Jewish woman saved from Muslim Quarter in Old City
1 Comments Published by Avi Green on Friday, September 21, 2012 at 3:12 AM.
We've got another rescuee brought back from the Old City's Muslim Quarter, and this one had some difficulty involving divorce:
A Jewish woman has been rescued from a years-long abusive marriage in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, activists with the Lehava anti-assimilation organization report. Lehava head Bentzi Gopstein spoke to Arutz Sheva following the rescue.State law?!? If I'm reading here correctly, then this is something that's got to be properly addressed. And look at how they surely had to pay a ton of dough, in step with an Islamic extortion tactic. Terrible, but thankfully, the woman and her children are now safe.
The woman, “A,” reached out to Lehava after a friend of hers had been rescued from a similar abusive marriage with the group’s help.
“The friend was helped in rehabilitation by Rabbanit Baranes… She told ‘A’ about us, and that’s how we succeeded in helping her,” Gopstein said. The assistance provided by Lehava extended to 'A'’s small children, who are three and five years old and returned to the Jewish community along with their mother.
Women who return to Judaism after marriages to Muslim men face bureaucratic problems changing their personal status, Gopstein noted. According to Israeli law, a Jewish woman who marries a Muslim man and registers as Muslim must obtain a Muslim divorce before re-registering as Jewish, he explained.
“According to halacha [Jewish law – ed.] she’s considered Jewish without this, but the rabbinic court must follow state law,” he said. “It was very hard for us to get the divorce from the Muslim court. The Arab man agreed to give her a divorce only after getting financial compensation.”
Labels: anti-semitism, islam, Israel, Jerusalem, misogyny
The requirement that a Jewish woman who has married a Muslim and registered as a Muslim obtain a Muslim divorce before re-registering as a Jew is a natural consequence of the "nation" based civil status system Israel carried over from the Ottoman Empire. Every person belongs to one "nation", whose religious law governs his or her civil status. If she were able to re-register as a Jew without obtaining a Muslim divorce, we would have the anomaly of a Jewish woman still regarded as legally married to a Muslim man. What law would then govern child custody and inheritance? Could she remarry? The real solution is to for Israel to adopt a system of civil marriage.