The Litigious Gerusha: Jewish Women and Divorce in Imperial Russia*

When Ita Myshkind learned that her husband had remarried before delivering the official get (bill of divorcement), she filed criminal charges against him in state court. “My husband,” she claimed, “Wishing to use my capital and valuable possessions, married me with the premeditated intention of divorcing me.” She complained that a few months after their marriage, he deserted her and married a certain Dveira Rafaelovich; and it was only after this blatant violation of the law that her husband hastily drew up the get without any rabbinic supervision. Efroim Myshkind, however, sharply contested his wife's account, asserting that he had sent a messenger to deliver the writ of divorce in the presence of two witnesses. “It is not at all difficult for a Jew to divorce his wife,” he wrote, “especially if she does not have a good reputation like Ita Kreines [here he used her maiden name], who spent an entire year abroad with different acquaintances.” But at the trial, the husband failed to prove that the get had satisfied all the requirements of Jewish law, much less that his wife had actually received the document. More important in the state's view, he had violated Russian civil law, which required a “spiritual authority” (in this case, a state rabbi) to supervise the divorce procedure. In October 1884, the Minsk court convicted the husband of bigamy and sentenced him to five months and ten days in prison.Although Ita Myshkind did not achieve all her objectives (namely, forcing her husband to divorce his second wife), she did prevail on two important issues: securing material support and ensuring that her husband would not go unpunished for his crime. That a provincial Jewish woman could utilize the Russian legal system to obtain justice raises two important questions: first, when and why did some women begin to resort to the state; and second, how effective were their efforts and what was the impact on Jewish women and their society as a whole?