Israel’s shame: children and families in danger

By Av Maftzir

The innocent and hardest hit victims in many cases of acrimonious divorces are the children, who have to cope not only with the breakup of their parents and families, and perhaps even separation from siblings, but also the fallout from long, drawn-out and bitter battles fought in one or more courts, religious and secular, occasionally even at the same time. Unfortunately, neither one of these court systems is properly trained, sufficiently equipped or adequately experienced to handle these tough cases.

The government granted the rabbinical courts jurisdiction over Jewish divorces, but the founding fathers could never have foreseen a system whose power – and abuse of power – has spiraled uncontrollably beyond the termination of marriages by means of the supervision of bills of divorce (get). This oversight functioned was meant to be carried out by dayanim (rabbinically ordained judges) under halakha – religious Jewish law – but the rabbinical courts have betrayed this mandate time and again. Whenever the rabbinical courts fail to adhere to their own detailed, written code of proper judicial procedure, as they do frequently, they violate the Torah’s repeated admonitions not to pervert justice.

In effect, the rabbinical courts have ruled themselves out of any reason for existing. As dozens of PAS sufferers know (www.parentalalienation.net), the rabbinical courts routinely ignore recommendations of social workers whose opinions the dayanim themselves have commissioned. Shockingly, The Jerusalem Post has obtained an official document proving that the rabbinical supreme court has twice knowingly sanctioned – even ordered – the violation of the Sabbath, as well as favoring Christian holidays over Jewish ones in the matter of parental visitation. If the rabbinical courts’ raison d’etre is supposed to be to uphold and preserve halakha, they should close their doors forthwith, because the obligations of halakha have been shown to come a distant second to covering up the mistakes of dayanim, and this continuing disregard for halakha constitutes a hilul hashem, a desecration of G-d’s name.

Unfortunately, given the political reality in Israel today, the rabbinical courts are not only unlikely to be abolished, they are threatening to amass even more power, as recent legislation promulgated by Shas suggests. Therefore, the only feasible alternative is to work out an arrangement whereby everyone’s institutional interests – even those of the rabbinical courts – are protected, for the sake of our children.

The most urgent priority is to set up a special category for divorces where children are involved -- and custody (or custodial arrangements) is disputed. In all such cases heard in a rabbinical court, a committee comprising a representative of the rabbinical courts, a representative of the family courts, and a social worker or child psychologist must approve the custody situation – and its subsequent enforcement – before a get is given.

The same kind of committee should be required to approve any order given by a rabbinical court to secular authorities, be they the police or the Executions Office. It is inconceivable that in a democracy, judicial clerics have direct power to give executive orders to the secular police force and a secular enforcement agency, both with powers of arrest and imprisonment. The religious courts have their own unfettered punishments they can mete out, such as excommunication; and any crossover into the exercise of deprivation of freedom, in violation of the spirit of the Knesset’s Basic Law: A Person’s Dignity and Liberty, steers our fragile democracy into the orbit of Khomeinism.

Enforcement of custodial, visitation and consultation rights must be made equal and automatic, in the same way that enforcement of child support monetary payments is.

Currently, an extra level of court involvement and intervention is required for custodial enforcement to be put on a par with child maintenance payments; even then, the police are generally recalcitrant about carrying out the court’s orders. Unequal enforcement of separate-but-equal clauses in one, integral judicial ruling is a double standard that no democratic system can tolerate.

The secular family court system is also years behind reforms that have become commonplace in many states in the US. For example, many counties and states require that couples attend court-ordered mediation, in an effort to unclog the system and defuse court battles, where all sides lose except the divorce lawyers.

More importantly, many jurisdictions have mandatory parenting courses that divorcing parents must attend before obtaining a legal divorce. This is a necessity in this country, to avoid situations where children become pawns in parents’ manipulations, and to reinforce the truism that parents divorce each other, not their children. The Ministries of Justice and Social Affairs should immediately establish a joint task force to see that a curriculum is created and classes implemented.

Finally, in cases where parents remain intractable and children are being torn apart, the courts must step in and appoint guardians ad lidem, and even attorneys, to represent the interests of the children that are being ignored by the blinding emotions of parents in various stages of anger, hatred, revenge or self-righteousness. Such temporary guardians or lawyers can enable parents to communicate with each other and the children out of an understanding of the latter’s needs, and without making the children fear parental reprisal, or that they are favoring one parent over another.

The cards are stacked against these kids anyway. Research shows that more than 50% of children of divorced parents have failed marriages themselves. The figures are even worse when one of the parental role models is denigrated or absent. Let’s give them a chance to even the odds.

Maftzir is a US-trained divorce mediator currently living in Israel. He is writing a book of case studies entitled Laws from Heaven, Judgments from Hell.

He welcomes people who wish to contribute to the book.