Introduction to Gittin: The Document of Divorce

If someone was told that marriage was a permanent contract with no-way-out, then how could anyone accept such an agreement? Hashem gave us the Torah, and it states the concept of divorce. The Oral Torah goes into detail as to how it is initiated in explicit detail.

Judaism does not lack the concept of divorce, but like any civilized society, it wishes to limit it so that it does not get out of hand. None of the world’s civilized cultures encouraged broken families like those seen in the modern world…

Historically, Jewish men had the option to be polygamous regardless of which kingdom they lived in. If he had a reason not to support one of his wives, then he would be likely to divorce her as he had nothing to lose. This made it easier for him to initiate a religious divorce that would be fully valid and not leave the husband a victim to the system years after…

In the context of ancient society, if found living with his wife to be impossible, then he would divorce her. The sages of blessed memory tried to incentivize not to senselessly divorcing their wives. Historically, marriages happened at earlier ages. Men were getting married before age 16. Some were remarried by age 18. Men have marital duties as well as women. Since there were less reasonable opportunities for women to work, a woman was financially dependent on her husband. Therefore, it would be difficult for a woman to be married to someone who is not willing to support them.

Historically, a man could have more than one woman. King Solomon was the wealthiest king in Israel, and he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. Historically, having additional wives was for the wealthy.Thousands of years later, the Christian Church instituted monogamy. The culture of  monogamy, found in the Christian kingdoms, created an atmosphere which limited the ability to remarry. The Roman Catholic Church frowned upon divorce while using marital annulments as a way to work around the issue by delegitimizing the marriage – claiming it never happened. Of course, in most circumstances under Jewish law, this would lead to the proliferation of bastard-children if the woman had children after this nullification of marriage was to occur.

The Christian Orthodox Church(s) accepted it in a manner closer to Jewish schools of thought. The Eastern Orthodox Church was closer to the practical rulings of Judaism which do not limit it to the concern for immorality (the opinion of Beit Hillel) where there’s more cases where a man can initiate a divorce while the Oriental Orthodox Church is closer to the stricter school of thought which limits it only to the concern for immorality (the opinion of Beit Shammai).

The culture of Islam operated differently as they preserved polygamy for the wealthy and even allowed kings to have concubines. In matters of divorce, a woman would have more options on whom she could marry because of the fact that she wasn’t limited to unmarried men.This is how Jewish society operated in ancient times. To put things into the perspective of modern times, the Muslim world does have a higher divorce rate than the State of Israel which only recognizes monogamy. 

The traditional system is different from the modern-world with secular courts that make it harder for a husband in matters of divorce, and they encourage the wife to steal from the husband through the courts. The modern world also has more opportunities for women which means that they aren’t literally dependent on their husbands. The need to be married is not present in all walks of modern life. Therefore, the incentives behind divorce are much different than in olden times.

While a religious divorce was mostly something generally initiated by men, the general culture changed to make it something initiated by women. This shift in cultural paradigms has a significant impact on the current culture.

The nature of Gerushin is an issue on practical and spiritual levels, and modern society does have serious issues when it comes to the mishandling of divorce which leads to broken families. The best way to understand how to resolve these issues is by seeing how the Traditions of the Jewish people operated in past times.

While in other areas of Jewish law, it seems that Religious Jews are willing to comply with the Mitzvot, yet with matters of גירושין, it seems that there is an incredible volume of ignorance in this topic. Anything pertaining to the nature or validity of a Gett is something that today’s Religious Jews can not seem to handle. In these matters, even Jews who wear a kippah will have opinions that are heretical. In fact, even the most Right-Wing side of Modern-Orthodoxy is consumed with believing in a “Get on demand” without realizing the consequences of such actions. Thus, even many of those, who believe in the sanctity of marriage, don’t believe in the sanctity of divorce…