Agunot Against Iggun: Women’s Resistance to Marital Victimization In Jewish History

Actions from Pre-Modern, Traditional Jewish Women – There Was Nothing Else.

Pre-modern, pious, traditional Jewish women—

there was nothing else—

actively resisted falling into iggun

and fought actively, creatively, and often transgressively, to escape it when trapped.

Shulamit S. Magnus, Jewish Marital Captivity: The Past, Present, and End of a Historic Abuse

documents this behavior richly for centuries of Jewish life

across the Jewish map,

in pre-modern Jewish communities of every ethnicity and halakhic custom.

Here are but two examples, from 16th century Safed/ Sfat:

Rabbi Joseph Karo (1488-1575— who wrote the authoritative halakhic code, the Shulhan Arukh, second only to the Talmud in its authority--

had a married son who died, without having fathered a child in the marriage.

That made Karo’s daughter-in-law obligated to marry another of Karo’s sons in levirate marriage.

But this daughter-in-law did not wish to marry her brother-in-law (the “levir/ yabam” see “levirate marriage”).

Indeed, many women in such cases did not wish such marriages and sought halitsa, release from them.

And levirs sought yibum—to marry the widow—

because this meant that the widow’s payment would not have to be paid to her from the deceased’s assets,

and furthermore,

that any gifts the deceased’s family had given the wife at the time of the marriage (tosefet ketubah), would return to the deceased’s family—rather than go to the widow—which would tremendously increase her value on the re-marriage market at their expense.

Without halitsa, however, such women are agunot: chained in marriage to men all acknowledge are dead, or forced to marry against their will.

Karo’s daughter-in-law and the would-be yabam fought for two years, he, refusing to give her the halitsa she demanded; she, refusing to marry him, and unfree to marry of her choosing.

Finally, a member of her family suggested the following—which we know was used in other cases in Jewish history, in Ashkenaz and elsewhere:

The widow was to go to the synagogue of the would-be yabam—this was Karo’s son, so it was Karo’s synagogue!—

on a weekday when there is Torah reading--

meaning: plenty of halakhically valid witnesses present, required for a valid halakhic procedure—

And was to interrupt the service

point to the would-be yabam

and declare three times, spitting:

this is the would-be yabam! I don’t want him!

This was halitsa.

An uproar ensued and tremendous scholarly discussion among the learned rabbis about the legal upshot of the woman’s act:

Did this alone constitute halitsa?—had she self-enacted halitsa?!

Did it merely mean that Karo’s son no longer had a choice and had to enact halitsa?

In either case

the woman’s actions freed her.

She did not plead.

She did not appeal.

She acted and set her own future.

There was back and forth among rabbinic authorities within Safed and between them and authorities in Jerusalem—

But in the end

This aguna got halitsa: I reproduce a copy of the document in my book, Jewish Marital Captivity.

None of the sources about this extraordinarily forthright behavior names this resolute woman.

In another case from 16th century Safed, 21 women were made agunot when their husbands went down in a shipwreck.

R’ Karo ruled against lenient disposition in their cases that would declare them widows and free to remarry.

But one of these women took matters into her own hands and remarried without such dispensation—

Meaning

That four other Jews had joined her in this action: her new husband; two halakhic witnesses (meaning, men), and a (male) officiant.

Other rabbinic decisors argued against Karo’s stringency, citing fear that, without rabbinic accommodation in a lenient ruling

just as this one widow had remarried without rabbinic authorization—

the other agunot in this situation would do likewise—

Each, necessarily, with four other Jews joining in the act.

Not compliant behavior but assertive behavior caused arguments for leniency and accommodation—

While the Jews in these cases-- these agunot-- wrested freedom to live their lives—as pious Jews in traditional communities—

There was nothing else!

For many more instances of assertive, formally transgressive behavior by traditional, pre-modern Jewish women to protect themselves from iggun and exit when trapped, behavior that included taking cases to non-Jewish courts—both Christian (non-ecclesiastical) and Muslim state courts—

see the book, Jewish Marital Captivity: The Past, Present, and End of a Historic Abuse.