Published: 13 December 2022
By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in Plus61J Media
NOMI KALTMANN speaks to the founder of an international website that rates Beth Din on their speed and quality of response for women who apply for a gett.
For anyone undergoing a divorce, the process can be a traumatic experience. Separating from a partner is a lifechanging experience that involves extra stress and along with the division of assets and custody, and the expense of going to court. However, an extra set of considerations exists when couples who married under the Chuppah seek a gett, the religious divorce. Facilitated by a Beth Din, a religious court, obtaining a religious divorce is a separate process to the civil divorce in Australia.
While Beth Din can be used for a number of purposes, including dispute resolution, adjudicating on community issues and rabbinic matters such as facilitating conversion, the most likely interaction for most lay people is during a divorce proceeding, where the “court” facilitates the gett.
In many cases, despite a civil divorced being finalised, there can be a lag to obtain a religious divorce. The reasons they can take a long time to process a gett are varied. Sometimes local Beth Din do not have full-time staff and resources and in other cases some are only open on certain days of the week or at certain times.
In addition, one partner, unhappy with the civil divorce outcome, may seek to leverage the religious divorce to renegotiate settlements that have already been adjudicated in a secular court. And in other cases, Dayanim [religious court judges] lack the required sensitivity or training to deal with complex mental health issues from either partner, which in turn, drags out the process.
The speed of resolution of a divorce through a Beth Din and the sensitivity of the Dayanim vary from place to place, with no way for people to know whether the Beth Din they are using will be able to help them finalise the dissolution of their marriage in a timely manner.
However, if a new website has its way, this will soon be changing.
Founded by Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll, the founder of the Israeli advocacy group Chochmat Nashim, a website launched in 2021 called RateMyBeitDin.com has compiled a comprehensive list of Beth Din from around the world where people who have gone through a religious divorce, are able to rate their local Beth Din, and leave feedback on the sensitivity and quality of their experience. To date, the website offers its services in English, Hebrew and French and has Beth Dins listed from tens of countries, including Australia.
Keats Jaskoll, an American who made Aliyah over a decade ago, remembers the moment she became an advocate for women going through a religious divorce.
“I have been doing agunah advocacy for 14 years,” referring to her work helping women whose husbands have refused to grant them a gett and find themselves shackled to a marriage they no longer want to be part of.
At the beginning I was fighting for my aunt who had been denied a gett. I wound up going to court for her. You are a religious woman, you expect to see empathy and creative thought. I expected to see justice.
“At the beginning I was fighting for my aunt who had been denied a gett. She was in Monsey [an ultra-orthodox community in New York]. I wound up going to court for her. I expected to see justice. You are a religious woman, you expect to see empathy and creative thought on how to help you, even if it doesn’t happen right away,” reflects Keats Jaskoll.
Unfortunately, she was surprised to find that the opposite was the case.
“It was apathy, chaos and lack of sensitivity. I did not understand the scope of the problem at the time. I was trying to help my aunt. I wound up going to rabbis, Members of Knesset, Rabbaniyot, literally anyone who could give me insight into how I could get this done. It ended up going on for years and years. The challenges that we faced were so insane and so monumental,” she says.
From this experience advocating for her aunt, Keats Jaskoll was driven to become a powerful advocate for women caught up in the Beth Din system trying to obtain a divorce.
“It kind of become a passion of mine. I protested. I was going to Knesset. I spoke to anyone I could think of. In the past years I have done a lot of interviewing of Agunot, and it has become really clear, amongst everything else, that Dayanim don’t understand abuse, addiction, narcissism or victim mentality. They tell the women seeking help to “Smile and make dinner and he [the husband] will be nicer to you. How are there people who do not understand abuse and manipulation in a position of leadership?”
To help reform the system from within, the kernel of an idea was born to create the Rate My Beit Din website.
Over the years, it became clear, that before we touch halacha, there is so much that can change in order to help women and men who are in this situation.
“Over the years, it became clear, that before we touch halacha, there is so much that can change in order to help women and men who are in this situation. The system should work for everyone.”
Partnering with GetOutUk, another Gett advocacy organisation based in the UK, and two other organisations which prefer to remain unidentified, Keats Jaskoll created a survey in Hebrew, English and French. The aim of the survey was to pinpoint areas that could be improved throughout a person’s experience with a Beth Din while undergoing the gett process.
For Keats Jaskoll, this work has incredible purpose and urgency. She sees improving the system from within as a matter of life and death.
“We are talking about people ready to commit suicide, because of hopelessness, because of feeling unheard, because of feeling betrayed by the thing they believe in. An Agunah is trapped by her belief and her community,” she says.
To date, the survey has 197 responses in English and close to 100 in Hebrew. The survey encompasses a wide range of questions. Some of the data is quantifiable, such as the average cost of a gett in a Bath Din or the average time it took to resolve a case, but the comments that are provided in the survey also provide valuable insight into the situation on the ground.
“After I saw the results of the survey, I knew we had to do something. A cousin of mine said, why don’t you rank all Beth Din? The goal is not shame, the goal is not to make enemies of the rabbis and Dayanim. It is to show how the system doesn’t work and to work towards improvement,” Keats Jaskoll says.
“One thing we have created are badges. For example, a Beth Din that promises to get back to a petitioner in 48 hours, gets a responsiveness badge. It sounds silly. But when it is your life on the line, when no one gets back to you, then it is an endless open pit in front of you.”
A site like this, despite its good intentions, is bound to attract some criticism from certain quarters.
“We have been called chutzpadik. But at the same time, we know of at least one Beth Din that has changed its procedure because of the site. In my experience, the only thing that moves a Beth Din is bad press; they hate bad press. For the people who feel that there is no way to reform, that the site is not going to help, if a Beth Din, gets bad press, that’s pressure. And I think it helps,” she says.
While a site like this will certainly be impactful in places like America, Israel and other European countries, Australian leaders in the Gett advocacy space are not sure of the site’s applicability here.
“I really admire what Shoshanna has done, but for us, it is a very different experience to the American way of dealing with a gett,” says Yael Hersham, the co-chair of Unchain My Heart, the Australian gett advocacy organisation.
“In America, parental and financial matters are dealt with via the Batei Din. And people have a choice of Batei Din they can attend when getting a gett. Our experience is so very different, because the Beth Din deals solely deal with the gett and no other matters,” she says.
In addition, because the major Australian cities usually only have one Beth Din, the system works differently here, compared to countries with larger Jewish communities, like the United States or England, where there are alternative Beth Din bodies. “So, it is not like we can just rate our one Beth Din and it will help the state of affairs,” she says.
Australian Beth Din have more constraints than their overseas counterparts, Hersham adds. “We deal with a Beth Din that works part time. When there is a backlog, we cannot expect Gittin (divorces) to be given quickly. Even if it is a simple case. And both partners get on. But even still, it can take time.”
When asked what could help Australian Beth Din improve their processes, Hersham offered a practical approach. “Organisational aspects could be improved,” she says, referring to the fact that most Australian Beth Dins have small budgets, resulting in part-time staff and part-time hours. “And people need to be communicated with in a timely manner. There are all these practical things that can be assisted with a larger budget.”
Hersham also noted she was looking forward to improvements being made to the Melbourne Beit Din based on recommendations of the Gittin Review subcommittee, where approximately 90 people responded to a survey providing feedback. This survey was sent out to Australians, just prior to the pandemic, independent of Chochmat Nashim’s survey, and aimed to assess the experience of Australians who had gone to a Beth Din during a divorce.
While in an Australian context the utility of the website may be limited as there are only really two Beth Din that can deal with divorce, one in Sydney and one in Melbourne, around the world RateMyBeitDin.com is continuing to create ripples. “I am proud and pleased of what Rate My Beit Din is doing. You can hate me. But if your awareness of your people who are in pain is raised and how you relate to them is improved, we all win.”
About the author
Nomi Kaltmann is a Melbourne lawyer who writes regularly on Jewish life and culture. Nomi is also the founder and inaugural president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance Australia (JOFA).