Agunah

Agunah (Hebrew: עגונה‎, plural: agunot (עגונות); literally "anchored" or "chained") is a halachic term for a Jewish woman who is "chained" to her marriage. The classic case of this is a man who has left on a journey and has not returned, or has gone into battle and is MIA. It also refers to a woman whose husband refuses, or is unable, to grant her a divorce document in Jewish religious law, knows as a get.

For a divorce to be effective, Jewish law requires that a man grant his wife a get of his own free will. Without a get no new marriage will be recognized, and any child she might have with another man would be considered a mamzer, a term often translated as but dissimilar to the concept of a bastard. It is sometimes possible for a woman to receive special dispensation from a halachic authority, called a heter agunah, based on a complex decision supported by substantial evidence that her husband is presumed dead.

Because of the difficulty of the situation for women in such situations, it has been a task for every generation of halakhic authorities to try to find halakhically acceptable means to permit such women to remarry. In the past it was not uncommon, due to the danger of travel and primitive means of communication, for people leaving home never to be heard of again; consequently rabbis often had had to deal with this issue. Over the past few centuries, thousands of responsa have been written to deal with cases of agunot.

Aguna (disambiguation)

Aguna or agunah may refer to: