Playing on Broadway currently is A Doll’s House, Part 2, a sequel of sorts to Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 drama about the collapse of a respectable marriage. The play, of course, isn’t about Jews; there were virtually none in Norway until 1892, only about two years before Lucas Hnath’s new play takes place. But there are parallels between the 19th century period drama and a problem in the Jewish community today.

(Minor spoilers ahead.)

The “Part 2” to A Doll’s House takes place fifteen years after the conclusion of the original play, when Nora Helmer has finally realized that her marriage is toxic, and that she has no identity of her own outside of that of wife and mother, so she leaves her family. Part 2 begins when she knocks on the door through which she had left. It turns out, despite her thinking otherwise, her husband, Torvald, never filed their divorce. Having made enemies for her radical beliefs about women and marriage, Nora now realizes that she is vulnerable to legal action for acting in a way a married woman in her society may not— like owning property, and having lovers.

But the law has another unfair obstacle against women. A man may quickly, and for no reason, obtain a bill of divorce from his wife. A woman must begin a protracted legal battle, in which she must prove she deserves her freedom, with extreme allegations such as that her husband was abusive.

One strength of the play is how modern it feels; though the setting is firmly nineteenth century, the characters speak with modern voices, and their debates feel fresh, from conversations about feminism to the question of why we even have the institution of marriage. But it is in the inciting action of the play, Nora needing Torvald to be free, that wouldn’t quite apply in today’s society.

Well, in today’s secular, American society. While divorce is largely a lengthier process than a trip down to the town clerk, it tends, at least on paper, to provide equal footing to men and women alike. Not so in Judaism (and by extension, Israel), where a marriage ends when a man presents a woman with a divorce document. Even when men eventually relent and grant their wives divorces, it often puts them in positions of power, having the upper hand in negotiating finances, custody of the children, et cetera.

In A Doll’s House, Part 2, Nora finds herself similarly beholden to Torvald, after taking it on blind faith over a decade ago that he would do what they agreed. Although their marriage has been over for fifteen years, she suddenly finds herself coaxing, pushing, even manipulating to make a formal end of things that would set her legally free. All he has to do is sit there and become convinced, or not.

Torvald is clearly not a bad man. But as the man, he holds the power, and while it doesn’t exactly corrupt him, he’s not eager to level the playing field. Nora, the early feminist, is furious at the unfairness of it all. Even outside of her own circumstances, she wants the release of women everywhere from the bonds of marriage; she considers it a cage.

How upset would Nora be that over a century later, even when so much has changed about marriage and women in society, some women are still stuck in shells of former marriages, because the man refuses to relinquish his power over her?

And how much of a shondeh is it that it’s happening in parts of our community?

Photo of Chris Cooper and Laurie Metcalf in A Doll’s House, Part 2. By Brigitte Lacombe. 

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The Israeli film Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, is what a Kafka-esque movie would be if Kafka were a feminist. It is a surreal, maddening, even funny story, which—like the recent Iranian film A Separation—uses a personal tragedy to call attention to a larger travesty, a particular kind of injustice that occurs in the world every day.

The set up is simple. A long-married Israeli woman and mother of four, Viviane Amsalem (the terrific Ronit Elkabetz), wants her freedom in the form of a gett, a Jewish divorce. Her pious and, as we learn, passive-aggressive husband, Elisha (Simon Ekbarian), refuses. According to the laws of the land, the couple must appear before a beit din (rabbinic court) and lay their arguments out before a panel of three Orthodox rabbis. If those judges are not convinced that the wife has grounds to terminate the marriage, the husband’s refusal stands. The wife remains trapped.

For all intents and purposes, she and Elisha are no longer a couple; they do not speak, let alone co-habit. Viviane has been living in an outbuilding on her sister’s property for the past three years. But the judges demand to know more. If Elisha does not beat her, if he does not withhold money or sex, if he is not an adulterer, then he is not a bad husband; and if he is not a bad husband, why should she want to leave?

In vain do Viviane and her lawyer, Carmel (played with power and desperation by Menashe Noy), try to explain that the man and the woman in question are badly matched for each other. She has regretted their semi-arranged marriage, which began when was 15, from its first days; ever since, she and Elisha have made each other miserable. The judges shrug as though to say, Nu? They send Viviane “home”—back to her husband’s house—to try to work it out. When that fails, they tell the plaintiff and the defendant to call witnesses.

Since the entire film takes place over five years (!) in a bleak cell-like courtroom and its adjoining waiting areas, the relatives and neighbors summoned to testify liven up the proceedings that otherwise remain as claustrophobic and dystopian as Terry Gilliam’s bureaucratic fantasy Brazil. They inject some much needed energy and even levity. They also help give a fuller picture of contemporary Israeli society, how insular it can be, how gossipy and constrained, even for those who try to live a modest yet fundamentally secular life. As Viviane’s sister says bitterly at one point, “Life for a divorced woman here is shit.”

The judges seem shocked, but more by the language than the sentiment. They must know that, as grim as the process is for Viviane to gain her freedom, her future is even grimmer: any victory is bound to be pyrrhic. Unless—like the wife in A Separation—she tries to take her children and leave, she will continue to be bound by the laws of a theocracy that values her husband’s honor over her happiness.

Image: Ronit Elkabetz as Viviane in ‘Gett.’ (Courtesy of Music Box Films)

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Some good news: Gital Dodelson is finally officially divorced, according to civil law and an Orthodox rabbinic court. The 25-year-old woman—who has been fighting to obtain a get from her husband, Avrohom Meir Weiss, for three years—announced the news on Wednesday via her publicist, Shira Dicker.

Dodelson’s story first came to our attention via this impassioned piece in the New York Post in November 2013, in which she detailed Weiss’ controlling behavior and emotional abuse:

On my last mission to ask for a get, a month ago, Avrohom said, “I can’t give you a get — how else would I control you?” I think that’s the key to it all. He insists the marriage isn’t over until he says it’s over.

We’ve tried everything — the informal route, negotiations. I’ve asked him myself, my parents have asked his, our camp tries to reason with his camp, but, counting down from the time when he sued for custody in March 2010 and I first asked him for a get, we’ve been shut down for 3¹/₂ years. One proposal his side put forward in January was for me to agree to override the court decision on custody of Aryeh and hand over a payment of $350,000. There’s no way I can afford that.

She also appeared on This American Life a few weeks ago in Mark Oppenheimer’s excellent segment on agunot (the Hebrew term for women whose husbands refuse to grant them a divorce—literally, “chained women”). According to Dodelson, Weiss was constantly changing his demands for the condition of the get. At one point he insisted that she agree to tell their four-year-old son (when he was older) that the failure of the marriage was her fault. Weiss’ family refused to comment on the case to Oppenheimer; his lawyer refuted Dodelson’s claims.

It’s a happy ending (or at least a bittersweet one) for Dodelson—but not so for scores of Jewish women all over the world stuck in marital limbo. Fortunately, there are advocacy groups working hard to support them and bring about change. (Over at Tablet, Batya Ungar-Sargon has a fantastic profile of Susan Weiss, the American-born lawyer pushing Israel’s rabbinate to change the way it handles divorce proceedings. Also related: this piece about a real-life ‘Get Detective’ who specializes in tracking down recalcitrant Jewish husbands who have abandoned their wives. Dark but compelling reading.)

Dodelson’s mother, Saki Dodelson, has vowed to start an organization to help other agunot. Says Dicker, “The family isn’t just skipping into the sunset. There’s a real sense of responsibility here.”

Photo credit: Shutterstock.

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