Judaism

I began my search for divorce practice in the Conservative Movement. One of the first rabbis with whom I spoke suggested that I read Divorce is a Mitzvah, by Rabbi Perry Netter. Netter has also written a very helpful pamphlet entitled, "Parenting through a Divorce," published in 2003 by Life Lights. Netter is a rabbi from Los Angeles who has been divorced. His title is clearly provocative and invites misinterpretation. He does not mean to say that individuals are commanded to divorce but that divorcing well is a mitzvah (a moral law or commandment).

Several Jewish individuals and leaders from Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Judaism that I interviewed were engaged in making the get (Jewish divorce ritual) or newer separation ceremonies meaningful healing/ending rituals. I found most of the ritual innovation for divorced and separated Jews outside of Conservative synagogues—in Jewish Family Service organizations, Centers for Jewish Healing, Reconstructionist and Reform Judaism, and explicitly feminist organizations. Support groups for the divorced were found in Jewish Healing Centers and Jewish Family Service organizations. The website, www.ritualwell.org, a project of the Jewish Women's Project of the JCC in Manhattan and the Jewish Women's Gender Studies Program of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, was also a popular source for divorce practice.

I found an interesting recreation of traditional ritual at Mayyim Hayyim. Founded in 2004, Mayyim Hayyim is a Living Waters Community Mikveh (mikveh is the Jewish ritual bath) and Education Center in Newton, Massachusetts. Its mission statement reads: "To reclaim and reinvent one of our most ancient Jewish rituals—immersion in the mikveh—for contemporary spiritual uses and to make this new, sacred space open and accessible to all Jews in the Greater Boston area." I visited the center in the fall of 2007 and interviewed one of the volunteers/guides. I also interviewed a divorced woman who had gone through an immersion at Mayyim Hayyim after receiving her Jewish divorce. Several other women with whom I spoke were planning to conduct a similar ritual at their local mikveh.