my new sunglasses

my new sunglasses
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

I bought these downtown. Lev calls them "our glasses."

I was at the rabbinic court yesterday, with an old friend who had vanished for twelve years. I found her last week on facebook. Her last dozen years had involved increasing immersion in chasidic judaism, an arranged marriage (three dates; six weeks), five kids, and the slow but urgent realization that she needed to get a divorce. I found her the week before her appointment at the rabbinic court for the "get" (divorce). Under Jewish law, a woman needs the man's consent to get divorced and for a long time he had refused to grant it. All Jewish marriages and divorces in Israel are done by the rabbinate; you cannot have a secular marriage in this country. So the rabbinate is full of all kinds of "clients", from the ultra-orthodox to the entirely secular, and it is a strange mixture of the bureaucratic and rabbinic, with rabbis in long coats wandering the shabby hallways with file folders and bottles of scribal ink. There was no real waiting room, so I found myself sitting knee to knee with other couples waiting to get a divorce. Across from me was a sephardic couple who had been married 29 years; they gave the impression of still being a couple, as she checked over his divorce file to see if it was complete and he joked that they should hold off on the divorce another year so they could have a thirtieth anniversary party. He said, It's her decision and I respect it - we're still friends. But when he left the room she looked entirely different, suddenly frightened and angry. She leaned forward and hissed at me - he says we're friends? We're not friends. I feel like a sickness has been lifted out from me - I'm born again today.

Anyway, my friend got her divorce, though it almost didn't happen, but many women are still waiting. http://www.jofa.org/about.php/advocacy/whatyoucando