Some months ago I saw a documentary on the difficulties (impossibilities, in some cases) faced by Jewish women in Israel in getting a divorce from their often errant husbands. It was heartbreaking; these women - often with children - trapped in a marriage where the husband had moved out some years previous, started another family, yet still would not grant a divorce to their spouse. And this supported by the courts in that grant for divorce was in the gift of the husband. Often it came down to money; how much was she willing to pay for her release from bond!

At the time it struck me just how closely these cultural norms, given legislative authority through 'state religion', resemble what we would usually associate with practices in Muslim states. The fact that it happens in Israel means, sadly, that it goes largely unheralded in the 'West'. We are highly selective on who we choose to liberate; Jewish mothers and Palestinians just dont cut it, it would seem.

Thought the comparative with Nazis a tad gratuitous, but thanks for the article.

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."