{"id":4193,"date":"2015-03-25T08:06:28","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T12:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4193"},"modified":"2015-04-01T07:08:50","modified_gmt":"2015-04-01T11:08:50","slug":"gett-the-trial-of-viviane-amsalem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4193","title":{"rendered":"Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ronit

Ronit Elkabetz and cast in Gett.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Israeli movie<\/a> Gett<\/em> (trailer<\/a>) is the story of Viviane Amsalem and her five-year struggle to obtain a divorce (gett<\/em>) through Israel\u2019s Orthodox rabbinical courts. The only roadblock: her husband says \u201cno,\u201d and under Jewish religious law, a divorce cannot be granted unless the husband agrees. The entire movie takes place in the courtroom and just outside it, as witnesses come and go and the couple and their lawyers face off, in confrontations that rapidly switch between absurdity and tragedy.<\/p>\n

This may sound as if there\u2019s not much action, but there is plenty going on emotionally. Except for the lawyers\u2019 confrontations, much of the power of the film comes from the way feelings simmer (mostly) below the surface, through the outstanding performances by the wife (played by Ronit Elkabetz) and husband (Simon Abkarian). He is torturing her in front of the three rabbis who serve as judges, who alternately don\u2019t see it, don\u2019t acknowledge it, and don\u2019t act when they do. This also makes the film a cautionary tale about the difficulties of male-dominated religious courts, intent on shoring up a patriarchic system and oblivious to individual and women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, in real life, Israel\u2019s rabbinic judges claim the movie misrepresents them, which, as Israel\u2019s oldest daily newspaper Haaretz<\/em> says, \u201cmisses the underlying point: that the rabbinical courts will not approve a divorce unless the man agrees to it,\u201d citing a 2013 survey that one in three women seeking divorce in Israel is \u201csubject to financial or other extortion by her husband.\u201d The term for these truly \u201cdesperate housewives\u201d is \u201cchained women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lest you think the problems of chained women are confined to the Jewish State, in 2013 in New York, criminal prosecutions<\/a> resulted when rabbis kidnapped and tortured several estranged husbands to persuade them to approve their divorces. (Although the United States regulates marriage, divorce, and remarriage through the secular laws, for these proceedings to be religiously<\/em> recognized, Orthodox Jews must also have them approved in rabbinical courts.)<\/p>\n

Elkabetz and her brother Shlomi directed the film, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards and won the Israeli Film Academy Ophir Award for Best Picture. Rotten Tomatoes critics<\/a> gave it 100% positive ratings (47 critics), and audience approval was 87%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Israeli movie Gett (trailer) is the story of Viviane Amsalem and her five-year struggle to obtain a divorce (gett) through Israel\u2019s Orthodox rabbinical courts. The only roadblock: her husband says \u201cno,\u201d and under Jewish religious law, a divorce cannot … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem - the torture of divorce when a husband says \"no.\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[74,56,57,104],"tags":[417,162,328],"class_list":["post-4193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emotions","category-film","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-film","tag-movie","tag-ronit-elkabetz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-15D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4197,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193\/revisions\/4197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}