Nearly every telling of the Hanukkah story describes a different breaking point which triggers the Maccabean revolt. In the Scholion of Megillat Taanit it is the attempted rape of Mattityahu’s daughter at the hands of Greek soldiers. In this telling, the war and the miracles of Hanukkah all transpired in order to protect a Jewish woman. This year, as we celebrate Hanukkah, we are again called to take protective action for Jewish women.
While the Greeks attacked Jewish women in the very beginnings of their marriages, today Jewish women are often most vulnerable at the end, as husbands use gitin as leverage to extort their wives and demand money and privileges that they have no rights to.
Because a woman is not free to remarry unless her husband gives her a gett, it can appear as if he has all of the power in divorce, and that nothing prevents him from extorting her in return for the gett. Many assume the Torah has granted husbands this right. However, nothing could be further from the truth, as halacha makes clear that women must be protected in both marriage and divorce.
Waiving the Ketubah
The ketubah ensures that when a marriage ends, whether by the death of the husband or by divorce, the wife receives a lump sum of money. It was instituted in large part so that a woman would be provided for in the case of divorce. If a husband did indeed have the power to extort his wife and demand she forgo her ketubah to receive her gett, this would undermine the purpose of the ketubah. Perhaps for this reason, it was already made clear from the time of Geonim that a husband was prohibited to do this, as the following responsa unambiguously states:
A man who marries a woman and does not want to divorce her until she waives the ketubah or gives up the right to some of her possessions should be whipped and beaten until he divorces her and gives her the ketubah, and so should be the halacha.1
Furthermore, as noted by Rav Zalman Nechemia Goldberg ztz”l, perhaps the leading contemporary expert on matters of divorce, if husbands had the power to demand that their wives give up their ketubah to receive the gett, this would run counter to the straightforward meaning of several Talmudic sugyot (passages).2
Can the husband place other conditions on the giving of the gett?
What, then, regarding other demands the husband might make in exchange for the gett? According to most rishonim, a husband cannot place conditions on the giving of the gett, financial or otherwise, if halacha mandates that he give the gett.3 This would include cases of abuse but also situations where a husband and wife have not lived together for an extended period of time.4 The most prominent example of this approach can be found in a teshuvah (responsa) of the Rashbash (1400-1467), which states that a husband is categorically forbidden to do such a thing. He writes, “By what right can the husband place a condition on it? Let the judgment uproot the mountain!”5 A husband must not be allowed to play games and manipulate halacha to his advantage. Rather, he is required to submit to its dictates.
One finds a similar sentiment in the words of contemporary authorities like Rabbi Eliyahu Henkin and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the leading poskim of America in the 20th century, who both ruled that gett extortion is forbidden. In particular, Rabbi Henkin’s words are worth quoting at length:
If a husband separated from his wife and no longer desires her, and so too if he is unable to feed her and support her financially, and she demands from him a gett, in this case, the divorce is a mitzvah and a Torah obligation . . .One who holds back the gett because they demand money they are not entitled to is a thief, and even worse than this, it is like murder . . . In this generation and in this country, withholding the gett causes sexual transgressions, God forbid. If there are outstanding financial claims between them, they must be decided . . .One who refuses to [give the gett] out of revenge or for financial gain is a thief and desecrates God’s name.6
Rabbi Henkin lays out several key principles in this passage. First, he makes clear that in circumstances where there is no hope for the marriage to continue, the husband must give the gett. Any attempt to extort his wife for money in return for the gett is theft, plain and simple. He even goes so far as to compare it to murder because, as the Talmud states, “When one steals from another person even the value of a perutah, it is as if they have taken their soul from them.”7 He also acknowledges that withholding the gett often leads to sexual transgressions on both sides, for the longer they remain trapped in the marriage, the more likely they are to stray. Lastly, he states explicitly that using the gett as leverage for extortion or withholding it out of revenge is a chilul hashem, a desecration of God’s name. This chilul hashem is only compounded when the husband can take advantage of the fact that many batei din lack the means to address contentious divorce cases. Not only is he able to use the halacha as a weapon against his wife, but he does so in a way that highlights the powerlessness of the beit din system, making a mockery of halacha.
That said, there is a minority opinion among the achronim that seems to open the door to gett extortion. In a teshuvah of Rabbi Shmuel de Medina (1505-1589), better known as Maharshadam, he raises the possibility that even if a husband is obligated to give his wife a gett, he would still be permitted to place a condition on it as long as it is easy for his wife to fulfill. He appears to hold that rather than coerce the husband to give the gett, as halacha would technically permit in such a case, it is preferable that the husband give the gett willingly, even if he requires his wife to do something for him in return. Though the Mahashadam is a minority opinion, it is frequently invoked by husbands and even rabbis to justify gett extortion.8 Even in situations where he has agreed to divorce her, a husband will still extort his wife and refuse to give her the gett unless she gives in to his demands, which may include forgoing a large portion of the assets and spousal support she is entitled to, along with custody. Gett extortion can often occur even after the civil divorce is complete and all financial matters have been settled. Because they cannot legally be reopened, the husband will invent claims that do not fall under the divorce decree or settlement, such as demanding that his wife return half the costs of their wedding since the marriage has come to an end.
Gett extortion not only violates the spirit of halacha, which is intended to protect women, but ignores the fact that many later authorities have rejected the Maharshadam’s position or severely limited its application. Rabbi Shlomo Daichovsky, one of Israel’s most experienced and expert dayanim in matters of divorce, writes the following:
The use of the Maharshadam to prevent a gett from being coerced if the husband has placed specific conditions on giving it is something that has only emerged in recent years. I have been young and now old, and in all the years I sat on the regional rabbinic court and in the twenty years I sat on the supreme rabbinic court… all the great rabbinic judges did not agree to follow this opinion. When it came to a situation where the gett was to be coerced, they did not take into consideration any conditions the gett refuser may have made. Certainly, the reason for this is that they did not see it appropriate to rely on this opinion.9
This position is also affirmed by Rabbi Uriel Lavi, the head of the rabbinical court of Jerusalem, in an extensive analysis, where he shows that the overwhelming majority of rishonim and achronim reject the possibility that a husband, who is obligated to divorce his wife, can place conditions on the giving of the gett.10
Overturning decisions made under duress
In truth, even those who claim a husband can place conditions on the gett often don’t realize that the wife can potentially recover money extorted in such a manner even after receiving her gett. The Talmud describes a case of a woman whose husband died without children, thereby requiring her to do either yibum or chalitzah with the man’s brother. However, the widow now has a problem. The brother desired to marry her through yibum but she did not agree and preferred chalitzah. The Talmud rules that in such circumstances, she can persuade the brother to do chalitzah by telling him she will pay him 200 dinars in return, and after the ceremony is done, she can claim “I was fooling you,” to exempt herself from paying.11
Why would she be able to deceive him in this fashion? As long as she has good reason not to want to marry the brother, it is considered as if she has no other choice in the situation. Without chalitzah, she is trapped and unable to marry anyone else. Though she had agreed to compensate him for chalitzah, halacha considers this offer to be made under duress and, therefore, is null and void.12 In part, based on this precedent, the Or Gadol, also known as the Gadol of Minsk (1835-1896), rules that gett extortion would also be considered a case of duress (ones). If a husband is obligated to give the gett and can be coerced to do so but demands his wife waive her ketubah and give him certain possessions in return for the gett, she can go to beit din afterward and reclaim them after the gett has been given.13
Gett extortion and coercive control
It is critical to understand that most often, gett extortion occurs in the divorce when there has been a history of domestic abuse, also known as coercive control, during the marriage. Because husbands feel their control slipping away, they will do everything in their power to impose their will on their wives and make the divorce as painful as possible. Since batei din rarely show an interest in the fact that abuse may have taken place during the marriage, they don’t recognize that they are often facilitating additional abuse by encouraging the wife to give in to her husband’s demands. In these situations, they might claim they are following the position of the Maharshadam, but they fail to note that even his approach only permits the husband to place conditions on receiving the gett so long as conditions are “easy to fulfill.”
Rabbi Yosef Goldberg, an experienced Israeli dayan, is careful to point out that it may be physically possible for a woman to agree to a husband’s demands in many cases, but that does not automatically make them “easy to fulfill.” If they “go against her nature” and place undue psychological stress upon her, they would not be permitted at all by the approach of the Maharshadam.14 For this reason, if there has been a history of coercive control during the marriage, any demands he makes about the gett should not be considered “easy to fulfill.” Their primary purpose is not simply to benefit him but to cause his wife further suffering and ensure she remains subject to his domination. In fact, Rabbi Shlomo Daichovsky notes how dangerous this can be. In a particularly egregious case that came before the Israeli supreme rabbinical court, a husband had abused his son but demanded his wife grant him full custody as a condition of her receiving the gett. A lower beit din had agreed to this, but Rabbi Daichovsky reversed their decision, saying it was prohibited for them to rule in such a fashion.15 By doing so, they were enabling the husband’s extortion and endangering the child by placing him with his abuser. Rabbi Daichovsky makes clear that the husband cannot make demands related to third parties, such as custody demands. He also can’t demand that spousal support be reduced because it will result in harm to his children, to whom he has an obligation.
Part of what makes gett extortion so reprehensible, especially in cases where abuse has been documented during the marriage, is that the husband has already sinned once by abusing her. Now, he wants to take advantage of that sin by demanding money or other benefits from his wife in return for giving the gett. This kind of behavior violates a fundamental halachic principle expressed in the story of King Achab and Navot, where, after failing to convince Navot to sell his family lands, King Achab and his wife conspire to frame him for a crime that will lead to his execution, allowing them to take his lands. After doing this, God tells the prophet Eliyahu to confront the king and say, “You killed, and now you inherit?!”16 In other words, the king not only sinned by killing Navot but then compounded that sin by using his power to inherit his possessions. To our great sorrow, gett extortion often functions similarly, and in doing so, it desecrates the institution of Jewish marriage.