What is a Get? — Jewish Religious Divorce Explained

The simplest possible definition

A get is a document of Jewish religious divorce. Halacha — Jewish religious law — recognises a marriage as a religious bond that is created by a ceremony and ended by a specific kind of document. The get is that document.

If you were married in a Jewish ceremony — chuppah, ketubah, rabbi, the works — your marriage exists in Jewish law. A civil divorce under the Marriage Act and Family Law Act ends the civil marriage but does not touch the Jewish one. To end the Jewish marriage, the husband must grant — and the wife receive — a get.

Why a written document and not just an announcement

Jewish law has used written documents to end marriages since at least the period of the Mishnah and Talmud (roughly 2,000 years ago). The form is set out in detail — the Talmud devotes an entire tractate, Gittin, to the subject. A get is not a generic certificate the rabbi prints from a template. It is a specific document written by hand on a particular kind of parchment, by a sofer (scribe), specifically for the couple in question and on a specific date.

The reason for the formality is historic. In a world without civil registries, a written document of divorce was the only proof that a marriage had ended and that the wife was free to remarry. The formality has been preserved as halacha even though we now also have civil registries.

What happens at a get appointment

A typical get appointment in Melbourne takes place at the Beth Din. Both parties attend (with limited exceptions where one party is interstate or overseas, in which case a process called a get by shaliach — by agent — can be used).

The Beth Din supervises. The sofer writes the get to the dayanim's instructions, naming the husband, the wife, the date and the place. Once written, the husband, in front of the Beth Din and witnesses, places the get into the wife's open hands. She takes it. She walks a few steps with it. The Beth Din then takes the get back, files a record, and gives the parties a confirmation document (a peturin).

The whole appointment takes a few hours. The cost is modest — typically a few hundred dollars to cover the sofer and the Beth Din administration.

What it is not

A get is not a divorce decree from an Australian court. The Beth Din has no civil authority. A get does not end a civil marriage and an Australian court does not need to be involved (although it usually is, in parallel, on the civil divorce).

A get is also not a finding of fault. The Beth Din does not assess who is to blame, hear evidence about the relationship, or apportion responsibility. Its function in a get proceeding is administrative — to ensure the document is properly executed, not to judge the marriage.

Why this still matters in modern Australia

If you and your former partner are not religiously observant and intend to live entirely outside the Jewish community after divorce, the get may not be of practical consequence to you. Many secular Jewish couples take this view.

If either of you may want to remarry within the Orthodox community, or if you have children who may want to do so, the get matters. Without it, the wife remains halachically married, cannot remarry under Orthodox auspices, and any children she has with a subsequent partner have a complicated halachic status.

The get is also a clean closing ceremony for many couples even where they are not particularly observant — a way of formally marking the end of the religious bond as well as the civil one. Many couples find it brings a sense of finality that the civil order alone does not, and coordinating the get alongside the civil divorce is something Elisa runs through regularly.