Lonna was in her 30s and had children from a previous marriage when she met the man who would become her second husband.

There was no indication during their courtship that within a month of their marriage the man she described as “sweet, kind and considerate” and who had wanted to spend time with her children, would turn into a “Jekyll and Hyde,” taking away her credit cards and driver’s license, and privately and publicly humiliating her. 

After things failed to improve despite going to therapy, Lonna said she filed for divorce and asked for a get, the Jewish religious divorce contract she needed to halachically leave the marriage.

The couple went to a beit din — a Jewish religious court — where her husband agreed to provide her with a get — provided she give him $500,000 and custody of their son. As she contested these demands, which she described as extortion, her husband convinced a tribunal that since she had refused to accept the get, he should be able to get married to someone else (while technically remaining married to her). As this is not an option for women under Orthodox halacha, Lonna remained an agunah, a woman “chained” to the marriage, unable to move on with her life. Lonna recounted her experiences in a video interview on the website of the International Beit Din (IBD), which eventually helped her obtain the get.

Lonna’s was the first agunah case taken up by IBD, which was created after a 2013 New York University’s Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish Civilization conference, in which rabbis and scholars proposed a new kind of beit din.

While IBD says that some husbands continue to exploit Jewish divorce law as a tool of extortion and abuse, the group and its growing coalition of rabbis and scholars believe the harm of iggun — Hebrew for “chaining” — can be greatly reduced. With public awareness, halachic integrity and communal accountability, they argue, most cases are solvable and the system can be reformed.

Last week, the organization marked its 250th client whom it has helped receive a get or otherwise halachically dissolve their marriages. 

As IBD looks forward, the group will return to NYU later this month to hold a one-day “Redefining Freedom” conference at its law school, featuring a keynote address by Israeli Supreme Court Justice Daphne Barak-Erez and remarks by New York Supreme Court Justice Rachel “Ruchie” Freier — the first female Hasidic judge in the United States — exploring the agunah crisis through the lens of coercive control. The IBD has also raised more than $2.5 million from supporters, including former clients, toward a $3.6 million fundraising campaign to expand its education and training efforts.

The IBD began working as a safeguard, offering solutions based in Jewish law from leading poskim — halacha scholars — that neither relied on nor reinforced the power of recalcitrant husbands to stop get extortion and challenged the structures that keep women in limbo. In its first years, the beit din took on 10-15 specifically difficult cases annually, those that other tribunals had practically given up on, Rabbanit Leah Sarna, IBD’s director of public education, told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

But the pivotal moment in their work came three years ago during a transition in leadership, she said. When founders Blu Greenberg, Joseph Weiler and the late Rabbi Simcha Krauss, who served as the founding chief rabbinic justice, stepped down, and Rabbi Barry Dolinger assumed the role of executive director, the organization launched a strategic planning process that included an in-depth research study. It reviewed past cases as well as those supported by other advocacy groups across the U.S. What they found, Dolinger told eJP, was striking: Nearly all of the clients had been victims of the same form of domestic abuse as Lonna, known as coercive control.

“The problem, as described by survivors themselves, was not an end-of-marriage problem. It did not suddenly appear out of nowhere when women tried to obtain a Jewish divorce,” Dolinger said. “Instead, the story was of women who were subject to coercive control, a severe and dangerous form of domestic abuse, rooted in control, dominance and profound isolation from family, friends, and community. After heroically escaping from terrifying relationships, women found themselves subject to one final avenue of control [in the beit din], and one that threatened to be permanent: being an agunah. This wasn’t just the prevailing narrative but was the experience of virtually all of our clients.”

Most of IBD’s clients also face litigation abuse in secular courts, where their spouses file case after case to harass or control them, exploiting every available system, added Sarna.

It became obvious that the solutions to this must involve “agency, empowerment and healing,” Dolinger said. 

“Once you see it not just as an issue in Jewish law that needs to be corrected, but actually something much more broad than that, it transforms the way you function and the way you approach these cases entirely,” said Sarna. “That transformation is something we really want to see the whole world come along with… making sure that everyone understands that iggun is not just about [being] a victim of get-themed violence at the end of marriage. But actually this woman was a victim of years and years and years of abuse.” (Though the organization says it accepts male or female clients, it overwhelmingly focuses on women.)

With this realization, IBD has focused its mission on becoming a trauma-informed beit din, prioritizing empowerment and agency, Dolinger said. As a teaching beit din, it has also strived to educate professionals and scholars about the nature of the problem and ways to help, he said.

Sarna noted that IBD takes a holistic approach, prioritizing clients’ emotional well-being and the healing power of sharing their stories. Female social workers and psychologists handle intake and support clients throughout, ensuring the first point of contact is a woman — unlike traditional male-led batei din. The IBD also collaborates closely with top Orthodox rabbis worldwide to resolve cases.

“Once you see the whole thing as abuse, you start knowing what questions to ask. There are halachic tools that everyone agrees could be used, but you have to know how to look for them,” she said. “For example, if a witness to a wedding wasn’t kosher, then you know the wedding [wasn’t halachically valid]. And everyone agrees that’s not a controversial opinion. The thing is that you have to know to look for it. You have to know to ask, you have to know how to find out. You have to know how to do the research. So we invest in the research.”

The ultimate goal, said Sarna, is to change the basic way that batei din in the Diaspora are functioning procedurally and to bring about cultural change. While they acknowledge that get refusal will not end entirely, the IBD aims to stop cases from dragging on and encourages rabbis and local courts to stop supporting refusing husbands. 

“We would like to see a changed world on that front. We would like to see batei din functioning with different, more trauma-informed procedures. And we believe that we’re making a really good headway,” she said.