Notes
Notes Prologue 1. The Yiddish term is agune, pl. agunes. The Hebrew term is aguna, pl. agunot. Aginut is the state of being an agune. Since in this study the texts (apart from Solomon Maimon’s German one) are in Yiddish, I shall use the Yiddish agune throughout. (In some citations, agune appears as agunah.) In Jewish law, only the husband can execute and deliver a divorce, or get, and there are essentially four reasons why a wife may be unable to obtain a Jewish divorce: the husband is mentally ill, thus legally incompetent to grant a divorce; the husband has died but there is no legally valid evidence of his death; a recalcitrant husband refuses to divorce his wife; or the husband abandons her and disappears. If the husband has truly disappeared, the wife can never obtain a Jewish divorce. 2. Myra Jehlen, “Gender,” in Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 265. 3. Richard Johnson, “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” Social Text 16 (Winter 1986–87): 69. 4. See n. 1 for definitions of aginut and agune. 5. See Tania Modleski, “Feminism and the Power of Interpretation,” in Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, ed. Teresa de Lauretis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 130: “In my opinion, the function of feminist criticism is similarly to empower women by the force of its stories and interpretations.” 6. Solomon Maimon, Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte: Von ihm selbst geschrieben , ed. Karl Philipp Moritz and newly edited by Zwi Batscha (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1984), 147. 7. “Gold, zogt men, valgert zikh dort in di gasn.” Sholem Aleykhem, Menakhem-Mendl, in Ale verk fun sholem-aleykhem (1912; reprint, New York: Morgn-Frayhayt Ausgabe, 1937), 218. 163 8. Ibid., 49. 9. Morris D. Waldman, “Family Desertion,” in Proceedings of the Seventh Biennial Session of the National Conference of Jewish Charities in the United States (St. Louis, May 17–19, 1910) (Baltimore: Kohn and Pollock, 1910), 64. 1. Abandoned Wives in Jewish Family Law 1. Khayim Grade, Die agune: Roman (New York: Cyco-Bicher Farlag, 1965), and Chaim Grade, The Agunah, trans. Curt Levant (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974). 2. Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), 2:429. 3. In one text—Solomon Maimon’s Autobiography (Lebensgeschichte)—the deserting husband, when located, becomes a recalcitrant one, thereby offering readers an unanticipated insight into the function of the rabbinical court, or beyt din. 4. Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), 311. 5. In 1968, four decades after Conservative Judaism began its efforts to find a solution to the “plight of the agune,” its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards adopted a proposal for a conditional agreement to the marriage ceremony , giving its rabbis the authority to grant annulments if, after a civil divorce , the husband refused to issue a get. This, of course, applied only to future marriages, but in 1969 its beyt din granted an annulment to a woman who had been an agune for many years, which ended the agune controversy. See Pamela S. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 6–15, for a comprehensive history of Conservative Judaism’s struggle with the problem. It should also be noted that this solution did not apply to abandoned wives whose husbands were not available to issue or refuse to issue a get. 6. The term takana (pl. takanot) is a transliteration from the Hebrew. In citations from other texts, there are different transliterated spellings (for example, sometimes with two k’s or with a final h), but they all refer to a directive, which, after the Talmudic period, signifies “enacted by halakhic scholars or other competent body . . . enjoying the force of law” (Encyclopedia Judaica, 15:713). 7. Moshe Meiselman, Jewish Woman in Jewish Law (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1978), 103–4. 8. Quoted in Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, “The Unfreedom of Jewish Women,” Jewish Spectator 35, no. 7 (October 1970): 4. According to Nadell, “Cohen had refused to allow the Committee on Jewish Law to render decisions that had the potential to affect all of the Jewish People. Thus, even though he led the committee as it wrestled with the plight of the agunah, he was unwilling to support any halachic solution that won the approval of only the Conservative rabbinate” (Conservative Judaism in America, 54). 9. Reuven Yaron, “The Missing Husband in Jewish Law,” M...
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