Data Released On Israel Divorce Rate

The Rabbinic Court Administration in Israel released its 2006 country-wide data on divorce, and there are some very interesting findings.

First, from JPost:

In general, there are fewer divorces among religious Jews than among secular couples. But in Jerusalem, a predominantly religious city, there was a sharp 10.4 percent rise in divorces in 2006 compared to the previous year.

The jump in the number of Jewish divorces in Jerusalem to 1,471 exceeded the nationwide rise of 3.8% to 9,963, according to data released by the Rabbinic Court Administration Monday.

In an attempt to explain the surprising divorce data, Rabbi Yitzhak Ralbag, Jerusalem's marriage registrar, said that more religious couples were getting divorced.

"I see it even among haredim when they come to register for marriage," said Ralbag. "More and more requests to marry are being made by haredi divorcees. Once it was an embarrassment. But things are gradually changing. It is no longer a stigma for a haredi person to be divorced."

Secular Tel Aviv's divorce numbers also rose but at a more moderate rate. Some 3,007 Jews chose to end their marriages in 2006, a 4.4% rise from 2005.

The rising rate of divorce in Charedi and Orthodox circles is a trend I have personally seen at least anecdotal evidence of here in the US, and certainly a much-discussed topic among my contemporaries. Interesting to see actual figures to support a similar trend existing in Israel.

Another interesting trend:

The recent war in Lebanon seemed to have a positive effect on the institution of marriage, according to the Rabbinic Court data. The number of filings for divorce in August and September dropped a dramatic 18% compared to the same period in 2005. Also, the number of divorce filings in Haifa, the hardest hit by the war of the nation's three major cities, fell by 18%.

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This suggestion, that there are as many women who refuse to accept a get as there are men who refuse to grant them, might raise some eyebrows:

Rabbi Eliyahu Ben-Dahan, head of the Rabbinic Court's administrative body..provided preliminary data on divorces that had dragged on for more than two years. He said there were about 1,000 such cases, 20% of which could be defined as situations in which either the husband or the wife refused to acquiesce to the giving of a get, or divorce certificate. Ben-Dahan said that men and women suffered equally from the intransigence of their spouses.

I find that surprising, and I'm not the only one:

However, Sharon Shenhav, a veteran divorce lawyer and women's rights activist, said in response that the number of women who were refused a get by their husbands was much higher.

More on the data here and here.