The Aguna Crisis Isn’t About Divorce
In this post analyzing complex layers of an issue in our community, and calling for nuance, I’m going to start with an absolute:
The get is not, and should never be, a bargaining chip. Full stop.
A get-refuser needs to give his wife a get. Right now.
Ok, now let’s get into it. And stay with me, I promise I’ll get there.
The Jewish marital system was instituted centuries ago, and yes, it was progressive for its time. The ketuba tried to protect women when they had no agency in society. But “for its time” is the operative phrase. The ketuba was born when women were trafficked as pawns in political dynasties.
Baruch Hashem, we believe that Torah and Halacha are mayim chayim—a running stream that is timeless and flowing. And we know that “Lo Bashamayim Hi”, that it is up to us to interpret how the infinite morality of God’s laws translate to life on earth.
There are halakhic solutions to solve the Aguna crisis: Bittul kiddushin, Tnai kiddushin, Get al tnai, prenups, postnups, and other mechanisms. The saying is true: when there is a rabbinic will, there is a halakhic way. We see this constantly, like selling our chametz to circumvent the prohibition against owning whiskey on Pesach.
So the question isn’t whether solutions exist. It’s why we refuse to use them.
Six years ago, I spent nine months working in the ‘Aguna-verse’—for an organization trying to solve the aguna crisis. I didn’t last long in that job, but it left a lasting mark on me.
I met countless women chained to recalcitrant husbands, their lives suspended, their agency stripped away. And I realized that until we name the real root of the problem, the solution will always be reactive and incomplete.
The problem isn’t Jewish divorce. The problem is Jewish marriage.
The Architecture of Unequal Power
The mechanism of kiddushin—the Jewish marriage ceremony—is built on a foundational imbalance. The husband acquires the wife. Literally, in the language of Halacha.
From the moment the bride accepts the ring, the couple starts on an uneven playing field. Her husband halachically ‘owns’ her, and she cannot leave without his permission. (Yes, there are female gett refusers, who refuse to accept a gett. But there are halachic mechanisms to allow men their freedom, that surprise surprise, are much more easily attained and accepted)
And well, if you hand an abuser the legal and religious tools with which to abuse…. you get an Aguna crisis.
The intricacies and venues of the crisis vary from place to place. In the USA, the system relies on your communal loyalty, on which Bet Din and what rabbi you follow; communities ignore seruvim far too often, and agunot are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. In Israel, where there is no civil marriage or divorce, the Rabbinate drags its feet and barely ever uses their own legal tools of sanctions.
But across the board, it’s clear: we’ve built a system that hands one party unilateral control over the other’s freedom and future.
As Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll of Chochmat Nashim says: Every single Jewish woman is a potential aguna.
Halachic prenups matter—please sign one—but they’re not the solution. They put sanctions on the recalcitrant spouse, but they’re a band-aid on a fundamentally broken system. The real solutions are embedded in our Halacha, but require leaders with the will and courage to use them. And communities willing to accept them.
We need to ask the right questions.
Instead of: “How do we help individual women trapped in the system?”
Let’s ask: “Why do we have a system that traps women in the first place? And who will use the halakhic tools we already have to fix it?”
Now, let’s talk about that ‘how’, because the how is integral to our impact.
Tznius, Male Gaze, and Reclaiming Agency
(I promise, we’re getting there. Stay with with me)
Tznius is usually translated as “modesty,” but that barely scratches the surface. It’s been weaponized for generations to keep women small.
At my very mainstream frum high school, we were met at the gate every day by two male principals who looked us over carefully, and sent us home if a skirt was too short, we weren’t wearing socks, or an elbow was exposed. The message was loud, clear, and reinforced by teachers who insisted they can’t concentrate on teaching (15-year-old girls) if our knees were showing, because it made them think about sex.
Can you say ‘male gaze’?!
Tznius has been almost entirely explained through the male gaze: women should cover themselves so men don’t sin. (And yes, there are tznius laws for men too, but no boy was ever taught “wear a shirt so a woman doesn’t drool over your abs”.)
I’ve reclaimed this value by translating tznius as dignity, not modesty. I made it about intention, agency, and self-respect.
Every morning, I ask myself: Am I presenting my physical self with intention? Does this allow me to be my best self, for me and for Hashem? (Yup, my purple hair, mitpachat, jeans, and T-shirts pass this test for me.)
This reframe has been transformative and allowed me to stay connected to this mitzva, while healing my religious trauma.
More and more women are reclaiming tznius by removing the male gaze entirely.
We’re saying: My body is a temple. I keep it private for me and those I choose to share it with. Not so men don’t sin. For me. This mindset shift is how women stay Orthodox and still live with agency.
The Free-Agunot Campaign and the Danger of Populism
So here we are. (Told ya we’d make it!)
When a well-known podcast invites one who is well known as a get-refuser to speak about Jewish divorce, we have a problem. No disclosure. No context. Just a platform.
That man’s wife has been chained to him for years. The community failed her. The rabbinate failed her.
I understand why a recent viral campaign to free agunot exploded. After decades of silence, of institutions protecting abusers, there’s desperation to be seen.
But I can’t agree with the method.
The campaign called on religious women to post photos that violate tzniut—to bare their skin to highlight institutional hypocrisy. And while women have been answering the call in all sorts of interesting ways (my fave was the woman who posted herself making noodles, and there have been dozens of women showing little or no actual skin)…. The campaign puts tznius right back in the lens of the male gaze.
That’s my problem with the ‘how’: the campaign takes the very tool women have been reclaiming for themselves—their dignity, their agency, their right to define their own bodies—and inverts it. It asks them to use their bodies through the male gaze, in violation of their own values.
Women get to choose what they do with their bodies. If a woman wants to show bikini pics online, I mean, go for it, I guess (just remember the internet is forever). And if a woman chooses to keep her body private, to honor tznius in a way that feels right to her, that choice should be respected—not pressured, shamed, or ridiculed when they voice their dissent.
The campaign is also surfacing the danger of populism, the seductiveness of moral certainty and purity culture in a polarized world.
We are all guilty of it, me especially. When I consume any media, I can’t help but put it in a box even before listen to the opinion being shared. In our incredibly complex world, we strive to reduce every creator, every persona, down to ‘good’ (insert your ideology here- progressive/conservative/pro-Israel/frum/etc) or ‘bad’ (the opposite).
I get it, really I do.
It is tempting to turn off our brain, explain away why one boycott or cancellation is bad (because it’s someone we identify with) and the other is righteous (we must take a stand to defend our values!).
Even here, I know there are shades of gray, and that there are few absolutes in life. And Torah helps too, giving us some pretty clear instructions about who to alienate from society (hint: get-refusers are on that list). •
Which brings us back to the how.
How we get justice, how we repair this, how we keep women from becoming agunot—that requires nuance. It requires more than performative activism.
It requires building new systems.
And to do that, we need to make an important distinction between activism and social entrepreneurship.
Activism is the struggle against something. It’s burning bad systems down.
Social entrepreneurship is finding solutions. It’s asking: what does justice actually look like, and how do we create it?
Both are needed. We need activists saying: this is intolerable. The aguna crisis is a moral emergency.
But we also need people building. Women, Men, and organizations demanding deeper solutions. Communities deciding they will no longer protect abusers. Men examining the power they’ve inherited.
And we need to find and empower Rabbanim and Rabbaniyot who have the will to use the halakhic tools that can actually solve this. We need religious leaders who understand that protecting women is protecting the tradition.
What Now?
I work in social entrepreneurship because I believe in the possibility of repair. Mayim chayim isn’t just a concept—it’s a call to action. We can transform this tradition.
Women: Demand halachic prenups as non-negotiable. Then, go deeper. Donate and get involved with organizations building solutions.
Communities: Stop protecting abusers. Name them. Then identify the rabbis and rabbaniyot who dare to use the full toolkit of Halacha. Amplify them. Make them the ones we listen to.
Men: The kiddushin structure gives you control—will you use it to protect, or to harm? Will you stand with the rabbis and rabbaniyot trying to dismantle this system?
Educators: Teach a different Judaism. One where marriage means partnership. Where the halakhic tools that exist are actually used to protect the vulnerable. One where shivim panim laTorah can hold nuance and multiple perspectives.
We need Rabbanim and Rabbaniyot who understand their job is to use every halakhic tool to free women from the aguna crisis. Not to protect a rotting system. To save the tradition by fixing it. We need organizations like ORA and Chochmat Nashim and the International Bet Din and Metirot and Itim and Yad Laisha and so many others.
The campaign for agunot means building a Judaism where no woman or man ever ends up chained. Where the system works for everyone—especially those at the margins.
Because every single Jewish woman is a potential aguna. And that reality should shake us to our core.
The Halacha is there. The tradition is there. The morality is clear.
What we need is the courage to rebuild.
Editor’s note: A correction was made to this blog post on May 13, 2026. References to private individuals were removed, along with certain statements that were presented without any verified evidence and that should not have been published. We acknowledge this error and sincerely apologize to the individual for the harm caused.
