With bill shelved, woman denied divorce for 17 years ends hunger strike

A woman whose husband has refused her a religious bill of divorce for 17 years called off her hunger strike outside the Knesset late last week after some eight days, as lawmakers withdrew a bill that would have paved the way to annul her nuptials and as a rabbinical court clarified there was “no solution” to her quandary.

Ukraine-born Zvia Gordetsky, 53, told The Times of Israel on Monday she was still holding out hope the Knesset members would reach agreements with the coalition and advance the legislation by Zionist Union MK Yael Cohen-Paran, which was shelved last Wednesday.

In the meantime, she said a rotation of female activists supporting her cause were taking turns fasting every day in her stead.

“I can’t sit there forever because I have to work. I have a lot of debts. Meanwhile, the Knesset members are dealing with it, there, inside the Knesset. They said they would invite me to meetings. We aren’t giving up,” she said.

“I stopped, because I wasn’t feeling well. And if there is no vote, there is no point. My point is not to die there outside the Knesset, it’s that the law will pass and resolve the issue,” she added.

The shelved Knesset bill relied on a mechanism known as hafka’at kiddushin, supported by a minority Jewish legal opinion, that is unlikely to receive the backing of rabbinical judges, though an activist supporting Gordetsky said last week at least six rabbinical judges supported it. “One openly — Rabbi [Eliyahu] Abergel — and five secretly. But they exist,” the activist said.

Without coalition support, the bill had no chance of being approved in the plenum and was therefore withdrawn at the last moment in an effort to reach agreement with the government. The proposal would be conditioned on a religious ruling from the rabbinical judges to the husbands ordering them to divorce their wives. If they refuse, the law would then go into effect, expropriating assets in the amount detailed on the marriage contract.

While the Knesset would carry out the legal mechanism of separating her from her husband’s assets and debt, it would remain up to the rabbinical courts to decide whether the woman may then remarry, according to activists.

A spokesperson for Cohen-Paran did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the status of the legislation.

Gordetsky had parked herself outside of the Knesset two weeks ago in protest of her agunah or “chained” status, under which she may not remarry in Israel, where religious courts have final say on matters of personal status.

But speaking as she left the rabbinate for a hearing on Monday — in which she was once again denied a divorce by her husband, who has opted to sit in jail since 2000 rather than divorce her — she said the rabbinical judges informed her there was no solution. They did not explicitly refer to the Knesset bill during the hearing, she said, but openly oppose the measure.

“Today, they told me at the rabbinate that there is no solution. That in Jewish law, there is no solution,” she said. “That even for Ron Arad [the abducted Israeli pilot whose fate is unknown], they couldn’t allow [his wife to remarry] until signs that he is not alive are found. That not everything can be solved. That’s their answer.”

“I don’t accept it, but I don’t decide, they decide,” she said Sunday in response to the rabbinate hearing. “That’s their answer.”

The rabbinate was considering imposing additional sanctions on her jailed husband, including transferring him to serve his sentence among hardened criminals, she said, though a final decision has not yet been handed down.

Last week, Gordetsky said she first asked for a divorce “because of a tragic incident of domestic violence” in which she lost a baby, days before she was due to give birth. After hearing her account and the testimony of her husband, a rabbinical court ordered him to give her a divorce within 30 days or face a prison sentence, she said.

He showed up to the hearing with a bag packed for jail, she said.

Imprisoned ever since, including a stint in solitary confinement, Gordetsky’s husband recently had his phylacteries confiscated, under a new law aimed at further pressuring incarcerated recalcitrant husbands with religious sanctions.