The Place of Orthodoxy in the State of Israel
Susan Weiss, a Jerusalem attorney, is Executive Director of the Center for Women's Justice. She has won landmark cases advancing the rights of women in Israel. This article appears in issue 10 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
As the head of the Center for Women's Justice, I encounter on a daily basis the intractable entanglement—the “Gordian knot”—of State and (Orthodox) religion in Israel. This union of religion and state supports a gendered society, infringes on the basic rights of women, challenges the democratic values of the State, and threatens to undermine Israel's integrity as the political expression of the Jewish nation. Read more
The Interrogation of the Convert "X" by the Israeli Rabbinic Courts
The authors are associated with the Center for Women's Justice, in Jerusalem, www.cwj.org.il. The Center represented convert "X" in her struggles with the Israeli rabbinic courts, and won the case on her behalf. This report of the proceedings is a stark reminder of injustices within the rabbinic court system in Israel, and the need for the public to work together to change the system dramatically. Read more
The Tort of Get Refusal: Why Tort and Why Not?
The problem of the agunah—the woman whose husband refuses to give her a Jewish divorce—challenges the viability of Orthodoxy in a modern world that stands, if I may be given some poetic license, on the three pillars of equality, human rights, and the autonomy of the individual. How can it be that a Jewish woman in the twenty-first century is still dependent on the whims of her husband for her marital freedom? In this article, I have three goals: Read more