Breaking up is Hard to Do

R Eliyahu Safran:

«Getting married is easy – the joy, the grace, the dignity of the wedding day!  The beauty of the bride.  The nervous anticipation of the groom.  The proud and delightful parents.

Ending a marriage is hard, hurtful, painful.  There is sadness and shame.  Where there had once been joy and respect, there is now recrimination.  And questions.  Hard questions.  What had gone wrong?  Where should you go from here?

Marriage and divorce are not two sides of the same coin but polar opposites on the same spectrum.  Still, they have one thing in common.  In both, there must be respect and dignity.   We must embrace the same dignity and care at the end of a marriage just as we do at the beginning.  We must.  And yet, too often in the Orthodox community we do not.  Too often, we are seeing men withholding a Get as an emotional – and practical – cudgel which, in effect, enslaves a woman, damning her to a life that is neither here nor there, neither married nor able to move on with her life.»

Religious Divorce Must Not Be an Emotional Weapon - Judaism - Israel National News
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14128#.Uo6CgJuwHQV


Kol Tuv,
RRW