Amid war, divorce rates jumped 6.5% last year, rabbinate says
Rabbinical courts obtained writs of divorce for 221 women in 2024 whose husbands had refused to hand them over, says authority, which holds monopoly over Jewish divorce in Israel
The rabbinical court system said Tuesday it saw a 6.5% increase in divorces among Jewish Israelis in 2024, compared to 2023, recording 11,542 divorces compared to 10,838 the year before.
The rise in numbers came amid the stresses of the more than year-long war that started with the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre and saw divorce rates climb to heights not seen since 2021 in the wake of COVID lockdowns — when 11,567 couples separated, according to the same data set, provided by the Chief Rabbinate in a yearly report.
Family law in Israel is administered by religious authorities. The figures only include Jewish Israelis under the authority of the rabbinate and not Muslim and Christian citizens.
Areas that saw particularly high increases year-over-year included Beit Shemesh, which saw a 45% increase; Kiryat Gat, where divorces jumped 45%; Beitar Illit, where they jumped 44%; and Ashkelon, where they jumped 31%. In Tel Aviv-Jaffa, divorces rose 15%.
Locales that saw a dip in divorces this past year included Jerusalem, where the number of divorces went down 4%, Ra’anana, where they went down 18%, and Kiryat Ata, in the Haifa District, where they went down 11%.
The report also provided figures regarding the rabbinate’s special unit devoted to securing Jewish writs of divorce — the document known as a get — in cases of recalcitrance.
In Jewish law, a man must freely give his wife a get, though significant pressure may be applied to the man to compel him to do so, and the wife must freely accept it, though pressure may be applied to her as well — or else the divorce is not valid.
In 2018, the Knesset passed legislation that enabled Israel’s rabbinic courts to punish recalcitrant husbands who refuse to give a get to their wives even if neither the husband nor the wife are Israeli citizens.
In 2024, the unit managed to secure a get for 221 women whose husbands had previously refused to give them — about the same as the 226 secured in 2023. To achieve these results, the unit levied sanctions on 135 male get-refusers, down from 209 in 2023. It also levied sanctions on 8 female get-refusers, up from 6 in 2023.
As of January 2025, there still exist 67 ongoing instances of get-refusers in Israel, 44 of whom are men and 23 of whom are women.
If a woman refuses to accept her husband’s get, there is a workaround by which a man may remarry, involving the approval of 100 rabbis, which the rabbinate occasionally facilitates. There were 7 such cases over the Jewish year 5784 (2023-2024), the report said.

There is no civil marriage institution in Israel, where the matter is delegated exclusively to religious authorities. Despite decades of calls for reform from lawmakers, nonprofits and even some religious figures – and close to a dozen organizations established to battle the current situation – little has changed since the status quo governing religion and state came into effect 75 years ago.
For legal purposes, Israel recognizes weddings performed abroad, including same-sex unions. But if a Jewish heterosexual couple weds outside the country and seeks to divorce in Israel, they will still have no choice but to divorce through the rabbinical courts.
Amy Spiro contributed to this report.