"IT was like the unburdening of a dirty, guilty secret. Even our friends who thought everything had been worked out, were horrified to find that it had not. I simply ask to be accorded the same rights and freedoms as my husband now that we are divorced."
Sandra Blackman is one of nearly 250 Orthodox Jewish women every year who obtain a civil divorce through the courts in Britain. However, five years since her marriage ended under British law following the death of her middle child, Blackman is one of hundreds of Orthodox Jewish women known as agunot - "women in chains" - because their husbands have refused to grant them a religious divorce, a get.
The anomaly of the agunah situation is that under British law, while a civil divorce is recognised, a Jewish religious divorce is not.
Many agunot women complain that their husbands refuse to give them a get to punish them for walking out on the marriage, or in some cases as a form of blackmail to obtain money from their former wives' families.
The issue is further compounded as Jewish religious law states that only a man can give a get, women cannot.
For some agunah, the refusal of their husbands to give a get presents a further problem and highlights what they believe is a fundamental inequality in the halachic - religious way - of British Jewry. It is that the status of women in Jewish law, after the marriage has ended in the civil courts, is undermined and remains a source of much pain: a woman cannot re marry in an Orthodox synagogue if her husband refuses to give a get and if she were to by pass religious law and remarry in a registry office or a Reform or Liberal synagogue, the marriage would be deemed adulterous in Orthodoxy and any subsequent children would be known as mamzerim - illegitimate under Orthodox law.
The ruling for men is not so harsh: only a man can give a get, but a woman may refuse to accept it. In some cases, a special dispensation from a rabbi is all that's required for a husband's re marriage in an Orthodox synagogue. Sandra Blackman had heard of only two cases where a get has not been accepted or dispensation given to a husband.
The question facing an agunot who has not been given a get is whether to give up her Orthodox faith, which most are unwilling to do, or to live with the status quo.
Sandra Blackman admits that it didn't even occur to her that when she obtained a civil divorce in 1991 her husband, Douglas, would refuse to grant the get, "He was never frilly committed to the Orthodox religion and he has re married. In my mind it has removed any possible reason for refusing to acknowledge the marriage has failed. With hindsight though, I wasn't on a competent wavelength to deal with signing divorce papers. I couldn't cope with facing lawyers - it was just a struggle to get through each day and I was also coping with the additional burden of trying to come to terms with my grief. At the time I just kept asking myself how my husband was so with it, because all I could think about was this horrible nightmare.
"I suppose that as a solicitor he was better equipped than I was to deal with the situation. So I unwittingly dragged out the proceedings over three to four years and my husband was very angry at the end of the process. Perhaps, that is the reason, why he has delayed giving me the get.
The intricacies of the agunot problem have in some way been addressed by the Chief Rabbi in Britain, Jonathan Sacks, and a group of Rabbinical judges the dyanim who last week produced two revised versions of the Pre Nuptial Agreement (PNA), which was first published more than two years ago. The new PNAs are an attempt by the Chief Rabbi and the dyanim to solve the agunot problem in future cases of marital breakdown: just its existence is an acceptance that agunot actually exist, but its effectiveness will depend on the willingness of Jewish couples to sign it before they marry. The first version of the PNA states that in the event of a dispute a husband and wife will attend the Court of the Chief Rabbi and the London Beth Din, who represent United synagogues, and importantly, "that they will comply with their instructions, including co operation in any mediation".
If the court cannot resolve the problems of a Jewish marriage, the PNA advises that the dispute should be referred to and "finally resolved" by arbitration by the Beth Din. The second version of the PNA leaves out the arbitration clause, giving couples who feel the dyanim have too sweeping a power over their future, a chance to decide on the "softer option" but still encourage husbands to give a religious divorce if the Court advises.
Those Jewish lawyers who had difficulty with the earlier versions of the PNA highlighted a paragraph which referred to the "arbitration powers" of the rabbinical court "that could be enforced by the civil courts". Some Jewish lawyers advising the Chief Rabbi's office said they could not guarantee that a British legal system which does not recognise the Jewish get would not recognise the powers of the rabbinical court.
The Chief Rabbi's office is hoping that the up dated PNA will form part of a two pronged strategy to address the agunah issue and also to demonstrate to the "women in chains" that they have attempted to respond to change in a modern, increasingly secularised society.
The second initiative is not Jonathan Sacks's, but from the former Chief Rabbi - now Lord Jakobovits. He has persuaded the House of Lords to agree an amendment to the new Family Law Bill to delay, or in some cases to prevent the granting of a civil divorce by the courts where a get has not been given. This, he hopes, will force the hand of a recalcitrant Jewish husband to grant a get, but it is not enough for Sandra Blackman.
She says: "The difficulty for the Chief Rabbi's office and the associated London Batei Din is that whatever alterations they make to the PNA it will not resolve the problems of existing agunot whose husbands still refuse to grant them a religious divorce. These patriarchal laws must be re interpreted. The rabbis should think imaginatively and bring sanctions against men who refuse to give the get because there are now more agunot than ever before in Jewish history."
