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98 f o u r The Accidental Agunah Every woman, every person, is entitled to write the story of their life as he or she wishes and in accordance with their choice— as long as he or she does not trespass into the domain of others— and this is the autonomy of free will. If a person is compelled to follow a path that he or she did not choose, the autonomy of free will is infringed. Indeed, it is our fate, human fate, that we constantly act and refrain from acting not of our free will, and in this way autonomy of our will is found lacking. But when autonomy of free will is profoundly infringed, the law will intervene and speak Jerusalem Family Court judge Ben-Zion Greenberger Friendly, feisty, and quick to laugh, our “accidental” agunah gently rejects our suggested pseudonym. “It’s too plain,” she grimaces from the confines of her orange swivel chair in her Holon office. With amused defiance, she announces that she wants to choose a name for herself. We are pleasantly surprised. “The glory of a king’s daughter is [her] inwardness” wrote the psalmist (45:14) — according to one interpretation of the Hebrew verse—and ultra-Orthodox women are encouraged to be reticent and subservient, but this one seems to be neither. And though she wears a brown shoulder-length wig in keeping with the customs of her haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community, it has blond streaks in it, and she has a mischievous glint in her eye. A pharmacist who supervises a state-subsidized pharmacy near the home where she lives with her only son, she has had much taken away from her over the years, and we are not about to take away her choice Judge Greenberger (S. v. S., 2001), applying to get refusal a quote from Mishael Cheshin in Taib v. State of Israel, 2000. T h e A c c i d e n ta l A g u n a h 99 of a name, even a phony one, so we instantly agree to her request. She proposes Tikvah, or “hope” in Hebrew. It is an ironic choice, and it’s both apt and inapt at the same time. On the one hand, Tikvah is indeed full of hope and promise, and she is eager to cooperate with us. She is currently working on her second degree, and when we suggest the possibility of her doing a doctorate, she smiles, suggesting that it is not out of the question. On the other hand, while thirty-nine-year-old Tikvah has at least half of her life ahead of her, in the society to which she belongs, we observe, she is considered old and without much hope for the future. Sadly and reluctantly, she agrees with this harsh assessment. The mother of only one son and separated from but “anchored” to the man she accidentally married, she does not anticipate that she will be able to have more children, or even attract a youthful second husband and experience a loving marital relationship. And she isn’t interested in “becoming a nurse-maid” to an older man. She explains, “In the haredi community, single men my age want women in their twenties who can have a dozen children. The men who would want me are old, fat, bald, and sick.” So Tikvah is resigned to concentrating her domestic energies on her son Yair, now thirteen years old, who, she hopes, will have a happy marriage and many children of his own. “There were years that I dreamed of having more kids, but it’s not my fate,” she laments. “My son doesn’t even bother to ask me for brothers and sisters anymore. He understands what happened.” What happened is fairly simple. Tikvah cannot marry and have more children , or even go out for coffee with a man, because she does not have a get. Her husband, Ze’ev, a man with whom she lived for just three months, has refused to give her a divorce for the last fourteen years. She believes she will die his wife or his widow. After all, Ze’ev has said more than once, she recalls, that he will withhold the get “forever.” Rabbinic judges have told Ze’ev it would be a mitzvah for him to give Tikvah a get, but they have refused to order or compel him to do so, although they have the power to put him in...

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