A subversive marriage proposal

April 26, 2010 - 3:43 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Israeliness, Religion 

Rabbi Haviva Ner-David

Rabbi Haviva Ner-David has a subversive proposal for young couples in Israel: don’t get married. At all.

Ner-David, one of the first (and only) women to receive Orthodox Rabbinic ordination, wrote a column in last weekend’s Jerusalem Post that is bound to ruffle more than a few shtreimels. In it, she discussed the current state of Rabbinically sanctioned marriage in Israel, which she finds patriarchal, misogynist and inherently unequal, where a man can withhold a get (divorce decree) from his wife but not the other way around.

Her solution: avoid the Rabbinate entirely by getting married “by contract.” “With the help of a lawyer with an expertise in marriage and divorce,” she wrote, a young couple “can draw up a contract that will act as a civil marriage contract, albeit without the official ‘married’ status. If the couple should divorce in the future, they can cancel that contract and draw up a new one that deals with property and custody issues.”

The couple can then have what appears to all as a traditional marriage ceremony, complete with huppa and hot dogs, but they wouldn’t be registered as married.

Why not just fly off to Cyprus and get married there, as many non-religious Israelis already do? Because when they come back, their overseas civil marriage is still registered, placing them in the Rabbinical system should they ever divorce.

For those who do want to marry according to the Israeli Rabbinate, it’s becoming more accepted to sign a pre-nuptial agreement in addition to the traditional ketuba, which evens out the playing field somewhat in case the couple breaks up.

While Ner-David’s approach is intriguing, I wondered what would happen to the children of such an unsanctioned union? Would they be considered mamzerim (the only way to translate this is straight out: bastards) who according to Jewish law would not be able to marry in the future?

No, Ner-David said in a personal email responding to my question. A mamzer results only from a relationship between a married woman and a man who is not her spouse. The child of the kind of “contract”-based marriage she is proposing would be just as Jewish as any other Israeli. Which makes sense: we know a number of unmarried Modern Orthodox women who have given birth; they wouldn’t have done so if it would put their children’s future marriageability in doubt.

Ner-David, who now defines herself as “post-denominational,” may just be a lone rabbi railing against thousands of years of tradition, but she does run a center for modern Jewish marriage called Reut that provides tens of engaged couples a year with personal and group counseling. While that’s certainly not enough to impact to Israeli society as a whole, for the couples she works with, it could make a big difference.

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Would-be women of the IDF busted shirking and snogging

March 20, 2009 - 10:54 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Religion, War 

Religious teen women of IsraelThe way the Israeli army interfaces with religion is not so straightforward, which makes sense in a land where the separation between synagogue and state is still being sorted out. The IDF’s Rabbinate came under scrutiny this winter for attempting to boost soldiers’ morale on shaky theological grounds.

And the Rabbinate is notorious for being stingy when it comes to handing out shaving exemption papers for soldiers looking to be able to wear beards based on their interpretation of Biblical commandments, sometimes telling soldiers that they’re “not religious enough” to qualify for the exemption. But if it’s a rabbi’s goal to foster observance, he ought to embrace the individual’s interests, regardless of that individual’s flaws or hypocrisies.

In a society where we are constantly being pigeonholed due to what we’re wearing on our heads and elsewhere on our bodies, I don’t know about you, but my inclination is to say, “Please don’t put me in a box. I’m a real person, not a tidy category.”

Of course, embracing the religious grey area gets trickier when we’re talking about exemption from serving in the army altogether. Ditching the draft is relatively common among Israel’s Orthodox, for better or for worse, and the mechanisms for obtaining exemptions on religious grounds are relatively straightforward, making pleading religious a tempting option even for those who might not necessarily truly have theological qualms with the experience of being a soldier.

After years of turning a blind eye, more or less, to this phenomenon, the IDF is getting smart and trying to crack down on young women who “lie” and plead religious. Sure, it’s possible that a young woman who is too observant to serve, whatever that means, might experience a lapse in faith, but in general, if the army’s detectives catch you making out with someone, you should probably suit up.

“We need those girls, Lt. Col. Gil Ben Shaoul, deputy commander of Israel’s military recruitment center,” told The Associated Press.

The Israel Defense Forces says the surveillance program began last year and has caught 520 young women, many who admitted they did not deserve the religious exemption and signed up for military service.

….Catching the draft-dodgers is fairly straightforward: It takes one weekend, said Ben Shaoul. The young women are usually caught driving on Saturday, drinking or smoking.

Many who attempt to shirk the draft justify doing so on the grounds that women aren’t given “real” opportunities in the IDF.

“I served for two years doing nothing. All the girls do nothing,” said Shiran Cohen, 24, a university student. She said she was assigned to check on ammunition stockpiles during her service, but was frequently sidelined by men in her unit.

Although being a woman in the army can’t be easy, this excuse simply doesn’t hold water. I have fond memories of my days serving in the IDF’s Shiryon (armored corps) unit, where everything I learned about tanks was taught to me by women.

On the first day of tank training, the training officers took me and my fellow conscripts out to the open field and gave us a powerful demonstration of tank maneuvering and weaponry. The audience loved it. When the demo was over, the tanks pulled around and parked by the bleachers where we sat. The hatches opened, and out came four women from each vehicle. Surprise surprise. The bleachers shook with hooting, extra applause and jumping up and down as a special reaction for the ladies. It was a bit embarrassing, and it might serve to highlight how rough it must be to get respect as a woman soldier, but the point is that the opportunities are there for those who are motivated to go after them.

Image of Israeli modern Orthodox teenage women courtesy sethfrantzman from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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