Mike Ross is a Boston based attorney and former president of the Boston City Council. Ross regularly contributes to the Boston Globe. Follow him @mikeforboston.

Once a week, Sara Murray puts on a headscarf to cover her hair, and a billowing shirt and pants to cover her ankles and wrists, and takes a bus to a small public building near the ultra-Orthodox Haredi community where she once lived, before the divorce that changed her life.

There, she checks in with two religious social workers, charged by the rabbinical courts with supervising her visits with her six children, now aged 8 to 18. She tries in every way she can to reach out to the four boys and two girls who’ve been taught that she’s brought shame to their family. When she brings them food, they’re scared to eat it. When she offers them gifts, they refuse to take them.


Murray, who was born in the United States and has joint U.S.-Israeli citizenship, isn’t a criminal. Nor has she engaged in any behavior that would cause her shame in a modern, Westernized society like the United States or Israel. Her only offense was seeking a divorce in an ultra-religious community whose repressive policies, particularly on the role of women, are deeply offensive to most Israelis and other Westerners.

The government doesn’t stand up to cases like mine because they don’t want to go against the rabbinical court.”

But, for having once joined the Haredi, she can’t break free of its laws. Israel’s government, seeking to appease the ultra-Orthodox parties that now make up a key part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, has only empowered its religious courts. And, by both law and treaty, the United States must honor the rulings of Israel’s rabbinical courts whose domain includes marriage and divorce.

With presidential front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton slated to speak at AIPAC this week, the complexity of the U.S.-Israel relationship is once again in the news (a complexity, one could argue, that Trump does not appear to have thought much about). While the two countries have long had a symbiotic foreign policy arrangement, they have wrestled in the past about Israel’s domestic agenda. (Even Hillary Clinton in in 2011 gave a rare public rebuke to Israel about its unfair treatment of women.) Because, as Murray’s story shows, one of our staunchest allies and biggest beneficiaries does not always adhere to the liberal social and political standards Americans hold dear.

Ironically, it had been Netanyahu who, when briefly relieved of his reliance on the ultra-religious parties through a deal with the newly formed, centrist Yesh Atid party in 2013, began to roll back laws, especially dealing with women, that were in place to appease religious extremists. In June of that year, the Knesset approved a law that would, for the first time, add women to the committee that selects rabbinical judges. In November, the Knesset passed legislation that would raise the minimum age to marry from 17 to 18. In March of 2014 it approved a law that would eliminate the ultra-Orthodox exemption to military service. And later that year, Netanyahu’s cabinet adopted a law that liberalized the conversion process so that immigrants could more easily assimilate into Jewish life.

What resulted during the 2013-2015 government was nothing short of a domestic revolution, and it was a long time coming. But what followed was a shocking disappointment to Murray and thousands of other women under the thumb of rabbinical courts that bear more resemblance to Sharia law than Western tribunals.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men celebrate the feast of Tu Bishvat on January 25, 2016, in Jerusalem. | Getty

After his surprisingly strong performance in the election of March 17, 2015, based primarily on his hawkish national security policies, Netanyahu seized on a chance to rebuild his far-right coalition and brought the ultra-Orthodox parties back into power.

Immediately, he began rolling back the rollbacks—restoring a historic inequity.

In late April of 2015, just days before the ultra-Orthodox parties were planning to announce their deal to join Netanyahu’s coalition, as a condition of their support, the law requiring the Haredi join in the country’s requirement of military service, which was championed by Yesh Atid, was effectively reversed. Two months later, the bill making religious conversions easier was derailed by Netanyahu’s cabinet. The cabinet also approved the transfer of the rabbinical courts from the justice ministry to the ultra-Orthodox controlled religious services ministry.

For Murray and hundreds of women in her position, stripped of their rights by rabbinical courts, it was a triumph of ancient edicts over human rights—a victory for a powerful religious minority that for too long had been allowed to ignore the rule of law.

“They have so much strength to be able to do whatever they want to do towards women like me,” Murray said, referring to Netanyahu’s coalition government and the policies of the ultra-Orthodox that it adopted. “The government doesn’t stand up to cases like mine because they don’t want to go against the rabbinical court.”

Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a Yale Law School Fulbright Scholar who chairs Israel’s Rackman Center, which advocates for an end to discrimination against women, says that there is clear bias in divorce cases against the non-religious parent within the rabbinical court.

“We know of many stories like [Murray’s],” she said. “There is a phenomena of children being given by the rabbinical courts to the parents who are most observant.”

There is a phenomena of children being given by the rabbinical courts to the parents who are most observant.”

Naomi Paiss of the New Israel Fund, a U.S.-based non-profit, committed to social change within Israel, agreed.

“They want control of the personal sphere—marriage, divorce, burial,” she said, speaking of the ultra-Orthodox parties. “No matter who you are, your personal life is held hostage to your religion.”

And there’s an extra source of outrage in the fact that the United States, under the Hague treaty governing family law in most advanced countries, is obliged to enforce the judgments of religious courts in Israel; the only exception is for “grave harm” to the child, which rarely gets invoked.

Michael Helfand, associate professor at Pepperdine School of Law and associate director of Jewish Studies, said even American citizens who become involved in groups like the Haredi become subject to their laws.

“There are supposed to be safeguards, and sometimes they don’t seem to be working,” he said, of the protections U.S courts are supposed to impose before rubber-stamping religious agreements. “There are some pretty awful stories out there about parents who are unable to see their children because they left the faith. It pricks your insides out.”

***

Sara Murray started out just like any other rebellious 16 year-old American teenager living in upscale Westport, Connecticut. In 1995, on a trip to visit her stepsister in Boston, she showed up wearing tall lace-up boots, a short skirt, and her shoulder peeking out from beneath an oversized sweatshirt. Her cropped brownish hair framed a playful face. She smoked cigarettes.

Within just one year, she was married, pregnant and living in a Haredi community just outside of Jerusalem.

An ultra-Orthodox woman walks past a shop selling long-sleeve shirts and ankle-length skirts in a religious neighborhood in Jerusalem in 2008. | AP Photos

She had quit cigarettes and a whole lot more. The Haredim had many rules—no dancing, Internet, newspapers or outside influences of any kind. She was required to wear sleeves to her wrists, a skirt to her ankles, and leggings. Her hair was completely hidden beneath a head covering. No matter how hot the day, for 16 years, this was how she would dress.

At first this new life was a welcome change for her.

Her mother Henya, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, grew up in Israel. Following her divorce, and having struggled for several years with mental illness, she returned to Israel with Sara, then 16, in tow. However, she was unable to provide for her daughter, and at one point the two were homeless for several weeks, sleeping along the beaches behind the Tel Aviv hotels that line the Mediterranean.

It was there where Sara would meet her future husband Uri. She would visit him at his family owned restaurant near the hotels. He couldn’t help but notice the pretty girl who was always hungry. He was kind and would make sure that she and her mother had something to eat.

Like nearly 90 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, Uri grew up secular, and was when he first met Sara. But at the age of 19 he decided to join a Haredi community.

“We were young,” he said, explaining his turn toward religion.

Sara was months away from the legal age of marriage, which was 17, but the ultimatum from Uri’s rabbi was clear: If she wanted to continue to see him, she would have to drop out of high school and get married. It seemed extreme, but it was what she thought she wanted—a chance to start again.

“At first it looked exciting and beautiful,” she said.

But eventually, as she traveled among different Haredi communities, she began to see a very different reality.

One of those communities was Bnai Brak, an Orthodox enclave where very religious men and women walked on different sides of the streets so as not to brush against each other in passing, and where female transit passengers sat in the back of the bus and entered and exited through a rear door.

The practice of gender separation, pervasive in Haredi communities, was ultimately struck down by Israeli courts as it related to public transportation. This was the case that attracted the attention of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who, in 2011, said it was “reminiscent of Rosa Parks,” a statement for which she herself was roundly criticized by Israeli government officials.





As the years passed, Murray’s disillusionment grew. More than the restrictive lifestyle, her concern was for her children and how they were being educated.

For Murray’s two daughters, the Haredi education was only tolerable. Girls were taught specific skills in school, so that they could work to support the family, but well short of the rounded education their secular counterparts experienced.

“Women are the breadwinners,” she said. “Women are given more practical skills.”

Indeed, Murray brought in money for her family from a successful jewelry business she had begun, which grew into a chain of several stores throughout Israel.

But for the boys, and for the men, things were much different.

“They were deliberately not taught,” she said, speaking of her four boys. “From age 13 all they learn is Torah. They don’t even learn Hebrew or math. They have no tools to go out into the world. Men sit down and study Torah all day long.”

The schools, called “yeshivas,” which were subsidized by the government, came under growing scrutiny, when, in 2012, the price tag hit NIS 138 million (almost $40 million at the time). In 2014, the Israeli Supreme Court stepped in, striking down the program on the basis that religious students were being subsidized while other students, including women and non-religious university students, were not. The court also said that the yeshiva students were not being taught basic skills to prepare them to enter the workforce.

***

In Israel, there has long existed a rift between secular and religious communities. It derives from the unique structure of the government itself, which is neither all-secular, nor all-religious, but both—a compromise struck by the country’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, upon the founding of the state. It’s a deal that continues to divide Israelis and their domestic politics today.

For the Haredi, the matter goes well beyond the domestic politics of decades, to religious edicts that were made thousands of years ago.

“One doesn’t compromise on one’s essential principles,” insisted Rabbi Avi Shafran, the Director of Public Affairs for Agudath Israel of America, an organization that advocates for and defends Haredi interests. “Some wish to change those realities, and they have the right to try to do so. But those who are committed to Jewish religious law as it has been understood for millennia have an equal right to resist such changes.”

They were deliberately not taught,” she said, speaking of her four boys. “From age 13 all they learn is Torah. They don’t even learn Hebrew or math. They have no tools to go out into the world.”

The result of this bifurcated form of governing—part civil, part religious—is an inevitable clash. It is most profoundly seen around issues of marriage. In order for Jewish people to be legally married in Israel, they must do so within the rabbinical—not civil—courts. This applies to all Israelis, whether they consider themselves to be religious or not. As a result, many Israelis—about 17 percent—marry outside of Israel. The marriages are then recognized as legal once they return. It’s a religious work-around.

The religious laws also apply to divorce. Jewish divorce laws are thousands of years old, but are still followed today. In order for a divorce to be recognized, it requires the consent—or the “get”—of the husband. Without that consent, a woman remains in a state of limbo—technically married under religious law, but still estranged from her husband. While most husbands provide the required get, some do not. The women who are caught waiting for their husband’s consent have a name—they are called “agunot,” or chained women.

For Murray, when she eventually decided to leave the Haredim and her husband in 2012, 16 years after her marriage, she was allowed the get. But her decision cost her so much more—her children.

In a 2012 posting on Facebook, the use of which is forbidden by the Haredi, Murray told her story:

“I was shocked when I was prohibited to take my children with me. … They were not allowed to come to my home or spend more than a few hours with me. … They were ashamed of me despite my respective and modest attire during the visits. Food that I gave them they would fear to eat although it followed the consumption laws. Clothes that I bought them they would return even though they were just like the clothing I always bought them. They were forbidden to have a discussion of any sort with me or speak about their feelings. They robotically obeyed.”

Murray’s legal attempts to gain custody of her children proved futile. While she continues to visit her sons as much as she is allowed, her two daughters, whom she has not met with in over three years, no longer want to see her. Murray believes that they have been brainwashed by the adults of the community. Recently, her 8-year-old son told her that when the Messiah comes, she will perish.

They were ashamed of me despite my respective and modest attire during the visits. ... They were forbidden to have a discussion of any sort with me or speak about their feelings. They robotically obeyed.”

Through translated emails, Murray’s ex-husband, Uri, said he is unable to share the details of his divorce and custody case due to confidentiality issues, and concerns for defamation. However he defended the end result.

“The legal system in Israel acts in the child’s best interest,” he wrote. ”There is no religious consideration here.”

But this, counters Professor Halperin-Kaddari, of the Rackman Center, is a specious argument.

“The huge question is, ‘what is in the best interest of the child?’ If this means spiritually, and in terms of the soul, as perceived by the ultra-Orthodox’s own definition—OK [in their mind] they are telling the truth,” she said.

She also believes that ultra-Orthodox women are choosing to remain in bad marriages for fear of being ostracized and losing the rights to see their children.

“They know the danger, they know the risk, and they make a rational choice to stay within abusive marriages—abusive in many ways,” she said. “For a grounded fear of losing their children, they make that choice—if you can call it a choice.”

***

After Netanyahu’s 2015 stunning reversals of the reforms, a sense of hopelessness set in. Activists who had worked so hard to reform Israeli civil society to something that more closely reflected the majority opinion, were left with nothing to show for their years of work.

“Now everything is freezing,” said an exhausted-sounding Knesset Member, Aliza Lavie, of Yesh Atid, referencing her legislation that would allow civil unions and marriages.

Just how Netanyahu was able to preside over the initiation of decades-long fought domestic reforms, only to ensure that months later, nearly all would be completely reversed, flipped off like a light switch, poses a very real question. How could the move be anything more than just a coolly calculated political decision, intended only to hold his coalition together?

It’s a question I posed to his office, and one that they declined to answer.

For Murray, who now lives an hour from her children, her focus is not on politics—but on trying to hold on to her relationship with her family.

“I’m constantly missing being their mother,” she said. “I’m trying to start over. I’m working now as a waitress in Tel Aviv. But I’m devastated and I don’t know how to go on from here.”

Ironically, she misses the very religious life that pushed her away.

“I miss the faith. Having faith like that is very empowering—the feeling that you think you know the code of life,” she said.

But with it, she said, came something that she hopes others will not have to live with.

“Families are ripped apart because of religion instead of being brought together,” she said. ”It’s going against everything you devoted yourself to.”