62 No. 76 JUSTICE in Minsk became an aguna1 because her brother-in-law — who was halakhically obligated to perform the halitza ritual releasing her from a levirate marriage — had been exiled to Siberia. State authorities were forced to determine whether halitza was required under Jewish law, whether it had to occur in person, and whether the state could compel or facilitate its performance across vast distances and/or against the will of the man involved. Rabinovitch then turns to the remarkably different context of contemporary South Africa. In the 2005 case of Taylor v. Kurtstag, the Johannesburg beth din (Jewish court of law), issued a herem (religious ban) against Taylor for refusing to appear before the religious court or pay child support. The ban excluded him from communal Jewish life, including participation in synagogues that recognized the beth din’s authority — a significant sanction in a community with a centralized religious structure. Taylor sued for defamation, alleging a violation of his constitutional rights. The South African court upheld the beth din’s authority, reasoning that the ban was an internal religious sanction within a voluntary association. Crucially, the decision was shaped by South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution, which — unlike strict separationist models — explicitly acknowledges the legitimacy of religious and customary law within the national constitutional structure. These cases show how South Africa’s hybrid constitutional model enables a form of pluralist coexistence: religious tribunals may function autonomously, but only under the overarching canopy of constitutional supervision. Religious authority is not sovereign, but a recognized form of communal private ordering within a liberal framework that is committed to protecting islands of indigenous custom and religious law, particularly as it relates to the family. Though Rabinovitch does not mention it, this stands in stark contrast with a decision of an Australian court which fined beth din personnel for imposing a herem and social sanctions against a litigant who wanted to litigate in the state’s civil courts instead of the beth din. The chapter closes by examining how Israeli law continues the Ottoman tradition of vesting exclusive jurisdiction over marriage and divorce in religious authorities, which for Jews means the state Rabbinate. Yet this very empowerment brings halakha into deep entanglement with state bureaucracy, demographic policy, and judicial oversight. By contrast, in the United States, where church-state separation is more rigid, direct state involvement in religious divorce is rare. Nonetheless, New York State has adopted creative legislative mechanisms to discourage recalcitrant husbands from withholding a get.2 The “Get Law” delays the finalization of a civil divorce until all “barriers to remarriage” have been removed. Unlike similar statutes in other countries, American notions of separation of church and state require New York’s law to avoid referencing Jewish or religious language explicitly. Across imperial, national, colonial, and liberal legal orders — Rabinovitch shows how modern states reshape religious authority into a framework that functions within the state’s conceptions of jurisdiction. Overall, Rabinovitch’s work is meticulous and groundbreaking, offering substantial historical and comparative insights that illuminate liberalism’s persistent struggle with collective religious identities. Yet even the best books receive some critique. In that spirit, I conclude with one point that supplements Rabinovitch’s claims, and two critiques of the book's comparative and theoretical dimensions. While Rabinovitch rightly notes that American law approaches religious divorce through the lens of private arbitration rather than state enforcement, he overlooks the extent to which arbitration law does the heavy lifting in mediating between religious norms and constitutional constraints. American courts enforce beth din decisions, not by recognizing their religious authority per se, but by treating these rulings as the outcome of consensual private arbitration. A recent line of New Jersey cases upheld sanctions against a husband for withholding a get under the theory that the husband voluntarily agreed to submit any dispute regarding the religious divorce to a beth din. When the husband failed to deliver the get as the beth din required, he was subjected to contempt proceedings. The court found that this did not pose First Amendment problems because it rested on neutral principles of contract and arbitration law agreed to by the parties, rather than religious coercion imposed by the state. In one case, a New York court ordered a recalcitrant husband to be jailed for failing to adhere to a beth din’s ruling to deliver a get to his ex-wife. This body of caselaw offers yet another configuration, where American arbitration law allows Jewish law to operate with recourse to state power, but without the endorsement barred by the U.S. Constitution. What other regimes attempt via formalized legal pluralism or ecclesiastical 1. A woman who is unable to remarry under Jewish law because her husband either refuses to grant her a religious divorce or he is missing and unable to do. 2. A Jewish religious divorce document.
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