Agunah Revisited: How To Avoid High Conflict Divorce

Transcripts are produced by Sofer.ai and lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections. 

David Bashevkin: Hi friends and welcome to the 18Forty Podcast where each month we explore a different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I’m your host David Bashevkin and today we’re revisiting the topic of agunot. This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big juicy Jewish ideas so be sure to check out 18Forty.org that’s 1 8 f o r t y dot org where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings and weekly emails. We first explored the topic of agunot on 18Forty a few years ago in fact and we had a few very important episodes that we are going to resurface that are worth revisiting most especially with Rabbi Shlomo Weissman who works in the Beis Din of America and really walks through the entire process halachically of giving a get and really explains and explores the halachic nature, the nature of divorce in Jewish law.

In Jewish law there is a obligation to both get married according to the specifications of Jewish law and in order to exit a marriage there are specific ways in which we exit a marriage. One obviously is if God forbid a spouse dies, the other if the spouse is still living is for the man to write and give a get. A get is a Jewish divorce document they are typically 12 lines, it happens to be that the tractate that really explores the laws of get is called Masechet Gittin which much to my wife’s chagrin happens to genuinely be my favorite tractate in all of the Talmud. It’s the only tractate that I studied in every single yeshiva I studied with.

But one of the issues, and this is not a new issue, this used to be much much worse, but one of the issues that emerges from the halachic conception of marriage and divorce is that it is possible God forbid to have a chained divorce meaning in a situation where a husband does not want to give a get or if a wife does not want to receive a get, I think the former is far more frequent than the latter but they both exist, could have either party kind of hold up the process of unwinding the marriage. You are left with a situation known as a chained marriage or an agunah. An agunah is something that has been discussed and exists since the times of the Talmud. There are many leniencies that we have in order to avoid the situation of agunot.

It is something that Jewish tradition throughout the generations has viewed as a terrible, terrible tragedy that we should avoid in all circumstances. We do not want anyone trapped in a Jewish marriage and at the same time we want to ensure that marriage is not some flimsy or kind of spur of the moment decision that you can just choose to discard if you’re having a bad day. We want to make sure that the seriousness of marriage is maintained and at the same time Jewish law wants to ensure that no one is trapped in a marriage. Throughout history rabbonim, Jewish leaders, have been singularly focused on relieving the pain of those who are trapped in marriages.

We have responsa from the early 1900s, there is a responsa which is the letters that were written to rabbinic leaders asking them what to do halachically and in the collection of responsa known as the Beis Yaakov in the 49th siman it says nidun agunah achas she-nitba ba’ala be-oniya Titanic. It is a question about an agunah situation for her husband was on the Titanic and they weren’t sure if they would be allowed to remarry her. Now this is not the situation of agunah that is being discussed contemporarily on social media because that is a situation where the husband we know where the husband is, he’s alive, it’s a chained marriage. Most of the agunos that are described in the Talmud is where we’re not sure of the status of the husband, he may be lost at sea.

There is a famous prayer from Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor who was the leading rabbinic personality in the late 1800s and there is a prayer that is attributed to Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor that says as follows: Ribbono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe, galui ve-yadua lefanecha, it is known before you, asher zeh kama esrei shanim, it’s been decades, asher ani meshammesh berabbanus, u-she-elos u-teshuvot rabbot bau. Vehineni bechol pa’am each and every time that such a question comes to me miage’a ve’amel umishtadel yoter mikfi kochi I extend myself beyond my own strength vesham kol einai levakesh tzaddei heter bead hanashim atertefli taluy bahem and I try to find some leniency for those whose future is dependent on them ve’alken chos verachem gam alai ve’al banai asher tefli taluy bo therefore please have mercy and compassion upon me and my children whom my dependents rely upon it is an incredible prayer for someone who was a world renowned rabbi talmudist posek the one area where his tefilla he beseeched God and said please have mercy on me what did Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor invoke as a merit in his prayers it was specifically his work in trying to find leniencies to free agunos and one of the great leaders in this area who recently passed away was Rav Nuta Greenblatt Rav Nuta who was a rabbi in Memphis was a world renowned expert in the laws of divorce and when he passed away what is really remarkable is he one time waited through the night literally stayed up all night to secure somebody their divorce document and this woman wrote him a thank you letter saying you saved my life here and just the effort of staying up through the night the husband was supposed to come at ten o’clock he came at eleven twelve midnight the morning Rav Nuta didn’t move and when he passed away just a few years ago he asked specifically for that thank you note to be placed within his coffin there is a special merit for those who advocate beseech and try to comfort agunos I had a conversation once and I believe he’d be comfortable sharing this because it was genuinely a profound conversation there is somebody I know who I will say euphemistically is not beloved in certain parts of the community and his name is Asher Lovy Asher Lovy runs an organization called Za’akah which sheds light on survivors of sexual abuse within the Jewish community and I have actually always had what I would say a fairly cordial relationship with Asher we have had our disagreements but one thing I’ve always appreciated he’s always willing to get onto the phone and we’ve spoken many many times and one thing that I wanted to share and always stuck with me is I was one time having an argument with some of the strategies that Asher employs to bring attention to the issue of sexual abuse within the Jewish community another terrible issue related in some ways to the issue of agunos when very often issues of abuse and certainly sexual abuse are the reasons why many marriages fall apart but many marriages fall apart for issues that have nothing to do with sexual abuse or even abuse but regardless I was talking to Asher I was pushing back I said what’s the point of these tactics they are not focused on the actual problem I’m not sure there are any sexual abuse victims who are being helped by what you’re doing and I was being fairly critical and he responded and his response is something that has stuck with me to this very day he said look David you have to understand who I am representing my sole focus is to represent victims of sexual abuse and these are people who have been disappointed have been disenfranchised by every major Jewish institution this is not an issue that Jewish institutions like to champion not that they don’t have sympathy for such people but institutionally this is just not something you want no institution wants to be associated with this issue so he said look the people who are really suffering from this issue they need to know one hundred percent that I am not going to be loyal or beholden by any institution as important and as powerful as it may be and the people who I am advocating for need to understand I will never be beholden by the establishment so I deliberately say things online that are sometimes extraordinarily provocative and wild and make rabbonim upset they don’t like the way that I go about it and one of the reasons why I do this is to signal and message to the people that I am advocating on behalf of that I will never be beholden by any of the establishment and you know what I said you know what you’re doing a good job and that actually makes sense to me I myself am beholden to many of the institutions I am affiliated with and that has limitations it does and everyone has those kind of connections that may you know you don’t want to push too hard you don’t want to knock over kind of the the establishment as it is and I think there’s what to be said for that as well. However, when there are people who are genuinely suffering, in order to make sure that you have the trust that you are advocating on their behalf, they need to see that you are willing to really burn it all down. There needs to be that chaos component just to earn their trust.

And from where I am sitting, I think something very similar is going on in the world of advocacy for agunot. These are people who do not have a tremendous amount of power. Somebody in a chained marriage has lost a great deal of their power and leverage. They are chained in a marriage they don’t want to be a part of.

The advocates in that space, and God bless them, and I don’t consider myself one of them, I’m doing a lot of things. You need to be solely focused on this issue. And part of it is, I believe, they need to signal, much like Asher said, that we’re not afraid of anybody. And we’re going to advocate on your behalf come hell or high water.

And I believe this is an issue that is systemic enough and has enough pain that I personally am thankful that there are people out there who dedicate their lives to advocating and bringing attention to this issue. And that is one of the reasons why I thought it was appropriate to revisit this topic and explore some of the issues that arise within the Jewish community when couples seek divorce. How do things escalate where a divorce that could have been somewhat amicable escalates to this high conflict divorce? And there are three women who have really done incredible work in this space. First is Sarah Nissel.

Sarah is the director of the Faith and Family Mediation Clinic and an adjunct clinical professor of law at Pepperdine Law School. She along with our other guest, Yona Elishis. Yona who also serves as a professor of law at Pepperdine. And Sarah and Yona together run the Jewish Divorce Assistance Center of Los Angeles known as JDAC, as you will soon hear.

And they work in the mediation space for divorces. And towards the end of the episode, we also invited a previous guest of 18Forty, Keshet Starr, who for many years served as the head of ORA, the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot, and now works for the incredible organization that we have also highlighted in the past known as Shalom Task Force, which is focusing on domestic abuse within marriage and more importantly how to build a healthy, trustful marriage. I am so excited to introduce our conversation revisiting the issue of agunot and exploring the mechanics and strategies and issues that allow divorces to unwind amicably and those issues, personalities, and triggers that God forbid escalate divorces into high conflict divorces. One high conflict divorce is already too many, but we do see this more and more within our community.

It is my absolute privilege and pleasure to introduce our conversation with Sarah Nissel, Yona Elishis, and later joined by our friend Keshet Starr.

So I wanted to begin with a question that relates to a title from one of your lectures. I believe it was Sarah, but I think both of you can weigh in on this. You gave a lecture that essentially the title of it was marriage as a starting line, not a finish line.

And I wanted to begin with this in terms of framing marriage. For most people who are dating and whatever form of dating, apps, shidduch dating, they’re getting suggestions. We look at marriage as a finish line. That is what we are moving towards.

That’s how we’re going to resolve our lives. In what sense do you look at marriage as really a starting point rather than a finish line? Let’s start with Sarah.

Sarah Nissel: First of all, I would say that our demographic marries younger than the average American demographic and thank God, we’re in a century where we’re all hoping to live much longer. So the potential amount of time where people will find themselves living in the choice that they’re making to get married potentially can be a very, very long time.

So it can’t be a finish line. You have your whole life ahead of you.

David Bashevkin: And it really is a framing because, you know, I’m looking at my own dating experience. I dated for between seven and eight years, which to me felt like an eternity.

And it can really feel like once you get married like, okay, now it’s resolved, now it’s finished, on to my life. But in fact, marriage is really a starting point to how to figure out this relationship. Are there specific issues that really can only be broached after marriage? I think we’ve done some noble work in our community making sure that when people are dating, when people are courting one another, the importance of seeing a marriage therapist, making sure that you go to a therapist during the dating period. You have some plan of where you’re going to live and finances and you know about different family cultures.

Let’s assume that a couple is aware of that during the dating period. Are there specific issues that can really only be broached as a couple on the other side of the chuppah?

Yona Elishis: I do think so. I would say specifically many times in our community, you don’t have your first really big fight until you get married. Sometimes you do, you can be dating someone, you get engaged, you have a fight and everyone says, oh good, you had your first fight.

David Bashevkin: You got it out of your system, you’re a yotzei.

Yona Elishis: Sure, but it’s really when you’re married and you’re living together and all of a sudden you’re sharing your finances and you’re sharing your lifestyle that some of that stuff gets more heated. And the question really is, are we equipped to deal with fighting or disagreement or conflict? Do we have the skills to work through that? Can we normalize it and be like, it’s okay that we don’t agree on this exact point? It’s not a tragedy, this isn’t like the beginning of the end. This is normal, this is real life.

How do we work through this and get to the other side? I would start with that.

David Bashevkin: You have this incredible service, an organization that’s affiliated with Pepperdine University called JDAC, which is the Jewish Divorce Assistance Center. What you’re really providing is divorce mediation. And I assume when a couple is coming in, they’ve already made the decision.

I don’t really know much, thank God, about divorce mediation. I want you to take me through the process of divorce mediation. Who are you getting the call from? Are you getting a call from a couple? Are you getting a call from a rabbi? Are you getting a call from the in-laws? Who is calling you and take me through step by step, what is the information that you need to see, to understand, to analyze in order to make sure that this divorce, if it is happening, will happen on the most amicable terms possible?

Sarah Nissel: So for our organization, it begins with a call. We get calls from husbands, we get calls from wives, we get calls from parents, we get calls from children.

I will always make time to be a landing ground for any person who wants to talk about the process. I will always say if it’s your friend or it’s your child or it’s your parent, they should be the one who’s called because mediation requires self-advocacy and they need to be the one to call.

Yona Elishis: If we get a call that says, should we get divorced, or we’re thinking of getting divorced, we will tell them please call us back once you’ve made an active decision to divorce.

Sarah Nissel: And here is a list of family counselors.

Yona Elishis: And the reason we do that is from a public policy perspective, we are not promoting divorce. We’re not here to help you figure out whether you should be getting divorced. There are other professionals that have full-time jobs dedicated to that. But once you’ve made that decision and you’ve taken an active step towards divorce and it’s going to happen, we’re here to help you through it.

We want to be first responders, but we don’t want to be the first step in terms of you making that decision.

David Bashevkin: You’re associated with Pepperdine Law School, a friend of the 18Forty Podcast, we’ve had one of your associate deans, my dear friend Avi Helfand, as a former guest. Pepperdine University has done incredible things with the Jewish community and I think that bears mentioning. But what exactly is mediation? Before we get into the kind of the specifics of the intake, divorce mediation, is that different than hiring a lawyer? Is that the same? Are you representing, do you have the same duties of representation? Are they your client? Help me understand where is mediation, where does that sit within the legal space?

Sarah Nissel: Somediation is on a spectrumof ways to resolve conflicts in a marriage.

Starting with court, where you go to court to file whether it’s a divorce cause of action or a civil action, and then what you’re looking for in that case would be a binding order from a judge. The next step, there’s lots of other things in between, but the next big step down would be arbitration. So arbitration is where you come to a contractual agreement at the outset of your dispute resolution that appoints a person or a panel of people to adjudicate your conflict and you’re binding yourself to the outcome at the outset. Mediation is one step more on the spectrum of user-led, where the parties say we would like to ask you to mediate our claim.

Until there is an agreement, nothing is binding. Anybody can walk away at any point and people participate in coming up with resolutions to each of their particular conflict points. So that is where we live in sort of the legal system. In the state of California, family mediators do not have to be lawyers.

They could be social workers, they could be your mom. We are both attorneys and we do feel that you need to have an understanding of the way California family law works to effectuate in an ideal way mediation when it comes to divorce. So we stand at the intersection of mediation and the law. I’ll just circle back and say we do work as law professors at Pepperdine, so we’re teaching law and family law mediation and we also are very, very, very grateful to Pepperdine for an almost nine-year relationship really supporting us in our work.

Yona Elishis: So we will tell our clients generally speaking, “This is the law.” We’ll walk them through. We’ll say, “This is what divorce looks like in California, this is generally how custody works, this is how community property works, this is how support works,” so that we’re sort of empowering the clients to make decisions with an understanding of California law. That being said, we’re not advising them. We’re not giving them specific legal advice.

And if there’s something that’s very unique about their case, we’ll sometimes say to them, “You need to seek an attorney and really get specific advice about this very gray issue.” But we are empowering them with general knowledge of the law and then we’re trying to move them towards an amicable agreement. You know, we always say kind of in a joking way but like we know we have a good mediation when both sides feel a little screwed at the end. There’s no clear winner.

David Bashevkin: Can you give me an example about a common gray area where mediation may not suffice and you would recommend and say, “You know what? This is beyond the tools that we have in front of us and you may need a lawyer.”

Yona Elishis: I would say most importantly there needs to be some basic element of trust because you are completing California disclosure forms and you’re exchanging them with one another.

But if you automatically feel my partner is lying to me, they’re not disclosing assets, he or she is saying that they’re making X, but they’re really making Y, there’s hidden bank accounts, we’re not going to be able to effectively resolve their financial disputes because we’re dealing with dust. There’s not concrete issues that we can actually talk about because there’s zero trust. So we’ll say to clients all the time when they come to us, “This only works if you’re going to sign this California disclosure form, you’re going to fill it out, it’s under penalty of perjury, and then you’re going to accept it and we’re going to move forward presuming that, you know, these are the assets on the table.”

Sarah Nissel: Family law goes by state, so what is true in California is not true in New York as it goes with division of assets, let’s say. So in California there’s a concept of community property.

One big question we get all the time is, “Is something community property?” meaning it belongs to the marital community and it is equally divisible or is it separate property? And a lot of things are very clear: if it’s an inheritance, if it’s something that you came into the marriage with and kept on the side, if it’s a personal gift. But then there’s bigger things like if you bought a house, but you when you into the house and you used your separate money and put it into the house. So dividing those kinds of things, there could be colorable arguments on both sides and if we can’t mediate a compromise as to how to organize or where to place that asset as one example, that might be something where we would say, “We can try to mediate something that you guys can live with or you can both go to consulting attorneys and figure out where this lies under California law.”

David Bashevkin: They come to their first mediation meeting and you actually have the couple in front of you. What goes on in that kind of intake before you kind of come up with any sort of agreement or compromise? What is the intake, what is the information that you need from the couple in order to create, in order to kind of be the architect of any sort of agreement?

Yona Elishis: I would say that we’re very careful about just jumping into we call it a four-way mediation because it’s Sarah and I and a couple.

The way we work and this is very unique to our model is that Sarah takes one spouse and I take the other spouse and we’ll each meet with them separately prior to this four-way mediation. And we do that to really get an honest assessment of what’s really going on, what’s important to them, is something a proxy for something else, what are key issues that like they are just not going to let go of and what are things that maybe they can be a little bit more flexible about? And only once we sort of have a really good understanding of what the issues on the table are here, what the financial piece of this looks like, only at that point will we have the four-way mediation. So we go into it really prepared and what we try to do at that four-way mediation is actually highlight the things we have in common, the things we’re close on, the things we think we can reach an agreement on. If we both agree, you know, that it’s really important that the kids have equal access or best access to both parents, let’s talk about a schedule that’s really going to take your joint interest in that and really try to effectuate that.

And then, you know, we’ll see if there are issues that we’re stuck on and we just we can’t seem to move on, we won’t do that in a four-way. We don’t find that that’s productive in our model. We’ll caucus, we’ll meet separately, Sarah will speak to her partner, I’ll speak to my partner, we’ll try to reach a resolution that we feel they can both live with and the rest will kind of happen offline.

Sarah Nissel: We do not work as legal representatives of either of the parties.

They have fallen into a space that provides two mediators who are both looking at the agreement as their client. We’re very clear. We have an intake form that both of the spouses need to Before we even open their case, that clearly says we are not their attorneys. We are working as mediators and actually in the state of California in a lot of ways the mediation privilege is actually even more robust than the attorney client privilege.

So no one’s losing rights by working with a mediator. The mediation privilege is very robust. But when we talk about separating, divorcing spouses in terms of having one person to talk to and one person to hear them and to understand their perspective, and another person at the same time could be doing it with their spouse and then coming to a table that’s really set and where there’s a lot of positive reinforcement because people agree on a lot more than they think and people with the right refocusing can look at their children and look at their family system and what they want it to look like at the end of it all. We really try to do our work behind the scenes as much as we can before we sit down for a mediation session.

Yona Elishis: And one last point, we’re a free service and I think that that needs to be said because divorce is really expensive and people are spending no joke hundreds and thousands of dollars trying to resolve these issues and sometimes that alone is a motivator to concede something that you might not as your first desire want to concede. But when you have a service in front of you that’s free and you know that you can resolve all these issues and it’s not going to cost you anything that’s ultimately a cost saver. That in and of itself is a motivator.

David Bashevkin: After the house, after the bank account, what are the other kind of collateral issues that you find couples fighting over the most that are the most difficult to divide? You know like I’m thinking about in my own life I like rare books, I like rare newspapers, my wife has never expressed any interest in them.

I don’t know that I go around to say these belong to me and not you, but in a similar way you know I buy my wife jewelry and in a way they belong you know I guess it belongs to both of us we’re married.

Sarah Nissel: Are you trying to get free legal advice here?

David Bashevkin: No no God forbid. What I want to know where do you find the trip wires in the division in figuring out an agreement? What are the things that catch them off guard or they’re not really thinking about?

Sarah Nissel: I want to first say that many many many of the 300 families that we’ve worked with over the past 10 years do not own a home and many of them end up in dispute about separating debt. They have no assets.

So a huge portion of the Orthodox Jewish community that’s getting divorced can’t afford to get divorced. I had a call with a woman yesterday who has a young child they’re young themselves they can’t afford to live in two places. Jumping ahead here way down the line you can’t get a get unless you’re living in two different spaces. So the finances of divorce which The Wall Street Journal just is in the middle of publishing a whole series on is in and of itself very there’s a whole spectrum there as well.

So if we’re going with a house let’s say you could see you could touch bank accounts. If you’re asking financially what we see we see division of mileage. We have seen many cases where people do that.

Yona Elishis: We have literally seen division of cutlery.

David Bashevkin: Cutlery you get the forks I get the knives.

Yona Elishis: Yes the garlic press but he gets the wine opener. We’ve seen that.

Sarah Nissel: I think the resale value is this I think the resale value is that and a lot of our work is to say no you can make your spreadsheets and that’s something we think you could work out yourself but maybe something that’s close but a little bit bigger that we would wade into would be furniture.

If one person’s moving out and that’s part of a mediation who’s going to be moving out? Are you both going to be moving out? Are you going to be selling the house? Are you in a rental do you need a rent to place? Who’s taking what where? Sometimes what that looks like is we need to value all the furniture we have and then decide how we’re splitting it or who’s going to buy what from who.

Yona Elishis: We’re missing a big part of the picture here which is support. And I think a lot of times the emotion is packed into support because support really represents sort of looking holistically at your marriage and saying who is the breadwinner who’s going to get a payout what’s it going to look like and how long is it going to be for? And there’s a lot of like your history is packed into the support question child and spousal. And division of assets is actually relatively easy I would say.

I don’t know if you’d disagree with that Sarah but it’s a little bit more cut and dry. Support is where things get complicated and also where we start to see a lot of feelings coming up. Sort of what you were saying David before about like but these are my books that’s in the property category and we see some of that but we see a lot of that when it comes to support. I stayed home I raised the kids why does he or she get to go on and live this more affluent lifestyle?

Sarah Nissel: And the reverse I work so hard and now I’m paying?

David Bashevkin: What is the difference between what we euphemistically almost call an amicable divorce? I don’t know if any divorce is like amicable like oh let’s do it again next Sunday.

Divorce is painful divorce is sad and there are a lot of lives that are really altered forever based on divorce especially when there are children involved. But what do you see as the main differences particularly within the Jewish community between a divorce that can be resolved amicably and when the divorce is going to escalate? Do you sometimes have a sense for this is not going to be easy? What are the classic red flags that tell you this divorce is not going to go smoothly?

Sarah Nissel: First of all, we have a self-selected group of people who are calling and then whose spouse is reaching out and who are oftentimes waiting on our waiting list, if you could believe it. So once we open a case, our presumption is that people are motivated. Now what motivation looks like can be very different and that’s where I would say red flags come in.

Red flags that I see and again, if you talk to a litigator, you’ll get different answers. But in the mediation space, red flags that I see are slow response times, not meeting internal deadlines that we’ve set, canceling sessions or meetings or calls. We’re talking about reselling cutlery, you know, information dumps that are not constructive. We had a case where one of the spouses sent a 10-page Excel spreadsheet about the resale value of cutlery and power strips.

Those are not constructive moves. That’s one thing I would say. There are also people who speak in absolutes. We have a case right now where one of the spouses on the intake form said, under no circumstances will I ever pay spousal support.

So before we open that case, I got on the call with that spouse and said, we don’t like to open cases where something is completely off the table. You’re not setting yourself up for success. That’s a red flag for me.

Yona Elishis: I would just add to that interestingly, and I’m thinking about the children here, kind of the concept of Lashon Hara.

We tend to always come up with in every divorce like the victim and the perpetrator. And in service of the kids, I don’t know that that really helps them. And of course everybody needs their support system and they need to be able to speak freely to their close friends and their family and it’s trauma to go through divorce and you need to work through that. But I think that we can’t just say it, we really have to mean it when we talk about like these are children, this is a family issue, and we need to really set them up for success in terms of these kids growing up feeling like they have two parents that they can rely on, who they in their own eyes still respect and still feel good about.

And I just feel like once we start trashing people in the community and we hold them into being the perpetrator, it’s A, not good for the kids, and B, they sometimes step into that role. You know, it’s easier for them to put that mask on because they’ve already been called so many names. So to me that’s a red flag when there’s a lot of trash talking going on in the community and a lot of personal details about the divorce going around.

Sarah Nissel: I think trash talking also within the mediation space, even when it’s Yona talking to one spouse and me talking to the other, I think one of the services that our organization provides is a pushback on that which is that all might be true, and, you know, this doesn’t help you.

And everybody only has one mother and one father. And your child is going to internalize whatever it is that you’re saying. We need to put that aside if we’re going to be amicable.

David Bashevkin: Yona’s point is genuinely profound.

It is not just the children who sometimes internalize the negativity, it is the very parties at play where like if you keep on calling me a monster, maybe I am that monster and you’re going to see a monster in here if that’s the frame.

Yona Elishis: And I will say that applies to the get too. We are very careful, never call someone a get-refuser, or never start saying he’s never going to give me my get. To your point, it’s easy to step into that role once you’re being called that.

Presume there is going to be a get, always presume like of course he’s going to do the right thing, of course there’s going to be a get in this situation.

David Bashevkin: I’m so happy you brought that up because that really leads to a question that is extraordinarily sensitive and I know is kind of one of the primary issues why within our community unfortunately we have the issue of agunot, women chained in marriage, and that is using the get as collateral. In Jewish law, in order to be halachically divorced and remarried, a get, which is a halachic divorce instrument, needs to be written and delivered from the man to the woman. There’s been a lot of attention about this as we know, but one of the issues when it comes to giving the get is if I give a get then the man will say to himself, I am left with no other collateral.

And I don’t know if it’s always the man, it seems to me that they have a lot more at least with the halachic get process have quite a bit more leverage, but I have seen and heard from men who say, if I give this get right away before we kind of divide everything up, before even more importantly for men, custody battles, then what will be left for me to negotiate? I have no more collateral. What is your thoughts on the question of using the get as collateral?

Yona Elishis: Well first of all I would say it’s not only the man, I would start with that. We have many instances of women who are refusing to accept a get. Of course, it’s easier, the power dynamic is not balanced, but I just want to be careful not to talk in absolutes because we have dealt with many a case of a woman refusing to accept a get.

From the legal perspective, in our experience, there is no bias, at least in California, towards women getting more custodial time than men. And actually I would say the opposite. The court really wants to give as much time as possible to both parents. So I think it’s very damaging when people who don’t have knowledge of the law say something like that and put rumors like that out there.

It hurts our community, it hurts what’s happening with the get right now by creating this false narrative. The court does protect men custodially just as much as they protect women. The court system is never easy and there’s a lot of challenges with it, but there should not be this perception that women have the upper hand when we go to court.

Sarah Nissel: If you look at California family law statutes, you’ll see that California law says that it is in the best interest of the children to have continuing relationships with their mother and their father even in cases of abuse.

So I would welcome anybody who says that the court systems in California when it comes to custody prefer or are preferential towards a mother to go down to court for an hour, for a day, and see the types of fathers who are showing up and saying I want to see my children and they’re getting a break. So we’re not living in the 1950s. It’s 2026. And on the flip side of that, we’ve a lot of reality checks that we have to give to and I don’t want to generalize and say to women because the case that I talked about with spousal support was a woman who said I’m not going to pay spousal support and she’s a much higher income earner and she’s going to have to pay spousal support.

But generally we do see men as the higher breadwinners in the families that we see and I just want to use that as a comparison point where there is the same kind of misconception as in the 1950s if you have a long term marriage you’re entitled to spousal support for the rest of your life. That’s not the law. So for people to understand the law in terms of custody and support and all of the different holistic pieces is very important. Turning to how we as an organization treat the get, our position is that our organization helps couples who are going through a dual process of divorce.

Jewish couples who are going through a civil divorce process as well as a Jewish divorce process which is obtaining a get. So by the end of our mediation process, you should have a stipulated judgment, which is a mediated agreement that’s turned into a legally binding form that can be filed with the court and has all of the full force and efficacy of a judge’s order, and a get to be effectuated. When that takes place, from opening a case to closing a case, we do not take a position on. That being said, we do counsel couples by saying that once the get is brought up over the course of mediation, whether it’s by the husband or the wife, you need to give it in a timely fashion.

That doesn’t have to be tomorrow, but it can’t be at the end of the process. And that’s not because of my own ethical position which you’re not asking for, I’m happy to give, but because institutionally our mission is to help as many couples as we can at the same time. And because we’ve been doing this for ten years, we can tell you that if you’re going to choke up one avenue of amicability, you’re going to blow up your whole mediation. And we’re not just predicting that.

We can tell you looking backwards. Mediations that have blown up are ones where someone said, I will never pay support under no circumstances. I’m not going to give you access to the kids until we resolve A, B, and C. We’re not doing the get until the end.

You can say I’m going to be amicable and collaborative in four out of five issues and hope that things will remain amicable. They won’t. We have seen that too many times. So that is what we enforce in our practice.

When a couple comes in and nobody’s bringing up the get, we start out by saying these are the services we offer, this is what we hope to achieve by the end, and then when the get emerges or if a couple comes in where one party has already asked for the get to be effectuated, we will then say, if you want your mediation to be successful, we need a timeline for the get within this process.

Yona Elishis: I want to just say one more point about the get, which is that it really is an opportunity. Meaning we have life cycle events and ceremonies through our religion that are given to us to bring closure and to bring peace. We have brit milah, we have shiva, whatever it is.

The get ceremony could be and should be really an opportunity for closure, for peace. It’s one of the mitzvot. It’s an opportunity to say mazal tov actually, which is what you do say at a get, and you should have mazal and berakhah and go on to continue living a good life. It’s sad to me that the get has become sort of this trauma pocket in our community.

When really it could be and should be a gift that’s given to us to give the couple an opportunity to put closure on something painful and sad.

David Bashevkin: I like the comparison to shiva in a way because there’s a beauty to shiva, the mourning period, nobody looks forward, nobody wants to be in mourning. Nobody wants when they get married to give a get, but there is something very profound about the halachic system and the way that it mediates and processes our lives, especially when we’re not abusing the halachic system, but using it as it was intended.

And it really does give this opportunity to unwind the miracle of marriage. We think a lot about ceremonies around death and birth. The ceremonies around marriage and divorce have a profound holiness to both of them. And one question that I wanted to ask and I only see very loosey-goosey speculation about this.

But that is the question within the Jewish community. There’s no question that in the world at large, marriages have been happening later and less frequently and there is more frequency of divorce. Within the Jewish community, have you seen a rising rate in divorce? Do you have any speculation about why? Especially in our community, which is built so centrally around the family unit and it really disrupts people’s lives and their standing within the community. It is a traumatic event for any couple kind of unwinding that miracle.

But why do you think it seems, and I could be completely wrong, that divorce has gone up within our community? What do you attribute this to?

Yona Elishis: There are two things that come to mind. Definitely mental health and addiction. That is a huge untapped in terms of the resources and the attention we’re giving it within our community and I think people are really suffering and we’re not giving people the tools of how to navigate these issues, either themselves as adults or dealing with kids that are, God forbid, suffering with mental health or addiction, and I think it’s really ripping apart families and we need to be as a community really talking about this, really focusing on it, and really seeing how we can offer more resources and more front-door support to people.

David Bashevkin: Are you seeing a significant amount of cases where when they come to you in the mediation process, you discover that one of them has an addiction issue?

Sarah Nissel: When people ask us about what we do, they always guess that the number one presenting cause of divorce that we see is infidelity.

It’s pretty negligible in our 10 years of experience. When we look back at all the families that we’ve worked with, the number one and number two through-line is addiction and mental health. And I think when you framed the question talking about the centrality of marriage in our community, there are other experts who can speak to those two things that we just pointed out, but I do frequently wonder if, because marriage and intact families are really what we all strive for in our community, a lot of other issues are hidden. And I know that seems like the old trope, but we still see that.

We see families where there’s an ill child who’s struggling with an eating disorder, a severe eating disorder. We’ve seen children with addictions. More than that, we see one spouse, they come into the divorce process frontloading, telling us that this is what is tearing their marriage apart. We recently mediated a case where one of the parties was suicidal once they were in a more stable place.

We are seeing a lot of that. And to answer the first part of your question, yes, we are also seeing a huge uptick in divorce in our community.

Yona Elishis: I would just add one more. I don’t see it as prevalently as mental health and addiction, but I think religious differences, I think it’s something we see much more frequently than you would imagine.

People who are just making different lifestyle religious choices and then just feel like we can’t continue living together like this. And I know you had a segment on this I think a couple years ago.

David Bashevkin: For some reason that saddens me even more. You don’t want to see any marriage broken up for any reason.

You want everyone to be happy. Can you give me some examples that you’ve seen in your experience? Because I’m a big believer every couple has religious differences, without exception. Nobody is the same religiously and not so long ago it was almost very normal to see a major Rosh Yeshiva married to somebody who was a little more chilled out. We did see that quite often and it wasn’t always that there was this intensive being on the same level or the term that’s sometimes used in our community, having the same hashkafa, which is religious outlook, which can sometimes be a nuclear…

I hate the word hashkafa, I hate the hashkafa industry. Can I hear some examples? What are the religious issues that you see that tear apart marriages?

Yona Elishis: I think we’ve seen both extremes. We had a rabbi who came in because his wife was putting makeup on on Shabbos and he really had an issue with that.

Sarah Nissel: I told him to go down to the courthouse and he told me that when people call in, the first thing that we talk about is can we service your need? And so the presentation was we’ve just evolved into wildly different religious spaces and parenting styles. And then when the intake meeting came, this was the example. Then the pushback was, okay, well, she’s not driving a car on Shabbos. And his response was, well, it’s not allowed, it’s not allowed, it’s not allowed, it’s not allowed, it’s not allowed.

And I had to take a breath and say, okay, maybe you should go down to court or talk to a litigator because if you are having trouble with your wife putting on makeup on Shabbos while you’re married in front of the kids, how do you foresee that working out if you’re not married and the children are with your wife putting on makeup? And he said, well right, that’s why I want full custody. And that’s when I said, I think you should speak to an attorney and maybe go down to court.

David Bashevkin: Wow.

Yona Elishis: And to be clear, we also have the more extreme cases that you’re imagining where someone decides to totally not be Shomer Shabbat or they’re not interested in Kashrut, something a little bit more fundamental.

Sarah Nissel: Or radical atheists that their children need to know about.

Yona Elishis: Even in those cases where they do get divorced, we as a community have to make sure to leave the door open because we often see the community then getting behind the father or the mother that’s still within the community and having them over for Shabbat and making sure that they feel really supported. And the other parent who still could be potentially 50% custodial parent is all of a sudden isolated when they do have the kids for Shabbat but maybe they’re not fully observant.

Sarah Nissel: And then they justify their decision.

Yona Elishis: Yeah, they lock into it.

Sarah Nissel: Yeah, we get referrals from a lot of them, from pulpit rabbis or principals and we try to keep those people quote on the hook. So if there’s a couple and religion is presenting as the issue, we always tell the rabbi, make sure to invite both of the parties at the same time. Shabbos shouldn’t only live in one party’s house.

Make sure that nobody can ever come back and say it’s on you that these children don’t get to have Shabbos at one of their parent’s houses, or whatever this is. I also would say that oftentimes religion is a proxy for something else. In the case of makeup, it wasn’t about the makeup. I mean, the radical parenting differences were that the wife was very depressed and it turned out she felt very controlled.

And I mean, this is a whole system. So sometimes religion is really a proxy for something else, sometimes it’s not. So there’s all different ways of looking at that.

David Bashevkin: That’s such an important point and it really teaches you all arguments have the literal meaning, the peshat as we would say in Talmudic parlance.

And then there’s the drash when you mine it longer and you see that different issues can be proxy for much deeper underlying issues. So given your experience in the last 10 years and all of the red flags of amicable divorce versus high conflict divorce and how things fall apart and splitting up the cutlery and makeup on Shabbos, what have you gleaned about the positive aspects of what people are looking for or should be looking for in a marriage? Has your immersion in the world of divorce given you a better perspective or some insight of what are the real ingredients that make marriages work well?

Sarah Nissel: Marriage is a very special relationship. It’s special on a human level, it’s special on a spiritual Jewish level, but I think it can be compared to other relationships. So I think it’s very helpful to look at the way you interact in your other relationships and you can analogize from there and do your own work maybe while you’re dating, as you’re preparing to date, as you’re preparing to get married.

One example is your approach to conflict. What can you tolerate? What can you not tolerate? What will you have to tolerate? Some things you can look back on and say like it’s not easy living with anybody. It’s not easy living with your kids. It’s not easy living with your siblings.

That goes back to your first question, chupa not being the finish line but the beginning line. You can look at other relationships in your life and then turn inwards before you start or while you’re looking outwards. Marriage is very unique and very special, but you can learn a lot about yourself from the other relationships that you’re already in.

Yona Elishis: I would add to that flexibility.

I think it’s really important to be a flexible person. I think that when you get married, specifically sometimes in our community at a very young age, you’re not really a fully formed person yet or you’re beginning your journey in life and your views may change politically, your views may change to use the word you don’t like, David, hashkafically. You may change your parenting style, you may change whether or not you wanted to have a career. You don’t marry someone and then freeze them in time forever as to the person they are at 19, 20, 21.

You have to really commit to being flexible with this person that you’ve chosen. You made the decision to choose this person, you chose what’s inside of them, you You saw something there and now you have to work through whatever life twist and turn life is going to take you on and work through whatever challenges arise and I think a key component to that is being a flexible person.

David Bashevkin: I love both of the ideas that both Sarah and Yona said especially about not freezing ourselves in time. Sometimes sadly it’s not just the spouse that freezes the other in time but very often I’ve seen we sometimes freeze ourselves and I am the I don’t know Shana Bet guy who just got back from Israel.

I am just graduated from YU. It could be 10 years later and you still feel like a young married. One thing I’ve noticed all couples and maybe it’s a good thing at least I talk to my friends we still feel kind of like a young married couple. I don’t feel like an old timer yet the old timer that’s my parents we’re still younger and that ability to continue to evolve together is so important.

Right now we have someone else who we invited into this conversation a former 18Forty guest who has done incredible work previously in ORA which is the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot and now works with Shalom Task Force an organization that works on building healthy marriages and avoiding domestic strife. Keshet Starr thank you so much for joining this conversation.

Keshet Starr: Thank you so much for having me I’m excited to be here.

David Bashevkin: So I wanted to ask you because your work almost begins when Yona and Sarah’s ends.

From your perspective what are the reasons why a divorce escalates from amicable to high conflict and specifically in the Agunot issue which I am genuinely not sure if we’ve seen a rise in Agunot or just we’re spreading more information together it’s social media we hear much more about people’s lives. Has there been a rise in high conflict divorce and Agunot within our community? Why do you think that is so and what are the catalysts that take an amicable divorce that could have been resolved with Yona Elishis and Sarah Nissel’s incredible work in JDAC and instead now they’re in this totally chaotic maelstrom where it feels like all of social media is now picking sides and fighting etc. etc.? What are the catalysts that take a divorce from amicable to high conflict?

Keshet Starr: It’s hard to say if we have more Agunot or if we’re just hearing about them every time we go on social media. What we do know though is that there is a great study that looks at divorce in the frum community and found that while our divorce rate is low our high conflict divorce rate is 59%. So that means more often than not when we get divorce we kill each other.

And I think there’s a few pieces we lose along the way and I think people like Yona and Sarah can be incredibly effective agents at getting us back. And thing number one is we lose the big picture. I get so caught up in the frustration and the anger and the emotions of the moment which is totally understandable and completely real but I can forget is this even something that’s going to matter in a year or in five years? And the more that the people around the couple can help us get back to the big picture I think the better off we are. And then the second piece is values.

Just because we’re doing something hard doesn’t mean we get to do it however we want. If you have to make a difficult decision at work you still have a choice in how you do it. Are you going to do it in a respectful and a dignified way or are you going to do it in a really inappropriate humiliating way? We get to choose how we do things. And so who we are matters more when we’re in a situation like a divorce than probably in any other situation in our lives.

But I think we have this idea that because I’m not with this person anymore there are no values that apply. When actually the values matter even more especially if you have kids together. And then I think the last piece is really a case that is all over social media is a case where every prevention mechanism has failed. And the best way to resolve Agunot cases is to not have them in the first place.

So a lot of the work that we do at Shalom Task Force is really starting in high school to talk about what makes a good relationship what makes a lousy relationship what is abuse? Because the more people know about that the better able they are to spot it either in their own relationships or with a friend and that can be incredibly impactful. And when a divorce is happening what happens in the first three to six months is game changing. I really believe that. Agunot cases did not get what should have happened in those first few months.

And then the more time passes it’s like if you stand in wet cement you’re not going anywhere after a while and there’s a lot of cement standing in divorce. And so we need to really find ways to figure out how are we doing this in the beginning and if we have to do this how are we going to do it in the One thing you say, Sarah, that I really love, that I’ve heard you say before, is that we have to collaborate one more time, but we get to choose how we’re going to do this and let’s choose to do it in a way that we can be proud of. And the conversation I’ve had with get refusers over the years is that sometimes they’ll say, well, what if I give a get and things fall apart and I don’t get the custody I want and I don’t get this. And I would tell them you’re right, but you know what you get? You get to go to sleep at night knowing that in probably the biggest test of your life, you rose to the occasion and you did the right thing.

And that gives your kids so much to be proud of and that gives you so much to be proud of. That if we believe that we’re Jews and we believe in a God and we believe that our actions matter, then these are the moments where the rubber hits the road and where you get to show who you are. So show up as a really great person.

David Bashevkin: Really put a pin on it.

Why do you think within our community, even if divorce is lower, the percentage of those divorces being high conflict is so much higher? If we’ve already made the decision to get divorced, why not just do it amicably? Why is it so frequent within our community that divorces become so high conflict?

Sarah Nissel: I want to point out two things. First is, I don’t think we have enough landing grounds for people to do it in the right way. So we have curated a space and developed a space in Los Angeles where people have a phone number to call that’s not litigation and sets the pace for amicability in the first three months or the first three minutes or the first three hours or the first few weeks. So we don’t have enough lights being shown on the number of people who are getting divorced and giving them a crisis line to call when they’re getting divorced, not when someone’s recalcitrant.

That’s A. B, I think that for good more than not, we live in a community that is very intertwined and where there is support and an ear to listen. But when it comes to divorce, I think that going to the wrong store for the services you need leads to a lot of bad choices. So we started out talking about who’s calling us.

We as Jewish families, as parents, we’re mama bears, we’re papa bears. As a pulpit rabbi, you are really threading a needle because you have a husband and a wife both are going to your synagogue. So I think knowing how to stay in your lane is not something we’re really good at. So those are two things that Yona and I see that contribute to the problem and we’re not even working in the all the way other extreme.

Yona Elishis: It’s a culture within our community and it’s the worldview culture nowadays like you air your laundry on social media, you know, we have feelings and we express them and we form clubs around those feelings and we really turn those kind of into like cultural movements. So I think we’re just a microcosm of what’s happening in the larger society in general. You know, we’re living in a culture where it’s a me first culture and it’s be true to yourself and air your grief and we’re just kind of like a microcosm. It’s not like it was for better or worse thirty, forty, fifty years ago where we kept things quiet and dirty laundry stayed inside and you don’t need to talk about it.

That’s not the world we live in anymore.

Keshet Starr: I think two things. First of all, because we’re in a community where we really value marriage and we stigmatize divorce, I think that we’re much more likely to see divorces because of abuse, serious infidelity, gambling, higher level issues that also mean that you’re coming into the divorce in a very charged situation. But I think another issue that we don’t talk about enough is divorce professionals.

There are a lot of people out there that you can hire to be involved in your divorce. A lot of people don’t know which fields are regulated and which aren’t. So for example, both mediation actually and coaching are completely unregulated. Anyone can be a mediator.

You can be someone like Sarah or Yona that have professional backgrounds and expertise and you can be someone who got a bad divorce and woke up the next morning and decided to be a mediator. And so there’s a real burden to do your homework and I think this is why we need more JDACs, so we just need to clone this service. A lot of the time the high quality support is expensive and the free support is not great quality. And so if you don’t feel like you can afford that really professional mediator and instead you’re going to someone in the neighborhood, they might be amazing and they might really not know how to set you up for success because a strong process will leave you coming out of that marriage with clarity on what happens when it’s your visitation time and my birthday.

How are we going to divide up sedarim? All of the things that come up, you want those to be clarified. So I think that the wrong divorce professional can have an incredibly negative influence on a case and can really make things unnecessarily high conflict.

David Bashevkin: Keshet, how do you kind of conceptualize in your own mind the very public facing componentto these high conflict divorces?

Keshet Starr: So I’m a deep believer in trauma informed work, which means that the opinion I care about the most when it comes to publicity is the Agunah herself.

What does she think? Does she understand the different ramifications that might come up? Because campaigns can really impact your life. They can impact you in court. They can impact your dynamic with your kids. I want to know that the person understands it and is okay with it.

And I really give people in the situation a lot of room to do this in the way they want to do it. As an organization, again, I’m going to make my own decisions about how to advocate, but I think the core of trauma informed work is that you’re the expert on your life, you know what you can handle, and I’m going to give you space. And there are people that never ever want publicity and there are people that find it validating. So I think that element, but what can get lost sometimes is the Agunah‘s voice herself.

And so making sure that that’s upfront. And then the second thing I’ll say is that these campaigns really come and go. And pretty soon another drama happens somewhere in the world and our attention moves. So I would say that if you’re watching and listening and you’re moved, try to take a concrete action like go sign a halachic prenup, go sign a postnup, bring ORA to your community, bring Shalom Task Force to your community or your school.

Do something active that makes a difference for people experiencing get refusal and people experiencing abuse because the moment will pass. It always does. There’s always a crazy thing that comes up in the news and the real question is, can we harness it? And unless we take some kind of action, it’s so easy for all of that energy to get lost and that’s such a shame. So I think the key is what are we going to do? And there are many concrete things that you can do off Instagram.

And I think this is a really important piece. Often the action requested is repost, share, but this is happening in the real world outside of the online world. Do something in the real world, do an analog version. Don’t only take action in the online world because that fades as soon as the cycle kind of moves on.

Do something in the real world, something small that brings us one step closer to the kind of community we want, which is a community that understands healthy divorce, that understands abuse, that prevents these problems from happening before they start, and that responds appropriately and compassionately when these situations do come up. And so we can get there, but we have to translate the watching into acting.

David Bashevkin: And I’ll add one more way for people to get involved. If you’ve already signed a halachic prenup or a postnup and you’ve brought the education, the work of Keshet, the work of Sarah, the work of Yona is not free and you can contribute to their work.

They are doing holy work that requires infrastructure, that requires financial support and really the fact that you have all dedicated your lives to strengthening the most important vehicle within the Jewish community, which is the integrity of our marriages and that includes how we unwind our marriages, that includes how we move on after a marriage falls apart, that you’ve dedicated your life to this is so incredibly moving and I am just so grateful that you were all able to come on and share your wisdom and experiences.

I always end my interviews with more rapid fire questions and I hope you’ll indulge me. My first question, I’m always looking for good book recommendations. You know, it’s funny, I have books on death, I have books on suffering, on theodicy.

I don’t know that I own even one book about divorce. Are there any books you would recommend? It doesn’t have to be a how-to guide, but a book that opens up the windows to the world of divorce, how it’s done, what happens? And we can start with Sarah.

Sarah Nissel: I don’t know if this is the book that you all would say because it’s right now, but I just ran through Strangers by Belle Burden, which is an account of strangers in a marriage. It’s about an unwinding of a marriage and I couldn’t put it down.

I read it within twenty-four hours.

David Bashevkin: Again, the book is called Strangers and the author’s name is …  Excellent recommendation. Yona, do you have a recommendation?

Yona Elishis: Well, she took my book because I just lent it to her, so that was a steal.

David Bashevkin: I’m so glad you called her out on that.

Sarah Nissel: You did not lend it to me actually. I bought it, but you intended to lend it to me.

Yona Elishis: I intended.

I brought it back. You bought it before I gave it to you—

David Bashevkin: I am not ready to mediate between the mediators, but I’m so glad you called her out. What book would you recommend, Yona?

Yona Elishis: I actually have to say I tend not to read about divorce.

It’s something I try to stay away from on my downtime. I came across the book Strangers and I thought it was excellent, so along with everybody else, everyone’s talking about it right now, but I can’t make another recommendation with regards to divorce because I won’t read anything related to divorce in my downtime generally.

David Bashevkin: I totally appreciate that and shame on Sarah. And finally our friend Keshet, do you have a book recommendation? And that could be a book also that you give to couples about how to avoid divorce.

Keshet Starr: I love that. I need to go find a really great one. But I would say a highlight for me is See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill. It’s heavy, but it explains coercive control better than anything.

And if I can sneak in an extra, if you like fiction, read The Names by Florence Knapp, also about domestic abuse and really powerfully told and really gets conversation going. And JTS has done some book clubs about it because it really opens up so many discussions.

David Bashevkin: If somebody gave you a great deal of money and allowed you to take a sabbatical with no responsibilities whatsoever, go back to school and write a PhD on any subject of your choice, let’s start with Keshet. What do you think the subject and title of that dissertation would be?

Keshet Starr: Oh gosh, I have to say specifically, but it would definitely be something about spiritual abuse and something about like healing modalities for spiritual abuse for from women who have been through abusive relationships.

David Bashevkin: Absolutely fascinating. We should talk after. My PhD was about spiritual abuse from an institutional angle. But that is a fascinating subject.

Yona?

Yona Elishis: I have twin girls that are about to graduate. So I have been very fascinated by my own parenting journey of raising twin girls and I always say and think if I had more time I would love to learn more about the psychology of twins and raising twins. And also while I have the mic on me for one moment, because I did not give a book recommendation and I do want you to link this for your readers, there are two amazing movies to watch if I can quickly get in there.

David Bashevkin: I was gonna ask you for a movie recommendation.

Yona Elishis: One is Marriage Story

David Bashevkin: with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, I believe.

Yona Elishis: Yes, it’s a very realistic rendering of a marriage gone wrong. And so, you know, I think it’s a very powerful watch. And the other is Gett, called G-E-T-T, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem.

These are two movies we screen with our law students and they’re both extremely powerful and I think provide context and information, so I would just want you to link those two.

David Bashevkin: I really appreciate that. And my final question, I am always curious about people’s sleep schedules. What time do you go to sleep and what time do you wake up in the morning? Yona, let’s begin with you.

Yona Elishis: I go to bed pretty early, I’m sorry, don’t be jealous, like I want to say like 10:30, 11:00.

David Bashevkin: And then you wake up?

Yona Elishis: I wake up like six. I wake up pretty early.

David Bashevkin: Okay, so, yeah, we’re not cut from the same cloth.

No, no, no. There’s gonna be limitations. Sarah?

Sarah Nissel: This is what sometimes makes our job hard. We have completely different sleep schedules.

I go to bed very late and I would prefer to sleep in. So in college, let’s just say I didn’t take classes that began earlier than 12 PM.

David Bashevkin: Now you are speaking my language. Thank you, Sarah.

And finally Keshet, what time do you go to sleep at night and what time do you wake up in the morning?

Keshet Starr: So I’m with Yona on this one. 10 PM, 6 AM. If I’m partying on the weekend, you know, 10:30, 6:30. But that is how I roll.

My brain shuts down after 9 o’clock. Can’t do anything useful after 9 o’clock.

David Bashevkin: I am so grateful to each of you, Yona, Sarah, Keshet, thank you so much. This is such an important issue and I’m so grateful for you taking the time to speak with us today.

Thank you all.

Sarah Nissel: Thank you so much for having us, David.

Yona Elishis: Thank you.

Keshet Starr: Thank you so much. Good to see you all.

David Bashevkin: People ask me all the time, who is the target audience of 18Forty? And my general answer is that we are trying to reach not a specific community of Jews, but a specific stage in life, namely what I have been calling post-institutional Jewish life. For the first time in all of Jewish history, as I have mentioned many, many times, we have people who are being raised really from nursery school straight through college by institutions. Their Jewish life has always been mediated by different institutions, whether that’s a nursery or an elementary school or a camp or a Jewish high school or gap year programs in Israel, yeshiva, seminary, or whether that’s a Jewish college that they may attend, Yeshiva University, Touro, the incredible campuses where there are thriving Hillels, University of Maryland and Binghamton.

But we can be in our early 20s in this modern world and have spent the first two decades of our lives essentially with a Yiddishkeit that is beautiful, that is pristine, that is inspiring, but a Yiddishkeit, a Jewish life that has been mediated through Jewish institutions. And then we kind of step out of these Jewish institutions and you see this, you could see it in real time, people in their late 20s, early 30s, like, wow, I’m on my own now, and I gotta build this. And there are many people unfortunately who make the mistake of superimposing the ideals and the strategies of institutions on onto their families. So they run their family like it’s a gap-year program in Israel.

Or they look at themselves like they are the mashgiach or the dean of students of their own family and their own home. And that does not always work out well. If there is a central idea at the heart of 1840, it is giving the tools to our listeners and our community together, really to talk this out together for how to build our lives when our Yiddishkeit is no longer institutionally mediated, when Jewish life is no longer institutionally mediated. And I believe this is the question of our generation.

There is a lot of choice, there’s a lot of optionality, some people choose to leave, some people choose to go to communities that are associated with more religiosity or less religiosity. But what binds us all is that we are all condemned to our own freedom. We all need to figure out how to build meaningful lives. And I believe at the heart of this of the transition of post-institutional life is the vehicle of marriage and relationships.

As I have repeated many many times, the Kodesh Hakadashim, the Holy of Holies of our Jewish life is not the synagogue, is not the shul, is not the Beit Midrash, it is the home. It is how we interact with our spouses and how we raise our children. And if there is anything that I am trying to impart, the most central idea I am trying to convey on 18Forty, is learning how to reclaim that vision, learning how to succeed at a Yiddishkeit that is unmediated by institutions but one that is built and is oriented to the idea that the holiest place, the most responsibility that we have in our Jewish life begins with our family unit. It is not a coincidence that of all the major religions Judaism begins not with prophets, does not begin with rabbis, does not begin with politicians.

The story of the Jewish people begins with what we call Avos and Imahos, fathers and mothers. Our fathers, our Avos being Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and the mothers being Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah. It is not just an interesting quirk in Yiddishkeit, I believe this is central. Yiddishkeit was founded and what we call the founders of Judaism is not rabbi, is not prophet, is not Jewish leader, they’re not the nassi, they’re not the navi, they’re not Talmidei Chachamim, that is not what we refer to them as.

The Talmud emphasizes what do we refer to the founders of the Jewish people, Avos and Imahos, mothers and fathers. And if that is in fact the case then the most central vehicle, the most tried and true vehicle for Jewish life, for Jewish continuity, for the happiness that we are all after, the most tried and true vehicle is always going to be the home. And sadly, that vehicle and that relationship sometimes erodes and does not work out. And part of our work in learning how to build fulfilling and meaningful post-institutional lives is learning how to step into that Holy of Holies, how to sanctify our marriages, how to sanctify our families, and part of learning how to sanctify a marriage is, sadly but this is true, is learning how to unwind a marriage in a way that does not, God forbid, erode and undermine the holiness of the home, does not break the trust that we build with our children even when a marriage does not work out, to still be able to orient our lives and our efforts to making sure that our family lives remain as whole as possible.

And that is why I believe this subject and this topic is centrally related to our work on 1840, in this post-institutional reality that we all live in. We need to learn how to reclaim the agency after going to an amazing elementary school, amazing Jewish camps, amazing Jewish high school, an amazing years in seminary and yeshiva and Yeshiva University and in Touro. And then we step out and then we start building on our own, and there’s no rebbe and there’s no rabbi who’s in your living room or in your kitchen telling you what to do or how to do it. We have the freedom to build our lives as we choose.

But one thing we do not have the freedom is to step away from that responsibility of making choices to build our lives and I believe the most central and important vehicle for our religious focus, our most important religious priority, is elevating our family lives and part of that is learning quite sadly in this imperfect world not only how to sanctify a marriage but also how to properly, in a healthy and sensitive way, in a spiritual and uplifting way, to unwind a marriage. So thank you so much for listening. This episode, like so many of our episodes, was edited by Our incredible friend Denah Emerson. Denah, thank you so much for all of your incredible work.

If you enjoyed this episode or any of our episodes, please subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends about it. You can also donate at 18Forty.org/donate. It really helps us reach new listeners and continue to put out great content. And of course, I believe it’s dropping next week, so get it in now, you can leave us a voicemail with feedback or questions that we may play on a future episode.

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18Forty.org where you can find videos, articles, recommended readings, and weekly emails. Thank you so much for listening and stay curious, my friends.