Everyone knows the agunah problem, a husband refuses to give a get and the wife is stuck and cannot remarry. I want to understand what the halacha actually has in its hands.
1. What is the Torah source for the get itself, and what does it accomplish? Devarim 24:1 talks about a sefer keritut. Is divorce a mitzvah, a permission, or just a mechanism, and does the Torah picture the whole thing as the husband’s choice?
2. When a husband refuses, what can a beis din actually do? The Rambam in Hilchos Gerushin (2:20) says that when the din is that he must divorce her, they force him until he says I want to. Which cases does that apply to, and what happened to that power? Shulchan Aruch Even Haezer 154 brings the cases of kefiyah, so why do batei din today almost never use it?
3. What are the real tools now? Seruv, cherem, public pressure, the prenup. Do any of them have halachic teeth or are they just social pressure?
4. The gemara in Gittin (33a) and Yevamos (90b) says kol hamekadesh al daas rabbanan mekadesh, that chazal can annul a kiddushin. When does hafkaas kiddushin or mekach taut actually apply, and could it free an agunah today? Why is it almost never used?
5. What is Rabbi Abadi’s position on all of this? Is the agunah crisis a halachic problem with no answer, or a problem where the answers exist and the poskim are afraid to use them?
The Torah ends a marriage through a ספר כריתות …. a Get (Devarim 24:1). Ordinarily the husband must give it willingly, but “willingly” does not mean that nobody may pressure him. The Rambam famously rules that when the circumstances justify compelling him to divorce, כופין אותו עד שיאמר רוצה אני …. we force him until he says, “I want to” (Hilchot Gerushin 2:20). The essential issue is not whether some rabbinical body formally gave permission beforehand. The issue is whether the situation is legitimate and the coercion is justified under Halachah. Historically, Jewish communities had real power to enforce these obligations. Where such coercion was lawful, a husband who was wrongfully trapping his wife could be forced until he came before the Beit Din and gave the Get willingly. Today, in countries where physical coercion is illegal, obviously that cannot and should not be done; putting people in jail solves nothing.
But that does not mean the community is powerless. A man who deliberately leaves his wife an agunah should not be welcomed as though nothing happened. Seruv, cherem, public and communal pressure, exclusion from synagogue honors and communal institutions, and properly drafted prenuptial agreements all have real value. In the older Jewish community, somebody behaving this way could not simply walk six blocks to another synagogue and be treated normally. The rabbis and communal leaders acted together. Much of today’s agunah problem is that our communities are fragmented and too often unwilling to enforce their own standards.
There are also situations of mekach ta’ut. If a serious condition existed at the time of the marriage and it is clear that the spouse would never have entered the marriage had that fact been known, then there can be a genuine question whether the kiddushin was valid in the first place. That is not a device to erase every bad marriage, but when the facts truly amount to mekach ta’ut, rabbis should not be afraid to call it what it is. Hafka’at kiddushin also exists in Chazal …. כל דמקדש אדעתא דרבנן מקדש ואפקעינהו רבנן לקידושין מיניה …. although applying that independently today is a much more complicated matter. It was used for specific rules, not as a blanket tool.
So I do not see the agunah crisis as Halachah having no answer. The tools exist. They have to be used honestly, reasonably, and within the law of the country in which we live. The bigger problem today is often not the absence of Halachah, but the absence of the kind of unified rabbinic and communal leadership that once made these rules effective. A man should know that using a Get to hold a woman hostage is not something the Jewish community will tolerate.