Her name is Adina Porat, and after eight years she is finally free.
She got her get when it was signed on December 30th and with the ruling of the Israeli Rabbinate in Jerusalem on January 7.
The husband signed it two months after the New York-based Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA) launched an awesome social media campaign and held a rally near the husband’s home.
Agunah now refers to a woman whose husband refuses to provide her with a get, thus trapping her inside the marriage. Classically it referred to a woman whose husband had died but it was unable to be proven. Within Orthodox halacha, a divorce isn’t final until a husband provides his wife with a get and without one, an agunah is unable to remarry.
Sometimes, behind-the-scenes negotiations don’t work. In those cases, in order to convince husbands to sign a get sometimes one has to be innovative. ORA Executive Director Rabbi Jeremy Stern says this is the first time ORA has produced a video about the predicament of an agunah as part of its strategy.
“The video that we created went viral on Facebook and YouTube, followed up by the rally, and all the publicity of the rally — all of that pressure led to the issuance of the get,” Rabbi Stern says.
ORA opened the website freeadina.com on October 21 to announce the rally; the site featured a video interview with Adina Porat and her children about their plight. Between then and the end of December when Adina’s husband signed the get, the video was viewed more than 68,000 times and Porat’s story was reported by international Jewish media.
