Long Road Ahead

Leah did not entertain illusions that the divorce process would go smoothly. She knew her husband’s tenacity and bullheadedness would be an issue. Ironically, Leah recalled two earlier instances when Eli had helped an agunah obtain a get from her willful husband by obstinately wearing him down until he finally capitulated. “The incredible paradox was that I thought to myself, I’m going to have to hire Eli to help me obtain a get from Eli,” she recalls drily.

Her first few months alone were dedicated to her emotional healing. Finally, a year after she’d moved out, Leah felt ready to begin the process of obtaining a get. She approached a well-known dayan in the Midwest to begin the process. However, the rav would not send a hazmanah to beis din until he’d spoken to Eli, and tried to reason with him. “I knew that was pointless, because talking is Eli’s drug of choice,” Leah maintains wryly. “He’s always been in his element when given the grandstand to explain his twisted spin on events. Trying to reason with him is an exercise in futility.”

After several fruitless attempts to speak with Eli, the rav realized he was out of his element. He recommended Leah turn to a prominent national beis din, whose reputation for structure was well known. They sent Eli three hazmanos to beis din, all of which he ignored. One of the dayanim sent a message to Leah indicating that in his opinion, Eli would not give her a get. Unfortunately, that message was accidentally sent to Eli instead, who used it as grounds to claim the dayan had defamed him, and he was therefore no longer bound by his judgment. Leah chose not to request a seruv from the beis din, “mostly because I didn’t really understand how it could help or empower me, and I was also afraid of what he would do to me if he was issued a seruv,” she admits.

The upshot was that the beis din now gave Leah a heter to turn to secular court, which she did, promptly filing for divorce in a local court. Next, Leah turned to a third beis din, where she encountered a very sympathetic rav who was known to help agunos. Despite investing hours of his time, he was unable to make any significant headway.

The beis din whose hazmanos Eli had previously ignored issued a new set of three hazmanos. When there was still no progress, they reiterated their permission to appeal to a secular court. By this point, Leah had been separated for three years.

Leah and Eli’s grown children were indignant over their father’s behavior, and with the guidance of a rav, sent a letter to both parents insisting they agree to adjudicate with a rav and consent to his recommendations. This was a proviso for any future relationship with them and their families. Leah, of course, immediately replied, “Yes! I agree!” However she was not the true intended address of their appeal. Eli dug in his heels, willing to lose his entire relationship with his children and grandchildren over the get.

In yet another stunningly perverse interpretation of events, Eli spun this intervention as parental alienation on Leah’s behalf.

After four years of separation, Leah finally obtained a civil divorce, with two stipulations: As the chief breadwinner, Leah was to pay alimony to Eli, and they would agree to choose a beis din and abide by it.

It would be many long years before the second condition was fulfilled.

Paper Chains

For Kayla Goldstein, cases like Leah’s are unfortunately not atypical. “The more I learn, the more I recognize how Judaism is such a beautiful religion for women,” Kayla says. “But society, culture, and the evolution of the world have created roadblocks that have to be addressed.”

As the architect behind the organization Vaad L’Inyanei Igun, Kayla is determined to tackle these roadblocks and help women — and men — reach a mutually acceptable, halachic termination of their marriage. Her keystone value in achieving results is fealty to halachah, daas Torah, and gedolei Yisrael. “I cannot stress enough the extent to which this is our bedrock principle,” Kayla asserts, “and I’m proud of the fact that it is.”

The Vaad, as it is colloquially known, was the brainchild born from Kayla’s deep respect for, and faith in, rabbanim.

The daughter of Rabbi Yaakov Haber of Ramat Beit Shemesh, Kayla grew up in Mattersdorf, Jerusalem. Her father was a close talmid of Rav Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg; their relationship was such that her mother would call Rav Scheinberg whenever she needed his guidance, even for relatively trivial matters. Kayla recalls her frequent visits to Rav Scheinberg before school for a treat from the towering rav. Experiences like these contributed to her unassailable belief in the basic goodness of a rav.

“Coming from a rabbinic family, I was surrounded by amazing rabbanim,” she says. “I knew rabbanim are good and want to help, but when it came to agunos, everyone was maligning them. That simply wasn’t my experience and I felt something had to be done to correct this perception.”

Nine years ago, Kayla moved to America, where she and her husband, Rabbi Shmuel Goldstein, currently serve as the rav and rebbetzin of Beth Tefillah in New Jersey.  After encountering an agunah who was having difficulty navigating the beis din, Kayla contacted the rabbanim involved in her case, and found there was a unilateral disconnect between the suffering women and the rabbanim. Neither side seemed to be aware enough of the other’s needs and capabilities to help.

With her inimitable pragmatism and positivity, Kayla says, “I was a little innocent and naive, but I figured if there’s a global problem, let’s make a meeting between the two sides of the problem and see if we can come to an understanding.”

In mid-August 2023, Kayla called a landmark meeting at a Brooklyn shul, inviting every single Orthodox rav she had heard of, from across the hashkafic spectrum, alongside women struggling to obtain a get. Three hundred women showed up, agunos, their mothers, sisters, and daughters. Only four rabbanim came, a clear sign to Kayla of how much work lay ahead in the vital work of building trust and relationships with the community’s rabbanim. Kayla was undeterred: “Hashem knew this was all we needed.”

Rabbi Haber, Kayla’s father, spoke of the imperative for a central body unifying all the rabbanim who deal with divorce. Rav Yehoram Ulman of Australia spoke next, and concurring with Rabbi Haber, proposed they create an organization for this initiative. Finally, Rabbi Zev Leff spoke. “Refusing to issue a get is against halachah,” he declared. “We must adhere to halachah!”.

The next morning, Rav Ulman called Kayla and announced they were founding the Vaad L’Inyanei Igun, and tasked Kayla with running operations. For the next two months, Rav Ulman consolidated an international group of influential rabbanim to join the initiative, creating a global network of rabbanim committed to helping agunos. “This way,” Kayla asserts, “no one would ever fall through the cracks. No matter where the woman who needed help lived, we would have a rav she could turn to.”

A Path Forward

Rav Ulman is the senior av beis din in Sydney, Australia. A close talmid of Rav Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, he oversees all aspects of Yiddishkeit, including marriage, conversions, gittin, and medical issues such as fertility and genetic conditions.

“When Kayla Goldstein contacted me, after checking into who she was, I immediately agreed to support her. I couldn’t say no to such a cause.” Rav Ulman was impressed with her work ethic and the achrayus Kayla assumed for struggling women. However, he was particularly struck by her insistence on only employing solutions that are 100 percent halachically legitimate, and that pass the muster of the gedolei Yisrael.

Rav Ulman relies on his vast network of rabbanim to address different cases, and provides the halachic backbone for each case. Perhaps as important, however, is the profound compassion he feels for suffering women. “If every person would regard every agunah as his or her sister or daughter, there would no longer be an agunah issue,” he says.

In Rav Ulman’s beis din, the process of obtaining a get, a halachically valid divorce, is typically straightforward. A divorcing couple or an individual spouse applies for a get via the beis din’s website. When one spouse applies, the beis din’s secretary contacts the other party and informs them of their spouse’s request for a get. If the two concur, Rav Ulman converses with each spouse to ascertain if they tried to save the marriage through counseling and the like. If the husband is a Kohein, Rav Ulman takes extra care with this step, as divorce would prohibit him from ever remarrying his spouse, who as a divorcée, is forbidden to a Kohein.

When one of the parties is uncooperative in proceeding with the get, Rav Ulman contacts them to determine what is holding them back. They will be sent, via email, a hazmanah, an official summons to beis din. If they ignore three summonses, or indicate that they will not respond to future hazmanos, they may be rendered a mesareiv l’din and communal sanctions may be applied against them. The beis din may also issue a shtar siruv, a document publicizing the individual’s refusal to adjudicate the divorce in beis din. The siruv may be shared with any relevant party, or community, worldwide.

At first brush, Kayla’ gentle demeanor seems incongruous with the image of a warrior for embattled women.

Her words are ponderous and unhurried, her voice infused with sweetness and warmth. And rather than see herself as a warrior, Kayla frames the goal of the Vaad as achieving peace — whether by helping a failing marriage regain traction, or by facilitating a divorce. Yet despite her deceptively soft manner, Kayla is determined to assist any person who reaches out to the Vaad, and is committed to seeing their process through until they achieve a favorable outcome.

And her method seems to be working. In the approximately 18 months since its inception, the Vaad has successfully resolved 23 agunah cases, amounting to a cumulative 101 years of waiting for a get.

Playing Quarterback

Kayla’s approach to all cases begins with a simple phone call from a woman seeking a get from a recalcitrant husband. On that intake call, Kayla gathers as much information as possible: the length of the couple’s separation, their status in beis din, their status in court, how many children there are, what they’re fighting over, their financial situation, the rabbanim involved, who’s tried to assist until now.  Kayla’s matter-of-fact mindset is the impetus for her next question.  “I usually ask them what they think will work to help persuade their husband to give a get,” she says. “They know their husband best. I ask them to try and explain to me what’s going on in his head.”

The second step, which she will never omit, is to call the husband’s side to hear his take on the situation. She will speak with his rabbanim, family members, the beis din, and anyone else who can explain his refusal to give a get. This step is imperative in gaining an authentic picture, she says: In any situation a person is inclined to portray their perspective of events.

Rav Ulman concurs on this point. “One can never hear one side of a divorcing couple and determine that either he or she is a villain,” he says. “You’ll hear one side and everything seems so black-and-white, and then you’ll hear the other side, and realize it’s not as simple and straightforward as it was made out to be. As a dayan, you always must hear both sides.”

Kayla will also contact other organizations who help agunos, such as Lev and ORA, and source any relevant information they may have on the case.

After she completes the research phase, Kayla constructs a plan, which can involve hiring mediators, transferring to a new beis din, or applying permissible forms of pressure on the recalcitrant husband. Before she begins to execute it, Kayla reaches out to Rav Ulman to be sure the plan has his approval.

“I’ll also brainstorm ideas with him,” Kayla says. “He’s a huge tzaddik, and we won’t do anything without his permission.” This, despite the mammoth time difference between America, where Kayla is based, and Australia, where Rav Ulman lives. “I’ve woken up at two in the morning on many occasions to catch him.”

Again, Kayla’s pragmatism is evident. “We figure out where the get is stuck, and then we determine how to unknot it,” she says. “And in most cases, with siyata d’Shmaya, we can do that.”

“Kayla’s like a quarterback,” Leah explains. “There are so many rabbanim, and lawyers, and all the civil court pieces, it’s just so overwhelming, you can just say, ‘I give up!’ But Kayla holds it all together, issuing calming instructions, literally keeping her eye on the ball.”

Familiarity with all the details of a case and a dose of ingenuity can facilitate a solution. Rav Ulman recalls a case from his early years as a dayan, involving a woman who had been an agunah for many years. Her husband had already remarried a non-Jew, a devoutly religious Christian, and he refused to give her a get until the agunah paid him an exorbitant sum of money.

Inspiration struck. Rav Ulman called the Christian wife and told her, “Your husband married his first wife under Biblical law, and until he divorces her through Biblical law, he’s still married to her, so understand, you’re sharing your husband with another woman.” Rav Ulman chuckles. “The Christian wife was the one to convince him to give a get.”

The Vaad’s team includes a case manager and a coach whose express purpose is to be a “hand holder,” bolstering agunos through this highly fraught process.  The coach, herself an agunah for many years, had her get facilitated by Kayla. Providing emotional scaffolding for women whose challenges she intimately understands is her way of paying it forward.

Kayla shares the case of a woman whose husband had been delaying their get for a year. The woman was particularly concerned about the delay — there were no financial disputes and no children involved, and therefore no logical reason for the get’s delay. Kayla contacted the husband’s rav, who shared a crucial insight into the reason for the delay tactics. The husband believed his wife and her family were controlling him, and he refused to cooperate with the get until he felt he’d regained agency over the process. Consequently, he thwarted every decision they made regarding the get, all in an attempt to assert his control. “If she and her family sit down with him and are quiet for five minutes, he’ll give the get,” the rav predicted. “He wants to give the get! But he has a mental block when he feels he’s being controlled and he’ll never cooperate under those circumstances.”

Kayla understood the path to a get hinged on adopting a posture of submission. She coached the wife and mother until they were able to present the pretense of ceding control to the husband. Just as his rav had predicted, once he felt he was in charge, he promptly gave the get.

Kayla recalls another case where a husband refused to issue his wife a get simply because he still loved her and could not countenance life without her. Unfortunately, his behavior toward her was not consistent with his avowed feelings, and his wife, who had already left him on several occasions, was determined to secure a get. Kayla contacted a rabbi who spoke with the husband for hours, and using gentle persuasion, convinced him to give the get.

“I think so much of why this case worked out, is that the rabbi who sat with the husband treated him like a human being,” Kayla says. “He didn’t yell at him, or tell him he’s terrible for refusing to give a get. He tried to understand his point of view and then rationalize with him from there. We highly underestimate how important it is to treat someone like a person, how much that simple step can ameliorate things.”

We Work with Honey

In general, this aspect of Kayla’s approach is what sets her far apart from other vigilante efforts to help agunos. She uses social media for fundraising and education purposes (explaining the get process, terminology, etc.) only. “I’m the person you come to after you’ve had your fill of rage-bait. Everyone has their way, but that approach just doesn’t suit me. I try to be a calm presence in the agunah crisis by educating women, and by acknowledging what the issues are, explaining what we’re doing to fix them, and letting people know what they can do to help.”

Kayla doesn’t see warfare as an effective way of helping agunos. “I don’t think fighting works,” she says. Her opinion is evidence based; in every case she’s encountered, she can backtrack to the point the get process derailed, “And it’s always been when someone chose to fight instead of communicate.

“What people don’t realize is that by pushing someone away, you’re pushing them away! If you need something from them, and you’ve pushed them away, they won’t give it to you. The faulty mindset behind this approach is the reasoning that if I make someone’s life miserable enough, they’ll give me what I want so the misery will stop. Instead, the person will say, ‘She’s hurt me so much, why should I give her a get?’ ”

Kayla is under no illusions as to whom she’s dealing with. “These men aren’t tzaddikim,” she stresses. “For example, there’s a case I dealt with where the husband was literally just extorting her. But making his life miserable just didn’t work, and now there’s nothing left to do to him, so what did you accomplish?

“I find it easier to work with them than against them, even when emotionally it feels better to keep fighting, I try to defer to logic. I suppose there’s a place for the combative approach, but it’s not me.

“My approach is also why I’ve garnered so much rabbinic support. Rabbanim know I’ll never smear their name, or treat them disrespectfully. I don’t work that way, I work with honey, not with vinegar.”

Despite Kayla’s aversion for the militant approach, she recognizes it’s sometimes imperative. In Leah’s case, for example, Eli’s extreme refusal to cooperate rendered peaceful methods obsolete.

“In cases like Leah’s it’s important to determine when all peaceful routes have been tried — in Leah’s case they were — and figure out what will hurt enough to bring a husband to the table,” Kayla says. “In cases like these we absolutely push as hard as we can and won’t shy away from any form of coercion that’s halachically permissible.”

However, she cautions, an aggressive approach must be calibrated, akin to performing surgery. “You have to know precisely where to apply the pressure, and use it only where it’s appropriate,” she says.

Kayla’s surgical approach was evident in a case where the get refuser’s primary concern was maintaining his reputation with a specific rav. After unsuccessful attempts to resolve the matter through conventional routes such as mediation, hazmanos beis din, and other peaceful avenues, Kayla’s team threatened to involve this rav if he remained uncooperative. Within two days the belligerent husband was on board.

“The key here is that we didn’t immediately involve the rav, we first threatened to do it, in order to give him a chance to do the right thing. We found that resorting directly to force just angers get refusers, while initially threatening to use these tactics sometimes works better — not always, but it’s worth a shot.”

Get Refusers’ Playbook

Clearly, Eli’s obstinacy could not be “coached”  into compliance. Eventually, he joined a group of get refusers whose sole objective was to torture their wives and withhold a get. The bitter irony of this subgroup was not lost on Leah.

“They all find each other and support each other, so they’re no longer isolated,” she says. “So here I was, utterly alone in my quest to be free, and Eli has a whole gang of get refusers to encourage him. He became their chief advisor in tactics to evade get coercion. For Eli, giving a get meant giving up his status in this macabre subgroup.”

Kayla is intimately familiar with get refusers like Eli. “There’s a playbook that all get refusers avail themselves of. First, they claim to want shalom bayis, and they play that out for as long as they can, so rabbanim order counseling and marital support for a marriage that is essentially dead. Then they say they ‘just’ want to switch to another beis din, which means each spouse suggests three choices of batei din in lieu of the original one. Then they have to create a zabla (an acronym for ‘zeh borer lo echad’ where each side chooses an arbitrator and the two arbitrators choose a third arbitrator to complete a panel of three). This can waste a significant amount of time. Then, once they’ve settled on a beis din, the get refuser drags it out as long as possible with myriad demands. ‘I just want this or that on the agreement, I want arbitration….’

“Once the beis din actually hands down a psak, get refusers claim parental alienation: ‘I can’t give her the get because she took away my children, and withholding a get is the only piece of leverage I have!’

“My answer to that claim is always the same” — and here Kayla’s voice goes into smooth conciliatory mode — “ ‘Are you seeing your children by withholding a get? Is that working? It’s not working. If there’s a real case of parental alienation, go to court.’ They generally respond with, ‘It’s not that simple.’ But quite frankly, it is. You can get charged for kidnapping if you withhold court-mandated visitation.

“After parental alienation claims don’t work, these men generally go off the grid and disappear. This is their universal playbook. We do our best to prevent the situation from deteriorating, because once he disappears, it’s very hard to secure a get. So before that happens, we try to identify where they are in that process and to prevent a progression by addressing the core problem that’s impeding the get.”

Kayla adds another disturbing detail. “There’s a WhatsApp group and a YouTube channel for get refusers where they collaborate. I actually heard about it from someone who was on it and genuinely regretted his behavior.”

Halachic Help

While Kayla’s work has brought her in touch with too many women who are waiting to receive a get, she is quick to highlight how a woman is protected by halachah. “She can never be forced to accept a get,” Kayla notes.  “In fact, you can’t even force her to clarify her reasons for refusing to accept a get. You absolutely cannot pressure her. Halachically, she has more rights in a marriage than a man.

“Originally, in the times of the Gemara, a man was permitted to marry multiple wives, and theoretically, he could marry as many as he wished,” Kayla qualifies. “In order to protect women, the rabbanim decreed that he may only take a new wife if he would not compromise his care for his first wife. This included physical, financial, and emotional support. To circumvent this, men began divorcing their previous wives, giving out gets like candy, leaving their first wife homeless and without support. Therefore, the rabbanim decreed that a women could never be forced to accept a get, it was within her rights to stay married. And if she decides to accept the get, she has a kesubah, a marital contract, that obligates the man to pay her.

“That’s why you can never pressure a woman to accept a get. However, we can pressure a man to give a get, again to protect the woman. Why? Because we don’t force a Jewish woman to live with a man she does not want to live with.”

Rav Ulman is frank in his assessment of get refusal tactics. “In complete intellectual honesty, we have to admit that men have more solutions than women,” he acknowledges. “Sometimes, when it comes to a vindictive, evil husband who practices extortion or blackmail, we’re stuck. Unlike in Israel, where one can confiscate the passport of a get refuser, or even incarcerate him, in other places in the world civil law doesn’t sanction these methods.”

Despite this sometimes-difficult reality, Rav Ulman believes women are undereducated regarding halachically sanctioned routes to pressure get refusers. The foremost issue in applying pressure on a recalcitrant husband is a concern for effecting a get me’usah, a get forced unwillingly on a man, which, in most cases, is halachically invalid. Therefore, all forms of coercion have to be halachically calibrated to ensure it doesn’t produce this “forced get.”

When Rav Ulman finds a husband withholding a get for reasons of pure malice or control, he will apply Harchakos d’Rabbeinu Tam. Although a man cannot be coerced into giving a get, the beis din may rule that the community should impose certain sanctions on him, such as abstaining from engaging in business with him, denying him an aliyah l’Torah, refraining from burying his deceased relatives, refusing to host him, and any other sanction which beis din wishes, short of excommunication.(The next step, which falls beyond the bounds of Harchakos d’Rabbeinu Tam and turns up the temperature even further, would be to impose a cherem on the recalcitrant husband.)

“This can be used as a potent tool to make someone rethink his get refusal, particularly when he’s reliant on the community,” Rav Ulman says. “These sanctions are intended to make his life very unpleasant — imagine someone who is no longer invited for a Shabbos meal, or cannot receive an aliyah in shul.”

Rav Ulman has applied these sanctions with very favorable results. He believes the key element is in knowing which privileges to leverage in each individual case, whether it be family, friends, business associates, or communal rabbis.

In Leah’s case, Eli was a charter member of a local beis medrash, participating in their predawn kollel and assuming responsibility for all administrative tasks. An intervention was arranged with the rav of the beis medrash, which lasted for hours, where he threatened to ban Eli from the beis medrash unless he agreed to a get. Eli claimed he was willing to give a get, but first demanded vindication.

“It was as if he saw everything in life as a zero-sum game, you have to lose, otherwise it means I lose,” Leah observes. “In this case, if he gave the get, he believed it was an expression of his colossal failure at the game of life: He’d failed at marriage, at parenthood, at Yiddishkeit, at everything. In his dystopian view, if I was right at asking for a divorce, he was an abject failure. He couldn’t live with that.”

Predictably, even after the intervention, Eli dug in his heels and found yet another contrived justification for withholding the get. The rav followed through on his threat, and barred Eli from participating in all beis medrash activities, including the kollel he had once administered.

Rage and Reform

A version of the halachic prenuptial called “the heskem” (agreement) is another tool Rav Ulman suggests to prevent get refusal. Developed with Rav Yosef Feigelstock of Argentina, this prenuptial agreement is similar to the halachic prenup developed by the RCA, with several key differences. Rav Ulman’s version issues from the position that every marriage is a 50-50 partnership — the functional reality of most modern-day households — and treats the financial repercussions of a divorce in kind. In addition, if a spouse is preventing the other from exiting the marriage, whomever is at fault is required to pay approximately $190 a day to the other spouse as “mezonos,” alimony, as opposed to a “knas,” a penalty. The egalitarian nature of this prenuptial proved advantageous in states like California, where state law mandates an agreement be equally favorable to both men and women.

Kayla believes the halachic prenuptial can be a valuable tool. “First of all, it’s a red flag if someone refuses to sign it,” she says. “It automatically will shorten the divorce process, because it indicates the beis din a couple will use. And if a husband uses this as a delay tactic, choosing a beis din can sometimes take up to three years.”

Leah is skeptical that being aware of or discussing a halachic prenup would have helped her. She contends that Eli would have refused to sign one, and verbally wrestled his way out of providing justification for why. Leah likely would not have understood that this was a red flag. “But now, I wouldn’t let a child get married without one,” she maintains.

A month after Leah’s civil divorce was finalized, Eli insisted they apply to the beis din of a certain rav to work out the get. Leah complied, however the rav proved entirely ineffective. “He wouldn’t send any official hazmanos, and he avoided my calls.” Four months later, he finally agreed to sit with Leah and Eli. But when Leah met him, she knew he would not be able to help her. “He was very old and ill, couldn’t consistently follow the thread of conversation during our meeting.” Shortly thereafter, the rav recused himself entirely from their case.

Leah applied to a fifth beis din, who sent one hazmanah without ever following through. In the interim, the third beis din she’d turned to issued three hazmanos, which Eli promptly ignored. The beis din issued a seruv; however, Eli refused to accept their jurisdiction, claiming a convoluted set of circumstances he fabricated.

Leah reached out to yet another beis din, who proposed they sign a shtar berurin (binding arbitration), and commit to several in-person meetings, after which the dayan claimed he would “make Eli give a get.” Leah was unsure how he’d make good on his promise, but at a loss for another solution, she acquiesced.

“Then I received this crazy shtar berurin to sign that had the most ridiculous list of conditions, signed by the dayan,” she recalls. “I knew something was up. It turns out, Eli had concocted his own shtar and forged the dayan’s signature. The dayan confirmed this to be the case, and deemed the shtar berurin fraudulent. Apparently, Eli had refused to sign a regular shtar berurin at all.”

Leah had been separated for five years. She had been civilly divorced for two. Yet Eli would not relinquish his iron grip on their halachic marriage.

Leah was trapped in the paradox of the agunah: consigned to the purgatory of a marriage that had died years before, but could not be put to rest.

Moving Past Anger

Although she firmly disagrees, Kayla understands the origins of the ire toward the institution of beis din and the rabbanim who pilot it. She also recognizes the reason the agunah cause attracts feminist sentiment. “Their anger is coming from a valid place. It issues from women who have been burned by men. The agunah situation as a whole is a situation of men hurting women, and the system that allows it to happen is run by men. Women direct their anger toward the perceived cause of their pain — they see it as men against women. If a woman is asking for help but isn’t getting it, she’s going to start feeling that men are bad.

“At the same time, rage-filled feminism is not my way. You can’t solve this problem by contravening halachah and inventing a beis din of ten women. I firmly believe the Torah gave power to both men and women, but we are two different beings with two different roles. The Torah makes sure men and women don’t hurt each other. When men hurt women, they’re not keeping the Torah.

“I’ve never been in their situation,” Kayla acknowledges, “so I have none of their angst. But every single woman who calls me is angry. And I fully understand them.”

Here, Kayla transitions neatly to rational mode. “But when we just resort to anger and blame, saying, ‘it’s because of the men,’ and then stopping there, we’re bypassing our avenue of help.”

Kayla’s positive experiences with the rabbanim she’s engaged to further her cause have shaped her general perspective on the issue. “Any rav who follows the Torah and has middos and yiras Shamayim, will care about agunos,” Kayla says. “Ninety percent of the rabbanim I’ve spoken to care and help. Ten percent don’t,” Kayla shrugs matter of factly, “but there are always some bad apples.” It’s Kayla’s mission to help women avoid them.

Rav Ulman agrees. “The fact that ruthless, vengeful men abuse the provision that a get must be given willfully, is not a fault in the system,” he argues, “because any system can be abused. Parents abuse their children, should we abolish the institution of parenthood? Teachers abuse students, should we abolish the educational institution? Unfortunately, we also find rabbis who abuse their constituents. Should we abolish the institution of the rabbinate? Instead, we must maintain a zero-tolerance policy for these abuses, and fight them with every resource we can.”

Navigating beis din is another area where Kayla is determined to help women. She provides guidance on beis din procedures, demystifies complicated beis din jargon, and serves as a mainstay of support so a woman doesn’t walk into beis din alone and afraid. Kayla is especially helpful to women who don’t know their rights in beis din, or who are confused by halachic documents they’ve been presented to sign. She will go over the get agreement with women before they sign, and insert comments and changes, before they return to beis din for the get. The Vaad even offers a course on their website explaining the process of a halachic divorce.

Although Kayla and the other members of the Vaad work on a strictly volunteer basis, the Vaad incurs significant expenses. In addition to providing assistance to women who cannot pay for basic beis din fees, they will also underwrite small legal fees, such as for a lawyer to write a mediation agreement. In specific sensitive cases, the Vaad will even pay for a dayan or advocate to fly to the get refuser and obtain the get immediately, before the husband changes his mind or vanishes.

Currently, they are assembling a team of lawyers tasked with protecting dayanim who come under fire for issuing a difficult psak halachah. These measures incentivize dayanim and their batei din to work with the Vaad and expidate a get that may otherwise stall.

Kayla, who is deeply invested in the women she represents, will even pay for groceries if a women, tragically, had to escape her home with nothing but the clothes on her back.

Change and Trust

Kayla’s determined to effect change from the back end as well. In February of 2024 the Vaad held a rabbis asifah with communal rabbanim, spearheaded by Rabbi Ulman and Rabbi Haber. The topic was guiding a divorcing couple, to prevent the situation from escalating to an issue of agunah, and what to do if it does.

Recently, the Vaad conducted a meeting with four influential American dayanim. The stated goal was to increase awareness of and find solutions for precisely the issues Kayla has navigated with her Vaad clients. On the agenda were concerns such as the accountability of the beis din, addressing any abuses perpetuated by and through them, the affordability of beis din, and the need to finance ongoing arbitration when the couple cannot afford it. They also discussed lack of communication between the beis din and the women applying for a get, and proposed measures to ensure respect for the woman so as to maximize trust in the system. Finally, they created a protocol to deal with women who approach the beis din and declare it is unsafe for them to return to their husband.

Leah agrees that it is crucial that rabbanim and batei din develop measures to ensure that the woman feels safe and respected within the system.

“My ex-husband knew he didn’t have to win, all he had to do was keep the war going,” she says. “I think rabbanim, and the community, have to figure out how to prevent husbands from being able to orchestrate this. And it’s not only for the sake of the agunah. I think of some of my children, who were closely watching this whole process, and I can’t say they came out with their faith in the system and in rabbanim intact. And that’s a real tragedy.”

Rav Ulman believes the community has to step up. “Everyone must understand how unethical and immoral it is for a man to leave his wife an agunah,” he says. “He’s holding her hostage and there has to be a zero-tolerance policy for this behavior. If everyone who has any connection to the get refuser, instead of ignoring the situation and going about business as usual, would see what they can do, either on their own, or by persuading other influential people to help, I believe we would drastically reduce the number of agunos in the world.”

“The people in the community who are allowing it to happen are the biggest issue, but not in the conventional sense,” Kayla says, echoing Rav Ulman’s sentiments. “Everyone thinks that supporting an agunah means you have to kick the man out and cut him off. Don’t kick him out! Talk to him, find out why he’s refusing to give the get. Solve the problem! If you see a get refuser simply going about his daily life without a care, don’t ignore it. Ask him sincerely, ‘Why are you refusing to go to beis din?’ or ‘Why aren’t you willing to give a get? I want to help.’ You can’t imagine how many cases we’ve solved simply because someone went over to the husband and respectfully spoke to him about the issue.

“We are a communal religion, and beis din is only as effective as the community that listens to it. The community likes to take care of widows and orphans; agunos aren’t as popular a cause. That has to change.”

For Leah, negotiating the labyrinth of multiple batei din was a Sisyphean task. All told, she applied to a shocking nine batei din in an attempt to secure her get. In the end, the beis din came to her.

A year later their case was transferred to a different district, whose judge ordered Eli slapped with severe financial penalties, unless he consented to issue a get within 12 hours. At this point Kayla was already involved in Leah’s case and realized that Eli, sensing the game was up, could disappear at a moment’s notice. She swung into action. Over the next three hours, in the anteroom of the court, a unique drama unfolded. Kayla called Rav Ulman to determine that the judge’s decision didn’t render the get a get me’usah. With his consent, she called in her contacts, cobbled together a beis din, eidim (kosher witnesses), and a sofer to write the get and had them collected and driven in from the city to a nearby beis medrash. Remarkably, even now, with the curtains closing on him, Eli made a last attempt to avoid giving the get. But this time, the beis din was prepared; they had been briefed on precisely who they’d be dealing with. Eli tried to claim the get would be forced, and therefore invalid. “No problem,” the dayan responded. “You can agree instead to pay the fines mandated by the judge. Do you agree to pay them? Because if not, then you’re choosing to give a get of your own free will.”

It took three more hours of haggling, but finally — after 11 interminable years and ten batei din — Eli handed over the get.

It had been hours since the endless day had faded to a frigid winter evening, but the nighttime air had a sharp, fresh nip to it, and Leah walked out of the beis medrash into the night invigorated, get in hand.

After so many years, after so many battles, she was finally free. Ff

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 939)