A forum on Jewish divorce at a spring conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminists Alliance in New York became an impromptu tribute to The Monica Dennis Goldberg School for Women Advocates’ Yad L’isha Legal Aid Center and Hotline, when a former client stood up and publicly expressed her gratitude to the program and its female rabbinical court advocates.

“They screened the film Sentenced to Marriage,” recalls Elysa V. “I couldn’t stop crying because there were too many bad memories. I knew it was all so true. During the movie, the women around me started asking me questions, offering me tissues, hugging me. I was such a lucky one, really, that Yad L’isha came along and changed my reality.”

OTS Chancellor Rabbi Shlomo Riskin had just addressed the session when Elysa spontaneously jumped up, introduced herself and movingly described how the center’s highly-trained and passionate advocates had helped her obtain a get [religious divorce] from an abusive husband who had been refusing to set her free. “I wanted to put a face on the cases that Rabbi Riskin talked about,” says Elysa, an American woman whose husband was Israeli. “And I wanted to tell him personally that even when my own community couldn’t help me, Yad L’isha was there for me and didn’t let me fall through the cracks. I was so happy to let him know that he really helped save my life.”

Now in its 10th year of offering free legal representation to agunot – women whose husbands are refusing to release them from abusive or unviable marriages – the Monica Dennis Goldberg School’s Yad L’isha Legal Aid Center has helped hundreds of women like Elysa to finally break free of their chains and rebuild productive lives. Representing the entire spectrum of the Jewish community, these women include:

• Tziona I., whose husband left her for another woman in 1991, refused to pay child support and did not appear for rabbinical court hearings. When the ninth hearing passed without results, Yad L’isha filed a complaint against the rabbinical court with the Commission for Public Complaints of Judges. The case was thus moved to a special sector for agunot, which pressured Tziona’s husband to grant the get – and jailed him when he continued to refuse. Four days later – 15 years after Tziona first filed for divorce – she became a free woman.

• Tikvah Y., an Ethiopian immigrant whose husband fled to Ethiopia in 2004 to avoid giving a get and paying child support for the couple’s two children. Yad L’isha was able to carry out negotiations with him through a Jewish Agency contact in Ethiopia and the divorce was granted early this year.

• Yael D., an ultra-Orthodox woman whose abusive husband finally agreed to grant her a divorce only after Yad L’isha obtained a rabbinical court ruling that denied him any religious communal privileges, such as being called up to the Torah. Those sanctions, along with many months of unrelenting pressure by Yad L’isha, convinced Yael’s husband to participate in extensive negotiations which led to his wife’s release from the prison of their marriage.

• Shira A., a secular woman whose mentally-unstable husband became progressively more abusive during the course of their 11-year marriage. Shira filed for divorce in 1999 and approached the Legal Aid Center three years later, with the case stalled in rabbinical court. Legal precedent previously set by the Center enabled the advocates to move the case into the jurisdiction of the regional civil court, which ruled to incarcerate the husband until he agreed to the divorce. In January 2006, Shira finally received her get.

“For all of these women, receiving a get means much more than just ending their marriage,” explains Batsheva Sherman, director of Yad L’isha. “It means that after many unbearable years of yearning and tears, they are finally free to reclaim their property, their children, their wombs and their futures. They can remarry and build new homes and families. As our clients repeatedly tell us, Yad L’isha is doing nothing short of saving women’s lives.”

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