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SURVEY OF RECENT HALAKHIC LITERATURE THE SANCTIONS OF RABBENU TAM AND THEIR MODERN-DAY COUNTERPARTS: PART II J. David Bleich This study continues the examination of halakhic sanctions designed to pressure recalcitrant husbands who refuse to grant their wives a get, thereby leaving women as agunot. The column analyzes how early Israeli rabbinical courts and modern legislation have attempted to address this crisis through expanded enforcement mechanisms and examines early halakhic debates over wives' entitlement to financial support in troubled marriages and explores К. Isaac ha-Levi Herzog's controversial theory that minor financial sanctions may be permissible when traditional physical coercion is forbidden. Another novel form of enforcement that receives treatment is Israel's Hok Battei Din Rabbaniyim (1995), which authorized rabbinical courts to impose sanctions including passport revocation, professional license suspension, and imprisonment restrictions. The author identifies seven potential halakhic problems with these modern sanctions: they cannot be escaped by relocating, they explicitly connect punishment to divorce refusal, they may violate citizens' property rights in democratic societies, they transform voluntary community shunning into mandatory state enforcement, they cause forbidden shame and humiliation, they blur the distinction between rights and privileges, and they exceed the limited scope of traditional rabbinical sanctions.
I. The Early Days of the State of Israel
1. Contempt of Bet Din
In the early days of the State of Israel, decades before enactment of the statutes granting Israeli Rabbinical Courts enhanced authority to enforce penalties upon recalcitrant spouses, R. Ovadiah Hedaya was questioned with regard to the halakhic propriety of a statute authorizing punishment for refusal to obey an order of a bet din as distinct from sanctions designed to compel actual execution of a get. Rabbi Hedaya's undated reaction, published in 5719 in his responsa collection, Teshuvot Yaskil Avdi, VI, по. 96, was that a bet din is empowered to impose ultra vires penalties for failure to comply with its judgment. Such penalties would be analogous to punishment for contempt of court in other legal systems.
However, Yaskil Avdi immediately qualifies that statement by stating that such is indeed the case if the original order of the bet din was correct but that, if it was erroneous in nature or if the bet din had gone beyond its statutory halakhic power in...