Categories of Agunot

11Based on my study of 5,348 cases of agunot in the nineteenth century and 3,652 cases in the early twentieth century, I have identified seven basic categories of agunot (Sperber, 2016, 82-84) [2].

121. Women Deserted by Husbands Who Disappeared.

132. Women Who Refused to Receive, or Were Not Granted, a Get (divorce writ).

14According to Jewish Law (known as Halacha) divorce can only be granted by the husband, the process of get required the man to hand the get (either directly or via a messenger), both parties needed to be health by body and mind, and the woman needed to declare that she accepted the get. Men were required also to provide for their divorcees. Rabbinical court cannot give a Divorce writ (known as get) or force the Husband to do this. This complicated process offered men ways to refuse to give a get. In many cases refusing to grant a get made women agunot. On the other hand, there were also cases in which women chose to stay chained to the marriage and refused to receive a get.

153. Widowed Women Whose Brothers-in-Law Refused to Grant Them Permission to Marry Others.

16According to Jewish law, when a husband dies and has a surviving brother, the widow, if she does not have children, is obliged to marry that brother. She can only be released from this obligation through a ceremony called ḥalitzah, (Levirate marriage), which demands the consent and participation of the brother-in-law. In many cases the brother could not be found, or was very young (under the age of thirteen), and the widow remained chained to her marriage. In other cases, the brother demanded to be paid and refused otherwise to provide the ḥalitzah.

174. Women Whose Husbands’ Remains Were Not Found.

185. Improperly or Incorrectly Written Gets.

19Here again the power stays with the husband. If a woman’s get was improperly or incorrectly written, this would prevent the finalization of the divorce. There were cases of this being done deliberately – a scenario that appears as a plot device in several literary works from nineteenth century Russia. A famous example is Yehuda Leib Gordon’s poem “Kotzo shel yud” (The tip of the letter yud) (Stanislawski, 1988, 127-128; Nash, 2006). During the nineteenth century, frequently, men gave a get and left for other places, not knowing that they gave an improper get. This was mainly the case during periods of immigration.

206. Women Whose Husbands Became Mentally Ill and Were Not Competent to Grant A Get.

21A woman whose husband was not mentally competent had to apply for a heter beit din, (permission by a rabbinic court), a release from the rabbinic court, in order to remarry. This release was not always granted. On the other hand, men, whose wife became mentally ill, could obtain permission to marry another wife without divorcing. This was known as heter meah rabbanim (permission by hundred rabbis). Thus, husbands could marry two wives simultaneously. Women could not.

227. Women Refused a Get by Husbands Who Had Converted to Christianity or Islam.

23The most famous case involving conversion was that of Sarah Leah, the widow of Michl Alter Gener of Odessa. Her husband died before the couple had children, but both of his brothers had converted to Christianity and were not willing to perform ḥalitzah. She needed special rabbinic permission to remarry.

24This case was much debated in the newspapers, in rabbinic responsa and in the civil courts in Odessa. A rabbinic debate was led by Rabbi Avraham Yoel Abelson of Odessa, who consulted with some of the most important rabbis in Russia: Israel Isser Shapira, Aaron Zeev Wolf Veil, Itzhak Elhanan Spector, Mordechai Aaron Gimple, Leib Frankel, Yosef Zecharia Shtern, Naphtali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, Shimon Arie Schwabacher and Shmuel Mohilever (Freeze, 2002, 266 and 365, note 171) [3]. The main issue at stake was how to release a woman whose late husband had misinformed her in not telling her before the marriage about his brothers’ conversions. The rabbis debated whether it was permissible to allow her to remarry without ḥalitzah, since the marriage had, as it were, been contracted under false pretenses.

Jewish Newspapers

29Before the twentieth century, Jewish newspapers were mostly in Hebrew, but there were also some in Yiddish, including various local papers (Abrevaya Stein, 2004, 25-28) [5]. Although Yiddish was the most widespread spoken language, most advertisements concerning agunot in the nineteenth century were in Hebrew, with very few in Yiddish [6]. From the beginning of the twentieth century, most daily newspapers were in Yiddish [7].

30The first Hebrew newspaper was Hamagid (Gilboa, 1992, 119-135) published from 1856 to 1903, first in Lyck (Prussia), and later moved to Berlin, Cracow and Vienna (Gilboa, 1992, 119); it put the issue of agunot high on its agenda. Unlike Baker’s (1995), the present study surveyed all issues of Hamagid. Information on agunot can be found in other Jewish newspapers as well, particularly those published after 1880. For this research, a total of twenty Hebrew and twenty-five Yiddish newspapers was consulted, as well as ten local Jewish newspapers, mostly in Yiddish [8].

31Information on agunot in these newspapers appears in two main forms: advertisements (fig. 1) and news reports. The advertisements, placed by the women themselves or their relatives – mostly their fathers – sought information on the whereabouts of the missing husbands. The editors were very aware of potential manipulation by the parties concerned, and such advertisements were published only after the editors had verified the validity of the information, usually by having it confirmed by the local rabbi.

32As the editor of Hamagid wrote on June 23, 1869, he had been deceived by two women a few years earlier. He decided, therefore, that advertisements would not be published without rabbinic consent [9]. This policy was accepted by other Jewish newspapers editors. On June 28, 1871, the editor reported again some instances of women approaching the newspaper a few weeks after their husbands had gone away on business; by the time of publication, the husbands had returned. To avoid such mistakes, the newspaper reiterated: “We will not publish any advertisement concerning agunot if the matter has not been presented to us by the rabbi or communal officials of the place where the agunah resides.” [10]

33In many cases, rabbis themselves would write the advertisements [11], which were then published as letters from the rabbis to the editor. In other cases, advertisements were written by newspaper correspondents or community officials. In most cases, such advertisements were published free of charge [12]. In some cases, they were published in more than one newspaper [13], but in most cases, they appeared in just one. If a woman wanted to publish a series of pleas, she had to pay for them. The best-known case of a paid advertisement is that of Bassia Freizetova, who published her requests in three newspapers in 1883. Freizetova also tried other routes, including appealing to rabbis and to local Russian authorities (Freeze, 2002, 235-236). In one case, a woman’s advertisements were followed by another series over a decade later [14]. Occasionally, a woman or her relatives offered financial rewards [15].

34Another way a woman’s plight became known was through the publication of her story by a newspaper correspondent. A good example is the case of the deserter Shlomo Braham, whose story was initiated and followed up by a Hamagid correspondent. Many correspondents, most notably Ber Dov Goldberg in Paris, David Fishman in Tiberias and Shlomo Behor Hutzin in Baghdad, helped trace deserting husbands across borders [16], with the encouragement of their editors. The case of David Meyer Marcus is also worth mentioning: he left his wife Libbe twice and then emigrated from Russia to France. The Paris correspondent of Hamagid, Ber Dov Goldberg, was instrumental in finding Marcus and preparing a get, and the editor helped Libbe travel to Paris to receive it [17]. In one case, readers provided information that helped apprehend the deserter [18]. In another, the pursuit began with an advertisement but was then followed by a newspaper investigation [19].

35In some instances, newspaper editors were quite eager to publish stories of agunot. This was the case with Yehuda Kahalan, who was accused of abandoning his wife, Rachel Friedel. The newspaper published both sides of the story: the wife accused Kahalan of desertion, while Kahalan denied the accusation. However, the newspaper kept insisting that it was a desertion case even after it became clear that Kahalan had not in fact deserted his wife [20]. Such cases called into question the reliability of the editors. As a result, from 1879 onward, Hamagid published far fewer dispatches about agunot, and then only if the editors were certain that the wives were indeed deserted [21].

36Public awareness of the issue of agunot had unexpected repercussions. Some people tried to make their living by taking advantage of other people’s charity and concern. For example, Moshe Goldstein of Cairo (Egypt) claimed that he was carrying a get from Itzhak Finkel to his wife Ester Zissel. According to Jewish law, a get must be sent via a messenger if the husband and wife are living far apart from each other. Goldstein said that Finkel was living somewhere near the Caspian Sea, while Ester lived in Russia. In each city that Goldstein passed through, he asked Jews to pay for his expenses since he was performing a mitzvah [commandment] [22]. However, Goldstein had no intention of delivering a get to Ester. It was an easy way to earn a living. For some professional criminals, such as Hirsch Denmark, wife desertion was just one of several illicit activities he engaged in [23]. Some deserters were known to engage in trafficking women [24]. Other threatened to leave their wives without granting a get, thus making them agunot [25].

Responsa and Other Rabbinical Sources

45The extensive treatment of the issue of agunot in published nineteenth-century responsa testifies to the importance of the issue in the Jewish community, mainly in Eastern Europe [28]. Responsa books were written by rabbis and served other rabbis to rule according to the Jewish Law. Usually a responsa book was written by a rabbi who was an expert in a specific aspect of the Jewish law. In other cases, important rabbis published a collection of their rulings. More information is contained in unpublished responsa, which can be located in rabbinic archives [29]. The volume of responsa researched here, includes over 600 books of responsa [30].

46While this issue became prominent in responsa in the nineteenth century, it had long been a major topic of discussion in rabbinic literature [31]. In traditional Jewish society, family issues were usually handled privately and discreetly (although the disappearance of husbands was a known phenomenon). Nineteenth-century responsa contain rabbis’ reactions to the public challenge of the high profile of the agunot issue in the Jewish press. The rise of journalism offered agunot a new way to try to resolve their situation. Until the mid-nineteenth century, practically the only avenue that was open to abandoned wives was to rely on the aid of rabbis. Thereafter, the public spotlight on the issue, not only in newspapers, but also in Hebrew and Yiddish literature (Seidman, 2007), generated rabbinic literature and responsa on the subject (Sperber, 2011, 47).

47Rabbi Naphtali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, head of the famous Volozin Yeshiva [32] (Stampfer, 2012), referred in 1887 to Hamelitz as a source of information on agunot (Berlin, 1950, part. 2, §8). In another instance, Rabbi Berlin referred to Hatzfirah (Berlin, 1950, part. 4, §49). However, he asserted that rabbinic decisions should not appear in the newspapers unless absolutely necessary (Berlin, 1950, part. 2, §9). The well-known rabbi David Friedman [33] referred several times to discussions of agunot in Hamagid in 1873 (Friedman, 1913, part. Even ha’ezer, §16).

48Indeed, conscious of their own limitations, rabbis often advised agunot to publish advertisements in newspapers and even testified to their authenticity. In some cases, they even based their rulings on data received from newspapers, as did Rabbi Shalom Mordechai Shvadron in a responsum involving the case of an agunah named Hava Sateshny (Shvadron, 1902, part. 7, §40). In the 1895 case of an agunah named Reizel Laysten, whose husband drowned on a ship while traveling to America, Rabbi Shvadron also relied heavily on newspaper reports, even claiming that had the husband survived, he could have sent a note via the newspapers (Shvadron, 1902, part. 1, §8) [34]. Rabbi Yosef Shaul Nathanson, as well as other rabbis, published their notices regarding agunot in Hamagid [35].

49The most important rabbis in Eastern Europe, such as Shlomo Kluger (1785-1869) (Gertner, 1990), Itzhak Elhanan Spector (1817-1896) (Rakeffet-Rothkoff, 1995), Yosef Shaul Nathanson (1810-1875) and others, all wrote responsa on agunot. However, in many cases, the information in these responsa is partial and does not provide specific data regarding the persons and places involved. Sometimes, even the date is not specified. Another problem is that many collections of responsa were published not by the authors themselves but by others, long after they were written (Glick, 2009).

50Responsa literature deals mostly with the second, third and fourth categories of aginut: ḥalitzah, identifying the dead and get completion issues. In choosing which cases to include in my database, I ignored cases that do not mention the year; cases in which either the place or the names are missing are included, but not those in which both are missing. Responsa collections also mention many other unclear cases that are not analyzed in this study.

Letters, Philanthropic Organizations Correspondence and Other Information Concerning Immigrants

51Letters written by east European immigrants to the United States and England are a further important source of information on agunot [36]. Additional information can be found in the records of women’s benevolent societies and of social workers. Most of these records date back to the early twentieth century and relate to the second period under discussion here. Most important are the correspondence collections maintained by various Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), the Industrial Removal Office (established in 1901 to find employment for Jewish immigrants), the United Hebrew Charities, the National Bureau of Desertion (established in 1905 to help Jewish immigrant women who had been deserted by their husbands) and others.

52The files of the JCA information bureau also give insight into the east European perspective on immigration. After the 1903 Kishinev Pogrom, the central committee of the JCA decided to open an information bureau in St. Petersburg. Soon the JCA became the most important philanthropic organization in the field of immigration. The CEO of the St. Petersburg Bureau, a local lawyer named Shmuel Janovsky, recommended opening local JCA offices all over the Russian Empire. Gur Alroey found that by 1906 there were 160 offices across the Pale of Settlement, and by 1913 that number had risen to 507. The JCA also distributed questionnaires among emigrants and those aiming to emigrate. These documents offer a unique window into the agunot phenomenon (Alroey, 2014, chap. 2).

Agunot, Journalism, and the Rabbinic Establishment

66The role of rabbis as the key decision-makers in the Jewish community, especially for women, was diminished by the rise of the Jewish media. Before the publication of Hamagid in 1856, women had to rely solely on rabbinic advice to seek liberation from an absconding husband (Hyman, 1998; 2000). The new media offered women another path, and they took advantage of it.

67Although rabbis might rule leniently, taking into account women’s needs and their own limitations, the relief they could provide was restricted by women’s inferior status in Jewish law. Occasionally, they advised agunot to publish advertisements in newspapers and even testified to their authenticity. As the agunah phenomenon became more widespread, rabbis became even less effective in supporting the women’s cause. Finding that they could not rely on the rabbinic establishment or other male-dominated communal institutions for support or assistance, deserted women came to realize that they needed to help themselves. Publishing advertisements was the main avenue open to them.

68The uptick in religious Jewish women’s use of the newly formed public arena created by newspapers was probably the most significant change during this period. This change reflects women’s deep understanding of the modern public sphere, especially with regard to the role of the media in society (Parush, 2004). The public conversation about the issue of agunot in the late nineteenth century was an important indicator of east European Jewry’s modernization.

What Caused the Increase of Reports on Agunot?

69I was not able to uncover a satisfactory explanation for why the desertion of wives became more widespread over the course of the period under study. Most deserters were never found and left no evidence. Most advertisements were written by deserted women, their relatives, rabbis or journalists. We can only speculate about the reasons why the phenomenon became so widespread in the nineteenth century, but here are three possible explanations.

70(1) Demographic factors, such as the age difference between husbands and wives, particularly at the time of marriage, may have played a role. Many of the deserters were much older than their wives (Freeze, 2002, appendix, tables A.4, A.5 and A.7) [41]. As Freeze demonstrated, age difference was a major factor in marriage breakdown in late eighteenth century and in the early nineteenth century (Freeze, 2002, 56, table 1.2). Since many of the immigrants who left Eastern Europe were young men, age difference became more important as a factor in marriage breakdown. In 1897, 25% of Jewish women under age 21 were married, but only 5.8% of men were (ibid.). Since young men emigrated to America, young women got married to older men. For these men it was their second marriage, while for the young women it was their first and the age difference as well as the second-wife status were not in favor of the women.

71(2) The effect of internal and international migration was also a major factor, especially in the nineteenth century. People were constantly migrating within Eastern Europe, principally on account of the Russian government’s anti-Jewish policies. This constant motion created a cultural environment that prompted many men to desert their wives and families. But this begs the question: was the increase in cases of agunot a result of migration, [42] or did migration simply exacerbate an existing phenomenon (Alroey, 2006; Gartner, 2005)? In my view, although migration certainly played an important role, it was not a causal factor [43] but an added complication, one of many radical changes in Jewish family life and in the role of women in Jewish society in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe [44].

72However, even if migration only exacerbated an existing problem, it caused the desertion of women to become a much greater factor within that problem; in fact, it changed the nature of desertion. During this period of large-scale migration, the number of cases of husbands deserting their wives and families after arriving at their new destination skyrocketed.

73(3) Many scholars have proposed the poor economic situation of Jews in the empires of Eastern Europe as another explanation (Friedman, 1982). Urbanization during the nineteenth century worsened poverty. Young men left their shtetls in order to find work and provide for their wives and children (Petrovsky-Shtern, 2014, esp. chap. 7-8), but many could not earn a decent living and decided not to return.

74While no single explanation suffices, all three together do explain the extent of the phenomenon of agunot in the first period under study. The reasons for it in the second period are different however.

75As the figures in Table 10 indicate, most of early twentieth-century North American agunot were deserted after emigration from Eastern Europe. Adapting to life on a new continent was the main cause for desertion [45]. Scholars have argued in general that the challenges of acculturating to a new environment can explain social deviance among immigrants (Juozeliūnienė, 2013). The relocation of Jewish immigrants within North America by the Industrial Removal Office provides us with another explanation for spousal abandonment (Fridkis, 1981). Unlike in the first period under study, economic hardships and age differences were not as main a factor in cases of agunot in North America.

Agunot in Eastern Europe and North America

76The preceding overview of the agunah phenomenon indicates that there were (and still are) different types of agunot. East European agunot in the nineteenth century adhered to a “classic” type: a husband disappeared, and the wife was left seeking a way out of the marriage. Journalists, rabbis and others tried to locate the deserter or, if the husband was deceased, his remains. Many agunot cases were the result of migration – husbands who left for another country or another city and never returned. In North American cases of aginut, by contrast, family desertion and divorce – not migration – were the main factors. [46]

77One of the main reasons for these differences lies in the stark contrast between the two political regimes: the authoritarian system of Eastern Europe on the one hand and the democratic society in the West – especially in North America – on the other. The rulers of the Russian Empire did not enforce secular marriage contracts for Jews. Rather, Jews married according to halakhah. Rabbis decided when a marriage was over, leaving many women remained trapped in marriages long after their husbands had deserted them or died. However, in America, rabbis were not the sole arbiters of marriage and divorce (Last Stone, 2010; Breitowitz, 1993). In North America, women could use civil courts and non-rabbinical Jewish organizations to get out of their marriages and the decisions of civil courts were as recognized as those of the rabbinical organizations. Here Jewish religious law was but one factor determining the fate of Jewish women, not the only factor as it was in Eastern Europe until the later parts of the nineteenth century.