
various issues that may be particular to Jewish divorce and
important to the future well-being of the divorcing spouses.
In my work as the Chief Rabbinical Judge of the Beth Din of
the Chicago Rabbinical Council, which is a rabbinical court
of arbitration and mediation guided by principles of Torah
(Jewish law and tradition), I help Jewish couples fulll their
religious needs within the framework of their civil divorce
proceedings. Having previously served as a Wall Street
attorney, I have an appreciation for both intersecting worlds.
According to Biblical law (Deuteronomy 24:1-4),
whenever a Jewish couple divorces, the husband must
commission the writing of a Jewish bill of divorce, known in
the Talmudic literature as a “get,” and deliver it, either
personally or through an agent, into his wife’s hands in the
presence of two valid witnesses, in order to eectuate a
Jewish divorce. Even if a couple has obtained a civil divorce
according to the law of the land in which they live, they are
not considered divorced according to Jewish law until a get
has been given by the husband to the wife.
e get is a twelve-line document written in special
Hebrew calligraphy and signed by two qualied witnesses.
e main text of the get is relatively straightforward, referencing
Issues in Jewish Divorce
By RABBI YONA REISS
Published in Family Advocate, Volume 42, Number 2, Fall 2019. © 2019 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof
may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
