28 May
Beshert, Latest

Beshert | A Face in the Crowd Led Me Home

At 26, I was coming off a traumatic divorce that led me to distrust everything I knew to be true in this world. Desperate to figure out who I was and what I could believe in, I jumped when a friend invited me to go to a huge protest in Washington, DC, the 1979 No Nukes rally. I thought, now there’s something I could believe: Nuclear war = Bad. Start with the simple things, right? Tikkun olam. This wasn’t the sort of thing I used to do. Although I was kind of a hippie, I was also shy and not one to make big statements. Plus, I don’t like crowds—or Port-o-Potties. But milling among 125,000 souls like-minded on nuclear energy, energized me. As the crowd chanted, “Hell no, we won’t glow,” and “Two, four, six, eight,...

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21 Nov
In the News, Latest, Uncategorized

“An Uneasy Union” Update: Couple to Marry Thanks to Rabbinate’s Change of Heart

Photo and story by Eetta Prince-Gibson. Our November/December cover story “An Uneasy Union” explained why, in Israel’s thriving democracy, marriage and divorce remain under the authority of the religious courts. Central to the story was the case of Shlomit and Alon Lavi, an Israeli couple of more than 10 years who had been prevented from re-marrying due to arcane religious laws and the rulings of the rabbinical courts. One week after the article was published, Moment was pleased to hear that the courts had finally changed their minds: the Lavis would be able to be wed at last. In the wake of this happy decision, writer and former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Report Eetta Prince-Gibson catches up with the couple. Here, the Lavis look back on their 13-year-struggle to marry and forward to their future as a married...

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13 Apr
Culture, Misc, Religion

Thousands of Little Pharaohs: The Plight of the Agunah

By Martin Berman-Gorvine In this Passover season, consider the plight of Jewish women whose marriages have ended but whose (former) husbands refuse them a get (bill of divorce), which only the man can grant under the traditional version of halachah (Jewish religious law). The spectacle of thousands of Jewish men behaving like little Pharaohs, in whose hands is the power to enslave or free their former wives, has become sadly familiar. Not so well known is the inner world of the agunah. What are the emotional and spiritual consequences of being “chained” to a dead marriage? I spoke to “Deborah,” a former agunah from an Orthodox community in England, who was married for 13 years and had two children with a man who refused her a get for nearly five years following their February 2007 civil divorce,...

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