When a soldier is missing, what happens to his wife?

Our hearts and minds are pained, on a daily basis, with news of unthinkable tragedies due to the October 7^th attack on Israel and the ongoing war. The trauma of those taken hostage, murdered, wounded or fallen in battle, continues to shock us all. Beyond those calamities there is an unspoken tragedy of which most individuals are not aware — the real possibility of wives finding themselves as a classic agunah.

The classic agunah is a wife whose husband has disappeared without a trace or is in a medical state where he is not capable of expressing his will. In the last decade, there have been cases in Israel of men who lie in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) — living for years by virtue of medical technology, but with severe brain damage without mental activity. Both situations – disappearance and PVS — can be caused by accidents, war or terrorism (such as the terrorist attack of 9/11 in NYC). The wives are agunot, chained to a non-existent marriage.

During this war in Israel, there has been ongoing hatarat agunot – the “freeing” of wives whose husbands were brutally murdered by Hamas or taken prisoner. With gut-wrenching sorrow, all the agunot were freed by identification of human remains — whether by identification of husbands massacred in the initial attack or of the return of men killed in captivity. The anguish is indescribable. Moreover, the urgency of the process of hatarat agunot is felt deeply by all those involved in this difficult process. In each case, medical, dental and forensic experts contribute their expertise and present their findings to a Beit Din made up of dayanim with deep knowledge of the halakhot. The Beit Din weighs testimony from witnesses of an individual’s murder and even from individuals who heard from an actual witness who was subsequently himself murdered. Each and every determination of death and identification is a lengthy, complex process, undertaken by dedicated rabbanim — both of the IDF Rabbinate and the civil rabbinate.

Within the IDF there is a procedure for the prevention of the creation of agunot. The concept has existed since the wars of Moshe Rabbenu and of King David. Based on the same concept, at the inception of the IDF, Military Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren drew up a document of harsha’ah l’get – “Authorization to Give a Get in Wartime” on behalf of the husband. This official IDF document was based on the text Chief Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog had authored during World War II, which was signed by men who joined the Jewish Brigade and went off to battle in Europe. Today, the IDF harsha’ah l’get contains two independent conditions upon which a Beit Din can free a classic agunah by giving her a get as a proxy for the husband: either the husband’s disappearance for a full year with no knowledge of his existence or the medical determination of an injury causing no mental activity. The signing of this document gives married soldiers a chance to protect their wives, if G-d forbid great harm should come to them. This protection, a kind of insurance policy hopefully never meant to be implemented, is a mature, deep demonstration of caring for one’s spouse, allowing her to rebuild her life from within tragedy if it should befall the couple.

The Jewish people in Israel as well as in the Diaspora, have found themselves victims of terrorism or accidents. In these troubled times unanticipated catastrophes can occur anywhere. However, the one singularly Jewish tragedy which may befall a Jewish woman world-wide – that of becoming an agunah, can be prevented. For the married woman, the husband can sign a halakhic harsha’ah l’get. More simply, marrying couples can prevent a future agunah situation, G-d forbid, by signing a document right before the wedding. The “Tripartite Agreement – Heskem Hachut Hameshulash” contains several mechanisms, including a harsha’ah l’get, which in the case of tragic circumstances of the mental disability or the disappearance of the husband, a Beit Din can act as his proxy — appointed by him to free his wife.

In contemporary society, health insurance, life insurance and wills all come to minimize misfortune should it befall us. So too would married soldiers sign the IDF harsha’ah l’get, while world-wide, all marrying couples should sign the “Tripartite Agreement” to prevent unnecessary life-long heartbreak in the face of unexpected tragedy.