Annapolis, USA - A wife testified Thursday that a bill would free women “trapped” in Jewish marriages, but her husband blasted it as a constitutional and religious violation.
The legislation “releases captives,” said Cynthia Ohana, a Baltimore City woman whose struggle to get an Orthodox Jewish divorce from her husband, Ephraim Ohana, launched city protests.
“This is a hostage situation. We are being held for ransom,” she said before the House Judiciary Committee in Annapolis.
Orthodox Jewish law prevents women from remarrying until their husbands give them a “get,” or religious divorce.
For women who don’t receive a get to remarry, they must do so outside of the synagogue, and any subsequent children could not be Orthodox Jews.
Del. Sandy Rosenberg, D-Baltimore City, sponsored a bill that would require men to sign an affidavit promising they remove all religious barriers to remarriage when a couple files for a civil divorce.
Rosenberg’s bill failed in 1998, but he said he made a better case this year with the testimony of Cynthia Ohana and Sara Rosenbloom, another “agunah,” the Hebrew word for “anchored.”
Ephraim Ohana argued that the legislation violated the U.S. Constitution and his religion.
“A get can only be voluntarily given,” he said. “Any coercion invalidates a get.”
Cynthia Ohana, who divorced Ephraim in 2005, and Sara Rosenbloom, who divorced Sam Rosenbloom, of Gaithersburg, in 1999, have held protests to call attention to their plights.
This bill wouldn’t help them because they had civil divorces.
Some delegates questioned whether the legislation entangled the state with religion, but several rabbis testified that a constitutional precedent exists in New York, where a similar law was passed 20 years ago.
“We are treading very closely on the separation of church and state … and we have to be very cautious here, but I believe we have accomplished that,” said Del. Benjamin Kramer, D-Montgomery County.
“Let us not have two other women sitting here in five years” asking for the same measure, said Nathan Lewin, the attorney who wrote New York’s law in 1983.