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Jun 29, 2022
New offices and new approaches for agunah activists
"How do you solve a problem like agunahs?
The problem is by definition an old one: According to the Torah, only a man can initiate a divorce. A woman stuck in a marriage she can’t end — perhaps because her husband has been lost at sea or otherwise disappeared — is considered an agunah, from an Aramaic term meaning anchored...
...Twenty years ago, a group of Yeshiva University students formed the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot to put some activism behind this approach. (Perhaps not coincidentally, its acronym, Ora, means light in Hebrew.) Now, the organization has eight fulltime staff members and fields about 1,000 phone calls on its hotline every year. It boasts of having resolved more than 350 cases. It brings awareness of the agunah issue into high schools — in May, Naaleh High School for Girls in Fair Lawn, the Torah Academy of Bergen County in Teaneck, and the Frisch School in Paramus all hosted Ora presentations."
Read the full article at https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/new-offices-and-new-approaches-for-agunah-activists/