ABSTRACT

This chapter describes the ways in which civil courts have engaged with Jewish law to provide remedies that level the playing field between Jewish spouses. It focuses the ways in which rabbinical courts can collaborate with civil courts to aid this process, by testifying as expert witnesses and drafting religious prenuptial agreements that carve out a role for civil court enforcement. Orthodox Jewish women can have a complicated relationship to family law. Their marital lives are founded on a religious marriage contract and be governed by daily observance of religious obligations regarding food, comportment, conduct and marital intimacy. Jewish law differs from Anglo-American civil marriage and the model of Christian religious marriage upon which it is based in two key ways. Experts on the operation of Jewish law in the United States have made the point that Islamic religious arbitration can learn from the instructive experience of Jewish law arbitration.