Divorce in jewish law and the problem of agunah

Marriage and construction of family is fundamentally important in Judaism. Most marriages can survive but some marriages face certain problems and come to a mutual need to resolve the marriage, i.e. divorce. The Tanakh, the basic Jewish religious text provides main rules for both marriage and divorce. According to Jewish law the sole initiator of divorce procedure is husband. The role of wife in traditional Jewish divorce is mainly dependent on husband's will. In some cases husband ignores his wife and his duties towards her and does not divorce her. In the cases like this, the wife is trapped in the marriage. On the one hand she cannot continue her family life because her husband abandoned her, on the other hand she cannot end the marriage because her husband refuses to divorce her. The woman in this situation is called as agunah. The agunah is a very delicate and complex topic in Jewish family law. This dissertation gives a short information about marriage and divorce in Jewish tradition and then focuses on the problem of agunah. There are some contemporary efforts by Jewish scholars to protect Jewish women from negative effects of agunah. Main aim of current study is to provide a comparative investigation of outstanding solution proposals for the problem of agunah in Jewish context.