Why does this religious divorce matter to the women? Why don’t they just walk away? They explain, in their own voices. Advocates and legal experts also weigh in on the abuse and violation of Jewish law that fuels the agunah crisis.

The women fall in love, or they decide to give a nice guy a chance. But red flags start to pop up. There’s abuse. And the women escape. A normal divorce story would end there, but they’re still trapped. They’re agunot- “chained women.” That’s because their husbands refuse to give them a religious divorce, known as a gett. 

 The women in Getting Free are professionals, mothers, neighbors, and leaders. This is where their fight for freedom begins.

Meet the five women of Getting Free.  They come from different parts of the United States and different cultures, but they have one thing in common- after escaping miserable marriages, they faced one last impossible hurdle: getting their abusers to agree to a Jewish divorce.

It’s time they tell their stories.

Imagine finally escaping a marriage after years of abuse. But there’s one last step- you need your abuser’s permission to get a divorce. That’s the reality for the Jewish women in Getting Free, and countless others around the world. Their husbands use a religious tradition to trap them in marriages that should have ended a long time ago.  But it doesn't have to be this way. 

To learn more about this issue, and to help put an end to it, please join the International Beit Din at our conference “Redefining Freedom” on May 21st with the Gruss Program at the NYU School of Law. To learn more and register go to https://www.internationalbeitdin.org/campaign-to-end-iggun/