[00:00:00] Leah Sarna: Welcome to Getting Free. This is episode five. Before we start, just a warning that in this episode we’ll be talking about abuse and domestic violence. Please listen with care.

[sound of bell ringing]

[00:00:17] Ariel: Yes. May I help you?

[00:00:19] Pauley: That depends. Are you Ariel?

[00:00:21] Ariel: Well, that also depends. Are you a bill collector?

[00:00:24] Leah Sarna: How do you force a man to give a gett? You might have heard of one approach from the Sopranos….

[00:00:31] Pauley: We wanna talk to you about your father-in-law.

[00:00:33] Leah Sarna: A Jewish motel owner wants a divorce for his daughter, but his son in law won’t give a gett unless he receives 50% of the business. So Tony Soprano’s guys try to “convince” the husband to change his mind…

[sounds of struggle]

[00:00:51] Pauley: Get up. You stubborn f***

[00:00:52] Ariel: Please!

[00:00:54] Pauley: Too late for pleases you stupid f***. All this because you won’t give the gett to a divorce?

[00:00:57] Ariel: It’s not that simple!

[00:01:00] Pauley: Why not Idiot? Idiot! Sign your f***ing name to a piece of paper.

[00:01:04] Leah Sarna: This isn’t just some TV plot line.  Many years ago, communities DID use violence to convince husbands to hand over a gett. As recently as 2013,  the FBI arrested 10 New York men for kidnapping and beating up gett refusers.

So, for all of the community members who think gett refusal is normal, there are still LOTS of people who think it’s a major problem — and they want to do something about it.

 In general, beating people up to coerce a gett doesn’t really happen anymore. And here at the International Beit Din, we do not support using violence to free women. But what other options do we have? A lot of community members try shame.

[00:01:55] Protestors: Save Rochel, Shame on you! Save Rochel, Shame on you! Save Rochel, Shame on you!  Stop housing a gett refuser in your home. Send your son to Beis Din to sign the gett!

[00:02:06] Leah Sarna: If a husband refuses to show up when he’s summoned by a Beit Din to give a gett, the Beit Din can issue a letter known as a Siruv. It basically says the husband should be shunned and isolated from his religious community until he gives a gett.

[00:02:19] Emily: that doesn’t happen unless this has been going on for a very, very, very long time. Like you can’t get a Siruv after like nine months of separation. It’s got to be a super long time.

[00:02:32] Leah Sarna: This is Emily.

[00:02:33] Emily: Which I think, given the magnitude of what a Siruv is, I think that’s very appropriate

[00:02:40] Leah Sarna: More accurately, this is a voice actor, reading from an interview with a woman who we’ll call Emily

[00:02:45] Emily: Do you want me to stop and start again? okay? Okay.

[00:02:50] Leah Sarna: Emily is still in litigation with her husband. So, we’re hiding her identity to protect her. Emily’s gett process dragged on for years, and eventually, her beit din issued a Siruv against her husband, with the support of all her local rabbis. 

It said that people shouldn’t talk to her husband, employ him, or invite him to social events. He wasn’t even allowed to attend synagogue services. 

[00:03:18] Leah Sarna: And how did it affect you? The public shaming part of it.

[00:03:22] Emily: I mean, I really think that that’s one of the biggest drawbacks of the system as a whole.

[00:03:28] Leah Sarna: Emily wanted her gett, but she also wanted her privacy. Issuing a Siruv meant that the state of her marriage, and details about her life got exposed, to hundreds, if not thousands of people.

[00:03:42] Emily: You don’t want to be on display. You want to maintain some shred of family dignity. And that’s really difficult when there’s a siruv. And I wish there was another way for this to happen other than publicly shaming somebody, that is somebody that you used to love and care about. You know, many, many women are still co-parenting with their ex-husband, and that’s just not something that children should ever have to experience.

[00:04:11] Leah Sarna: But often this shaming is the only tool wives have…

[00:04:15] Emily: So the way the system is set up is a situation where either the ex-husband or the ex-wife has to bear permanent scars. And that just shouldn’t have to happen.

[00:04:30] Leah Sarna: Amit, the Florida mother of six children, also got a siruv when her husband wouldn’t give her a gett.

[00:04:35] Amit: The rabbi in Miami, we had a letter that he issued, which was unheard of. And we managed to get 15 signatures of different rabbis in the South Florida community 

[00:04:45] Leah Sarna: The letter said….until her ex shows up to a hearing, everyone should ostracize him. It didn’t really work…

[00:04:53] Amit: But still the few rabbis that were enabling him, they still didn’t, abide by the letter.

[00:04:58] Leah Sarna:  So, Amit tried another approach…

[00:05:00] Amit: Then I turned to Flatbush girl, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Flatbush girl, Adina Sash.

[00:05:09] Adina Sash: My name is Adina Miles Sash and I also go by the name Flatbush Girl. So feel free to call me Flatbush Girl.

[00:05:17] Leah Sarna: Adina is an Orthodox Jewish activist. And she takes public shaming of husbands to a whole new level.

[00:05:24] Amit: She is famous on Instagram in the sense that she helps Agunah in a very nuclear way. Like it’s like an atomic bomb.

[00:05:37] Leah Sarna: When Adina takes on a woman’s case, she blasts their story, and the story of what their husband did to them, to all of her 90 thousand followers

[00:05:46] Adina Sash at a protest: You owe her hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support based on an arbitration agreement that you signed! Stop hiding from justice! And stop terrorizing innocent women!

[00:06:00] Adina Sash: That’s where I put my most provocative content because the goal is for it to create enough pressure to make some sort of movement.

[00:06:09] Amit: She was like a powerhouse in the sense that like, people would see her as like absolutely insane. But they’re like, okay, like if you’re dealing with gett refusers, you gotta fight fire with fire.

[00:06:22] Leah Sarna: Adina started by trying to negotiate with Amit’s husband. She offered to promote his business and call him a hero on her Instagram account, but he wouldn’t budge. So, when negotiations failed…….

[00:06:36] Amit: All right. Social media. stories after story. And it blew up, blew up. I’m talking about hundreds of comments of. 95% support of me.

[00:06:53] Amit: He was getting, my ex, hundreds of messages from people. The rabbis that were enabling were getting hundreds of messages that they were going absolutely crazy.

[00:07:03] Leah Sarna: Adina’s strategy here was to target not just Amit’s husband but also his enablers. Men who refuse to give a gett are often surrounded by people who can influence them to change their behavior – employers, supporters, or family. 

[00:07:20] Amit: So Adina did this whole public campaign every day. It was like more intense than the previous day. I was getting so many messages, supporting me and saying like, we’re here for you, whatever you need. People that I don’t even know in like the South Florida community. And it definitely felt heartwarming, but at the same time.

[00:07:40] Amit: My family and I, it was almost like we couldn’t handle it ’cause it was so intense, it was so intense. And again, all truths. But it was hard.

[00:07:53] Leah Sarna: This public shaming is hard. Because like with Emily’s case, all of this attention affects the victim too. It can get them their gett, but it also makes them famous for surviving abuse. And in Amit’s case, it didn’t work. Her husband still refused to give her a gett.

[00:08:15] Leah Sarna: So, shaming… It’s the most common solution, but not necessarily the best. At the International Beit Din, we use other strategies.  And we think other Jewish Courts should too…. 

[00:08:32] Leah Sarna: I’m  Rabbanit Leah Sarna, and from the International Beit Din, this is Getting Free. 

[00:09:03] Leah Sarna: So what can we do? Here’s Rabbi Barry Dolinger, the executive director of the International Beit Din

[00:09:09] Rabbi Barry Dolinger: There are a lot of things Jewish courts can do. The first thing they can do is tell the man that he is obligated to give a gett and explain why? Jewish courts infantilize men by playing this game where they assume they’re so evil and wicked that you can’t even have a straight conversation with them.

[00:09:28] Leah Sarna: In that straight conversation, Rabbis and Jewish courts should start by listening

[00:09:34] Rabbi Barry Dolinger: Abusive husbands are also people. they themselves have almost always suffered trauma. and there’s a level of interaction and and listening involved in getting them on board and understanding that it’s not in their own interest to continue to precipitate a cycle of abuse.

[00:09:50] Leah Sarna: After that, Jewish leaders and courts should firmly say, you owe your wife a gett with no conditions

[00:09:58] Rabbi Barry Dolinger: We don’t negotiate with the gett. 

[00:10:02] Leah Sarna: Then, if the husband still says no, they can get creative about putting pressure on him to change his mind.

[00:10:08] Rabbi Barry Dolinger: If you’re a doctor, domestic abuse is bad and someone may report that to your licensing board. If you’re a lawyer, this may be an ethics violation and you should worry about your job. If you’re a pharmacist and you use those drugs to abuse your wife, someone  may report it to the pharmacy licensing board.

[00:10:24] Rabbi Barry Dolinger: And so there’s a combination of carrots: listening, compassion, accountability that are non-patronizing, and a little bit of toughness on behalf of these women, someone to stick up for them, and to say, no, there are points of leverage.

[00:10:39] Leah Sarna: Helen, the engineer,  worked with a lot of rabbis to put this kind of pressure on her husband. One Beit Din figured out a way to fine him for every day he refused to give her a divorce.

[00:10:50] Helen: So he had like over a hundred thousand dollars of like, gett fine. And then he still didn’t give it to me and they said, you have 30 days to give her the gett. And then he still didn’t give it to me.

[00:11:03] Leah Sarna: All the while, her husband was violating restraining orders… and sending her death threats. It was extreme enough to land him in jail.

When he got out on probation, her husband fled to Israel.  But the thing is—-in Israel.. they actually treat gett refusal as a crime.  And a ruling from an American beit din that says a husband owes a gett is enough for the State of Israel to get involved. Helen already had two rulings 

[00:11:38] Helen: And so I used those, rulings to open a case in Israel, and then they locked the borders on him.

[00:11:45] Leah Sarna: He was trapped. And if he didn’t give a gett, he could go to jail. So, Helen worked with an Israeli court, and scheduled a hearing for her gett. She hopped on a plane, and flew to Israel. To everyone’s surprise, her husband actually showed up. But he wasn’t ready to give in. During the hearing, he stalled. He talked and talked….

[00:12:19] Helen: He asked the rabbinical court to like order me back into the marriage and to make an order of reconciliation and he could reconcile with anyone, even a Hamas terrorist, and so of course he would be able to reconcile with me.

[00:12:32] Leah Sarna: And then…the scribe responsible for writing the gett burst into the room.

[00:12:36] Helen: And he’s like, guys, are we gonna do this, gett today or not? Because I have somebody who can give me a lift home and if we’re doing the gett I’ll stay. But if we’re not doing the gett, then I’m gonna go home with this person.

[00:12:49] Leah Sarna: It was the time pressure her husband needed.

[00:12:51] Helen: Then he is like, okay, I need a minute to think about it.

[00:12:55] Leah Sarna: He was enjoying his time standing in front of the rabbis, talking about himself.

[00:13:00] Helen: He wants the stage, he wants the acknowledgement, he wants them to like write him a rabbinical ruling.

[00:13:06] Leah Sarna: So, the court got creative…

[00:13:07] Helen: They’re like, yeah, we’ll write you a ruling. But first give her the gett and then we’ll do all the other stuff. And that was totally I think a bait and switch because one of the other rabbis kind of said like, but they live in California. And then I like saw visibly saw the first rabbi like elbow him and he was like, well, we’ll discuss if we have jurisdiction of the case or not. You can submit briefs.

[00:13:32] Leah Sarna: And that’s all it took.

[00:13:33] Helen:So then he’s like, okay, I’ll give her the gett.

[00:13:37] Leah Sarna: Finally! But first, she had to wait 45 minutes for the scribe to write it.

[00:13:43] Helen: So my attorney is like, you sit in the corner, do not say anything, anything. Don’t talk to anybody.

[00:13:50] Leah Sarna: When the gett was ready, Helen didn’t know what to do.

[00:13:54] Helen: Nobody prepared me for the fact that there was like this ceremonial aspect to the gett because nobody thought he was going to give me a gett.

[00:14:01] Leah Sarna: But there she was, standing in front of her husband.

[00:14:05] Helen: He’s actually very close to me for the ceremony. So that was terrifying because he has to like get close enough to you to like hand you this piece of paper.

[00:14:12] Leah Sarna: She was so scared, she botched the hand off of the gett.

[00:14:15] Helen: You’re supposed to like have your hands open and then you’re supposed to like close one hand on top. I don’t remember exactly, but like there’s a thing about when your hands are open and when you close it and how you close your hands on it. But I was like so nervous and so scared being like near this person that I messed up the gett and then we had to do it over again. And then he was like laughing at me that I had messed it up. But I dunno. I made it through. I got my gett!

[00:14:51] Leah Sarna: But what if a husband doesn’t flee to Israel, or even the most creative rabbis can’t figure out a way to pin him down for a gett? In those cases, we go to plan B—

[00:15:02] Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig: If the husband is being recalcitrant, if he’s being very, very obtuse you know, et cetera, et cetera, then the beit din may have another avenue, which is the nullification of the marriage,

[00:15:14] Leah Sarna: That’s Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig, one of our Jewish law experts. There are a few different terms we use for this nullification – –we often call it the “halakhic dissolution of marriage” or, simply a “heter” – permission for a woman to remarry even though she does not have a gett. It works in a very specific way: 

[00:15:35] Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig: We’re looking for a situation where the woman would say, if I’d have known this, I would never have gotten married.

[00:15:41] Leah Sarna: Maybe the husband lied about his past, or hid a mental illness. Whatever the deception is, Esther Macner, the agunah advocate, says the concept is really pretty simple:

[00:15:52] Esther Macner: if you have made an agreement to buy oranges and you get rotten tomatoes, well that agreement wasn’t valid.

[00:16:02] Leah Sarna: That’s what happened to Melissa. When she met her husband, he said he skipped his mandatory service in the Israeli Army because his family was having financial problems.

[00:16:14] Melissa: I didn’t wanna judge him based on his circumstances, and I thought he was doing it for a good reason that he really wanted to help his family, which I thought was admirable.

[00:16:21] Leah Sarna: But, after they separated, she took a closer look at his official release papers

[00:16:26] Melissa: And it just says like. He’s exempt from army duty because of ee-hat’ama. Like he’s not suitable for it. Then there was another paper that went along with it. I saw words like, wait, what is this? I saw like gneva, and like theft? And wait, what does that say? 

[00:16:42] Leah Sarna: Her parents showed the paperwork to some Israelis who had served in the military…

[00:16:45] Melissa: And they said like, oh my God, he’s a really bad guy. 

[00:16:48] Leah Sarna: He had been arrested something like 10 times…

[00:16:52] Melissa: They were all like serious crimes. many of them violent. There was like aggravated assault. There was, larceny. There was threatening and harassing a cop. I was like, oh my God, who is this person who’s the father of my children and I have to deal with for my whole life? Like I knew he was verbally and emotionally abusive, whatever, but now he’s also a criminal.

[00:17:16] Leah Sarna: Her family said, this might be enough evidence to get her marriage nullified – to get her a heter.

[00:17:22] Melissa: Which I had never heard of. I mean, I’d never heard of a Jewish annulment, a halachic annulment. 

[00:17:28] Leah Sarna: So, her Rabbi suggested talking to the International Beit Din…

[00:17:32] Melissa: He connected me with Rabbi Dollinger and then we set up a Zoom call and they explained everything to me.

[00:17:39] Leah Sarna: Once Melissa decided that she wanted to try this route, they set up a hearing. Since the International Beit Din takes cases from all around the world, our court meets virtually. 

[00:17:49] Melissa: All of the rabbis were very nice, and they just asked me questions about the marriage and everything. 

[00:17:58] Leah Sarna: Melissa didn’t necessarily know going in, but after nearly every hearing of our beit din, the judges and staff do further research. Sometimes we speak to family and friends, sometimes we look into police records, sometimes we even hire a private investigator. In Melissa’s case, we asked her for names of her husband’s friends and family members. We found that many of them… 

[00:18:21] Melissa: Were all apparently part of some, organized, crime ring. Like they, they did organized crime for profit. 

[00:18:32] Leah Sarna: This was not what she signed up for when she got married— Melissa got rotten tomatoes instead of her oranges.

[00:18:39] Melissa: I mean, this was like a clear-cut case.

[00:18:44] Leah Sarna: A little later, Melissa heard from Rabbi Dolinger.

[00:18:47] Melissa: He called me up at like 11 o’clock at night and he is like, I have good news.

[00:18:51] Leah Sarna: The International Beit Din had made a ruling. They would give her a heter. 

[00:18:56] Melissa: And I’m free to remarry as soon as I have the civil divorce, because it’s as if my marriage never happened. ’cause it wasn’t a halachic marriage.

[00:19:06] Leah Sarna: Melissa was free. Just like that. This is a technique that other courts can use as well, and historically they did. Here’s Esther Macner again…

[00:19:19] Esther Macner: This is not hocus pocus. This is based on rabbis who are scholars and, and God fearing Jews.

[00:19:28] Leah Sarna: Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who even Wikipedia knows as  “the most famous Orthodox Jewish legal authority of the 20th century,” published rulings like these in his main Jewish legal work, the Iggrot Moshe. 

Still, a lot of other Jewish courts don’t use this option. There’s a sense that it’s too extreme. But behind the scenes…

[00:19:51] Rabbi Barry Dolinger: We almost always are able to gain quiet acceptance for our decisions amongst senior rabbis and people that matter in order to help people remarry. So the opposition is a little bit louder in controversy than it is in reality.

[00:20:03] Leah Sarna: Here’s how Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig explains it…

[00:20:06] Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig: If I come and I say we should nullify a marriage, people will say, you can’t just nullify marriages, you have to do it in an organized fashion or else, you know, the sanctity of marriage is in danger. And they’re not wrong. It’s just that the sanctity of marriage is in danger also, if we don’t nullify the marriage. Meaning there’s a woman suffering here and her suffering is affecting not only her marriage, but everybody who, who hears her story says, you know, this is terrible, and how can Judaism allow this to go on?

[00:20:36] Leah Sarna: And why would anyone want to protect a marriage that caused so much suffering? Where is the sanctity in that?

[00:20:44] Rabbi Barry Dolinger: These flaws and dysfunctions and suffering are not light. And they’ve resulted in the death of multiple clients of ours, either by the hands of their husbands or through suicide. And so this is a life threatening risk, not on the periphery, but at its core.

[00:21:04] Leah Sarna: This gets at a larger truth about our mission at the International Beit Din. We help women escape terrible marriages, not so they can be single again, but so they can heal, from years and years of abuse.

[00:21:18] Rabbi Barry Dolinger: The problem is not the inability to remarry, the problem is the removal of autonomy and agency, of being a whole person, – which was built up throughout the marriage.

[00:21:28] Leah Sarna: If helping women get married again was the only goal, then giving in to extortion would make sense. It’s the quickest way to get a gett. But that’s not what we’re here to do.  We’re here to give women back their dignity.

[00:21:43] Rabbi Barry Dolinger: We had a client who, when she was finally received her gett said, I’m returning to work after 10 years. I was an accountant. I was in a major firm, but because of the abuse I had to stop. But now with this gett, I’m ready to resume working again. And my old firm agreed to take me back. That’s what we’re looking for.

[00:22:01] Leah Sarna: Actual freedom means truly letting go, of a relationship that stripped you of your identity and your power. So, perhaps that’s why Melissa had a strange reaction when she got her heter.

[00:22:16] Melissa: I didn’t actually feel free.

[00:22:18] Leah Sarna: Her civil divorce was still unfinished. And she felt pressure from her community to keep trying for her gett.

[00:22:24] Melissa: I was trying to do the thing that people were telling me was the better thing to do.

[00:22:30] Leah Sarna: But her husband wouldn’t budge. And even with her heter, it felt like she was right back where she started. 

Melissa struggled to get other Batei Din to help her. One rabbi told her to give into her husband’s extortion. Another said her husband was ready to give her a gett, so they scheduled a meeting…that got canceled.

[00:22:51] Melissa: And I learned, apparently, there was never a meeting. He never told them that he was going to go to it. They just lied. I think they thought that they could get him to come, but they made all of this up. They were like trying to be strategic, I guess,

[00:23:04] Leah Sarna: So finally, Melissa was just done.

[00:23:09] Melissa: So I texted, my rabbi and told him I decided to let it go. That was it. I let it go and I feel so much better. And now I’m free.  I could have been free for a long time already, but I kept on getting sucked back into it against my own will and I was trying to be like a nice, respectful member of the community.  And It was all at my own expense.

[00:23:33] Leah Sarna: And then a funny thing happened… five months after our interview, she got her gett

Melissa was moving on with her life. She didn’t need her ex-husband’s permission to remarry. So, the gett lost its value to him.. And he was still being pressured by their local rabbi to give it, so  he just did .

[00:23:55] Rabbi Barry Dolinger: It’s like our nuclear weapon. We will free women. So men just give in.

[00:24:00] Leah Sarna: He couldn’t use it to control her anymore. That’s what we mean by getting free. 

[00:24:08] Leah Sarna: Getting free means something different to everybody.

[00:24:12] Leah Sarna: Alla, the lawyer from the Soviet Union, got a heter from the International Beit Din.  And that was enough for her. 

[00:24:19] Leah Sarna:After Amit’s social media campaign failed, she went to the International Beit Din, and also got a heter.  But for the community she lives in, it’s not enough. She doesn’t feel free. So, Amit is still waiting for a gett. And we’re still helping her. 

[00:24:38] Leah Sarna: Julia, the woman whose husband spied on her with a hidden camera, waited for years… then someone told her-

[00:24:45] Julia: There’s this Jewish women’s organization that I belong to that I think may be able to give you some advice. and I said, sure, I’d be happy to, I’d be happy to contact them.

[00:24:58] Leah Sarna: That organization would send Julia to us. She called the International Beit Din, and spoke with Rabbi Dolinger.

[00:25:05] Julia: He just was so compassionate and so caring, and after speaking with me for a while, He said, would you be willing to go in front of the beit din? And I said, yes. He said, I wanna tell you. He said, you’re not gonna be alone. We’re gonna give you a female social worker. She’s gonna be with you every step of the way. And she was. And, and that’s what I did.

[00:25:32] Leah Sarna: Julia got on a Zoom call with the Beit Din and talked to them for about an hour and a half about her husband and their marriage.

[00:25:39] Julia: Even though they looked incredibly rabbi ish.They were also very soft in their tone and very easy to speak with. And I didn’t feel like I was being judged at all.

[00:25:54] Leah Sarna: She told them about her relationship and how she left. About the cameras, the threatening messages he sent her, the fear she felt. Everything.  When the hearing was done…

[00:26:05]  Julia: I closed my laptop. Went and sat on my couch with my cat on my lap and just sat there. ’cause it was a lot, it was a lot.

That afternoon, I got a call saying, you have grounds you’re able to get married again. You were, for lack of better terms, sold a cow and got a wolf. 

[00:26:38] Leah Sarna: Later, she got the official documentation in the mail.

[00:26:43] Julia: And I actually took the letter to one of my other patients who’s a Torah scholar. And he said to me, he said to me, I wanna read that. And he looked at me and said, yeah, this is legit. And then I brought it to my son. He said, yeah, this is legit.

[00:27:01] Leah Sarna: That’s when she started her healing process.

[00:27:05] Julia: It’s been a long process. I won’t say that it’s even a hundred percent done now.

[00:27:14] Leah Sarna: She still feels embarrassed sometimes that she married a man who would treat her this way.

[00:27:19] Julia: He never apologized to me once in the entire time we were together for anything. I was constantly apologizing. I knew that if I stayed any longer, I would have to become who he wanted me to become in order to be safe, but it wasn’t a true safety.. I knew if I erased any more of me, there would be no going back to me. It would be too late.

[00:27:49] Leah Sarna: But she had the strength to leave. And her heter made it final…

[00:27:54] Julia: I’d just become so small and I, and I’m not small anymore. And that’s what it did for me. I’m not small anymore.

[00:28:14] Leah Sarna: It’s been more than two years since Julia became free. Now, she’s settled into a pleasant routine. She goes to work as a rehab specialist a few days a week, and spends time with her family…

[00:28:25] Julia: I do things that every other happy woman does. It’s not an exceptional life, but it’s a good life.

[00:28:39] Leah Sarna: The other day, she was talking to one of her granddaughters, ….

[00:28:42]  Julia: Who’s a teenager, by the way. We were talking about different careers, and she said to me, oh, I’d never wanna do what you do. And I said, why? Because you’re with old people all day, and I don’t like being with old people. And I said, well, I’m an old people. She said, yeah, but you are different. You’re normal. So I guess my day is just normal.

[00:29:12] Leah Sarna: Sometimes getting free is just that— getting back to normal.

[00:29:27] Leah Sarna: Throughout this show, we’ve brought you along for the stories of women who came to us for help. But how do you turn these stories into action? What can you do to help? That’s next, on the final episode of Getting Free.

[00:30:00] Leah Sarna : You’ve been listening to Getting Free, a podcast from the International Beit Din

If you or someone you know is being denied a gett or facing extortion in the Jewish divorce process, reach out to the International Beit Din for Help. To learn more go to internationalbeitdin.org/gettingfree. 

This episode was produced by Megan Hall and Nat Hardy

With sound design and mixing by Nat Hardy

Voice acting in this episode by Miriam Anzovin

Our theme song is  “Yehei Rava” by Yoni Stokar

Additional music in this episode by BlueDot Sessions

This podcast is generously supported by Micah Philanthropies and trustees Ann and Jeremy Pava, as well as the Meyer G and Ellen Goodstein Koplow Foundation

I’m  Rabbanit Leah Sarna. You can listen to our final episode right now.