By Reb Ezra Weinberg
Parshat Ki Teitzei
“How do you refer to those families in your community who live outside of the traditional family structure?” I once asked Rabbi Susan Goldberg, a colleague of mine who was the spiritual leader of Nefesh, a start-up Jewish community. “Oh, you mean the majority of my community,” she replied. “We call them `Torah Families’ because they resemble the kinds of families we see modeled all throughout our most sacred and ancient text, the Torah.”
And she is right. The families of our patriarchs and Moses, venerated as they may be, are also textbook cases of evolving family structures, including intermarriage, multiple spouses, broken-up families, and refugee status. The Torah does not hide any of it, including divorce.
And it’s not just the stories and characters in the Torah who exemplify “Torah Families.” Non-traditional families are also referenced in the laws of Deuteronomy, specifically in the phenomenon of divorce, as we see in Deuteronomy 24:1.
A man takes a woman [into his household as his wife] and becomes her husband. And it comes to pass that she does not find favor in his eyes, and he writes her a bill of divorcement, hands it to her and sends her away from his house.
Apparently, in Biblical times, divorce was common and relevant enough to appear in the Torah. Although divorce is mentioned only once in the entire Torah, the subject of ending marriages merits an entire tractate of Talmud. Divorce is not a topic our sages shied away from. In fact, the schools of Hillel and Shammai famously disagreed, as they tended to do, on what constituted grounds for a divorce.
In Talmud Bavli (Tractate Gittin 90A), we read three different interpretations of the verse from this week’s parsha. “The school of Shammai says: A man may not divorce his wife unless he found in her an act of adultery. The school of Hillel says [he may divorce her] even if she burned his dish … Rabbi Akiva says: [he may divorce her] Even if he found another [woman] more attractive than her, for it is stated in Deuteronomy 24:1 `And it comes to pass that she does not find favor in his eyes.’” True to form, the more conservative school of Shammai argues for a stricter interpretation than the school of Hillel. Even the great Rabbi Akiva, to the debate, lends it even more gravitas.
Tempting as it is to focus on the obvious cringe-worthy grounds for divorce in Biblical and Rabbinic Judaism, that discussion awaits another D’var Torah. Rather, the Torah and our sages highlight something that we, the American Jewish community, take for granted, and if you’re not paying attention, you could miss it. Divorce is visible in the Torah as well as in our rabbinic tradition. Our ancestors spent time deliberating the legal ramifications of divorce, leaving us a record of their makhlaot, their sacred disagreements. But the existence of divorce is not a disagreement. Divorce exists and has been around for a long time. It is actually considered a mitzvah and is one of the 613 commandments in the Torah.
Historically and religiously, there is nothing abnormal about getting divorced. Divorce might be challenging for many reasons, but it is as real a Jewish lifecycle event as marriage, bnai mitzvah, birth and death. Divorce is a highly vulnerable, life-altering journey that 40-50% of the Jewish population live through and a moment of life deserving of care and communal support. While few would disagree with that claim, a long, dark shadow of isolation, shame and repulsion has been cast over Jews going through divorce in contemporary times.
With this in mind, we might ask: How might we better serve, collectively, the people going through divorce today? How do we begin treating divorce as a sacred and holy lifecycle moment that deserves our communal attention and care? What will it take to acknowledge the fear around it so that we can look it in the eye and show up for each other? If divorce has widespread visibility in our ancient texts, perhaps we need to have the courage to send an overdue message to our own people going through divorce: our ancient tradition sees you and may that inspire us to see you and be there for you.
Reb Ezra Weinberg is a freelance rabbi (www.rebezra.com) in Philadelphia and founder of jewsgetdivorce.com – a network of resources for Jews going through divorce.
