Divorce Is a Mitzvah

Perry Netter

Description

If your marriage must come to an end, do it the right way—
with wisdom, practicality, and understanding.

What does Judaism tell you about divorce? What guidance, strength, and insight can Judaism provide?

In this first-of-its-kind handbook, Perry Netter—divorc, father, congregational rabbi, and pastoral counselor—shows how wholeness can be found in the midst of separation and divorce. With a title drawn from the words of the eleventh-century biblical commentator known as Rashi, Divorce Is a Mitzvah< provides practical wisdom, information, and strength from a Jewish perspective for those experiencing the challenging life-transition of divorce.

Drawing on wisdom from centuries of biblical and rabbinic teachings, as well as modern psychological research, Netter offers suggestions for transitioning through the stages of separation and building a new life.

This indispensable guide for people in crisis—and the family members, friends, and counselors who interact with them—shows us how to transform a traumatic time of life into one of growth, right behavior, and greater spiritual understanding.

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 The Existential Question: Why Is This Happening to Me? 2 The Hardest Question: To Leave or Not to Leave—How Do I Decide? 3 The Guilt Question: Is Divorce Kosher? 4 The Psychological Question: What Do I Do with All This Anger? 5 The Most Painful Question: How Do We Tell the Kids? 6 The Ritual Question: How Do I Get to Closure? 7 The Awkward Question: What Do You Say? 8 The Legal Question: To Litigate or to Mediate? 9 The Most Important Question: How Do We Continue to Raise Children Together? Epilogue "Afterwards: New Jewish Divorce Rituals" by Rabbi Laura Geller English Translation of the Traditional Get Suggestions for Further Reading About Jewish Lights

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Relations familiales
• Philosophie et théologie
• Jewish literature
• Rashi
• Judaism
• Religion
• Rachi

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 03 mai 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580236324
• Langue: English

Extrait

Divorce Is a Mitzvah
A Practical Guide to Finding Wholeness and Holiness When Your Marriage Dies
Rabbi Perry Netter
Afterword by Rabbi Laura Geller Afterwards: New Jewish Divorce Rituals
D EDICATION

To Elisheva Miriam, Moshe Tzvi, and Shira Aviva: The pupils of my eyes, The lights of my soul, The blessings of my life, For whom I thank God daily.
C ONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Existential Question:Why Is This Happening to Me?
2 The Hardest Question:To Leave or Not to Leave-How Do I Decide?
3 The Guilt Question: Is Divorce Kosher?
4 The Psychological Question:What Do I Do with All This Anger?
5 The Most Painful Question: How Do We Tell the Kids?
6 The Ritual Question: How Do I Get to Closure?
7 The Awkward Question:What Do You Say?
8 The Legal Question:To Litigate or to Mediate?
9 The Most Important Question: How Do We Continue to Raise Children Together?
Epilogue
Afterwards: New Jewish Divorce Rituals by Rabbi Laura Geller
English Translation of the Traditional Get
Suggestions for Further Reading

About the Author
Copyright
Also Available
About Jewish Lights
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have lived with the writing of this book for over two years, which, I am told by those who know better than I, is not a particularly long time in the life span of a large writing project. Yet, for someone as naturally impatient as I, the task of writing this book has at times seemed daunting and endless. More times than I care to admit, I have wanted to abandon the project in favor of something more immediately tangible. That I didn t is a testimony to the encouragement of many people whose love and support I want to acknowledge publicly.
My family has been a wonderful source of strength and inspiration to me through this journey. My children-about whom I never tire of talking, of whom I am indecently proud-have made the greatest sacrifices that allowed me to write this book. I am enormously thankful that periodically they graciously gave up the part of my time that really belonged to them. I trust they will forgive me for the times their needs went ignored, and I pray that nothing in this book will embarrass them.
The first eyes to see everything in this book, and without whom there simply would be no book, belong to my friend, my confidante, my assistant, Cori Drasin. Cori lovingly and devotedly read every word and reacted with gentle criticism and unbounded support. She spent hours putting the manuscript in order-a task beyond mere mortals.
I am blessed to have a cadre of gifted and talented friends who belong to my community and who graciously read drafts of the manuscript. David Lauter is a thoughtful editor, who helped crystallize my thinking from the beginning of this project and helped save me from serious blunders. Rabbis David Ellenson and Michael Berenbaum were important voices for tradition and authenticity and were my teachers in conceptualizing this book. Julie Barroukh gave me invaluable direction, and Spencer Krull is responsible for much that is good in this book. I am deeply indebted to Adryenn Cantor for helping me think about the issues regarding mediation and litigation. Her candor, expertise and openness were invaluable in the preparation of that chapter. As always, the responsibility for any mistakes or errors lies solely with me.
My editor, Donna Zerner, has been a gift. I am deeply awed by her wisdom, her insights, and her talent as a very close reader. The readers of this book owe her a debt of gratitude that they are unaware of. Her unbounded devotion to this project has been a blessing and has surpassed any professional obligation. The many dedicated people at Jewish Lights Publishing have been an inspiration to work with, in particular Emily Wichland and Bridgett Taylor. The vision of Stuart M. Matlins, publisher of Jewish Lights, is what makes Jewish Lights the premier Jewish publishing house in the English language, and it is a consummate privilege to be associated with him and his stable of authors.
I especially want to thank the good people of Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles for entrusting me with the sabbatical time I needed to begin this book. I hope and I pray that the final product is a source of pride for them and makes the time they lived without me ultimately worthwhile.
Finally, I want to express my profound gratitude to the many men and women who shared their personal stories with me, who trusted me with their pain, their anger, and their fears as well as their joys and their triumphs as they made the transition through the stages of divorce. I have learned much from them, and I hope I have sufficiently camouflaged their identities so that they are the only ones who will recognize their stories contained here. May those stories help others to grow through, and heal from, their divorce.
I NTRODUCTION

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded tired, sullen, and heavy with sadness and grief. Rabbi, he said, his voice barely audible, I have been married for eleven years. I have three children, ages four to nine. And last month I moved out of the house. I need to talk to you.
David had grown up in a typical middle-class American home. He and his brother were the sons of a businessman father and a social worker mother. He went to college and graduate school, pursued a career, married his college sweetheart, fathered three healthy and loving children, and even bought the proverbial home with the white picket fence. All the elements for a successful life were firmly in place.
And now his life was in turmoil, and he was living through chaos. The fabric of his world was unraveling, and he was the one pulling the threads.
What did he want from me?
What was David looking for in the office of his rabbi? Was he unilaterally terminating his marriage, coming to this rabbi/priest in search of absolution? Was he coming because he wanted to be told that his religious tradition holds that what he was doing was wrong? Was he coming because he needed therapy, and a rabbi gives free sessions? Was he coming because he felt alone, abandoned by God, afraid of being shunned by his community, needing reassurance?
What did he want from me?
David entered my office dressed in old jeans and a gray sweatshirt. An unusually articulate and talkative man, David had difficulty making eye contact. He slouched in his chair as we spoke, his shoulders hunched over, his chin almost touching his chest, his voice soft and sad. He spoke at some length about the anguish of living in a loveless marriage. He spoke of the years he had lived without emotional and physical intimacy with his wife. He spoke of his radical disappointment, of the sadness of losing everything he had worked for, of the ache of living without his children, of the despair that had come with feeling that he was going to have to start over. He could not shake the feeling that he was a failure-as a husband, as a father, as an adult. He was able to succeed in all other aspects of his life; why couldn t he make his marriage work?
He wondered: Was he inflicting irreparable damage upon his children? Were they going to be crippled emotionally from this rupture in their family life, unable to adjust to these changes in family structure, unable to trust authority figures because their parents had cracked the foundation of their world? Would they be capable of forming healthy, rewarding, stable, loving adult relationships when they grew up?
The guilt he felt was enormous. How could he look God in the eye? Was God disappointed with him? Was God angry? Was God judging him as a sinner?
So many questions. These are the questions I grapple with in this book.
And then David asked the question that had brought him to me, to his rabbi: What did Judaism have to tell him about this moment in his life? What guidance, what strength, what insight could he derive from his religious tradition? How could he make sense of his life at this juncture in a way that would be consonant with religious truths? If religion had nothing to say to him at this crisis in his life, then religion had nothing to say to him. Period. I was his rabbi; I was supposed to have the answers.
What he didn t know-what he couldn t possibly know-was that I was going through a similar experience. By the time he and I met, Esther and I had already made the decision to end our marriage; we would not go public with the announcement for another few months. I also had been struggling for some time to make sense of an unfulfilled marriage, of living with the pain of disappointment and loneliness, of trying to understand how and why the decision to end a marriage is made, of wrestling with the consequences of divorce.
So many questions.
As a rabbi, I am consumed with answers. My role-as presumptuous and as pretentious and as impossible as it is-is to have every conceivable answer on the tip of my tongue, just waiting for its question to be asked. David came to my office because he expected answers from me. But what he got from me instead was as unsettling as it was frustrating.
I took from my shelf a traditional collection of medieval Jewish commentaries on the Bible. I opened the book and began reading to David the beginning of Chapter 24 in the Book of Deuteronomy, which contains the biblical statement on divorce:
A man takes a wife and possesses her. She fails to please him because he finds something obnoxious about her, and he writes her a bill of divorcement, hands it to her, sends her away from his house (Deuteronomy 24:1). [All biblical translations follow the text of the Jewish Publication Society Torah Commentary.]
Contrary to the contemporary stereotype, divorce is not a malady of modernity. Divorce has been around as long as there has been marriage. There it was, in black and white-as much a part of the biblical tradition as the giving of the Ten Commandments and the splitting of the Sea of Reeds.
I pointed out to David that on