Laws of Personal Status

Submitted by Fred Schlomka (Israel), Oct 21, 2007 at 09:58

Here in Israel of course one can only get a divorce from a religious court, either Jewish, Muslim or Christian. There is no civil divorce - period. The Israeli government has ceded many functions to the religious courts.

Rabbinical courts even have the power to jail people. It's rather bizarre. For instance under Jewish law only a man may grant a divorce to his wife. However in cases where a man abuses his wife for instance, and refuses to grant her a divorce, a rabbinical judge, sympathetic to the woman, may imprison the man until he agrees to the divorce.

Other strange religious laws allow our religious police to monitor grocery stores during Passover and give tickets and fines to any Jewish shop that sells leavened bread. It's a slippery slope . . .

In the US of course, a civil divorce between orthodox Jews is not recognized by the rabbinical authorities unless the couple first obtains a rabbinically sanctioned Jewish divorce known as a 'Get'. Jews cannot remarry in the USA under Orthodox law until this is done.

Other religions in the USA similarly do not recognize a civil divorce, Catholics and Mormons for instance, thus creating bodies of religious law that people must adhere to if they want to stay part of their religion. However in Israel it is mandated by the government that everyone must declare a religion and subject themselves to religious law. Those that disagree often leave the country to be married. There's actually a booming business in wedding parlors in nearby Cyprus. In a quirk of the law, our government does recognize any marriage carried out under the lawful authority of another country.

So it's all well and good to criticize Sharia, but the Muslims are not much different in matters of personal status than other orthodox and conservative religions.

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