The State of Israel has eliminated polygamy even among its Sephardic citizens; immigrants from lands where polygamy continued were forced to choose one wife while providing maintenance for any others. In 1950, this mainly affected mmigrants from Yemen and a few other lands.
CONCLUSION
We have traced the slow movement of Judaism toward monogamy. Two decisive developments were the introduction of the ketubah in the talmudic period and the ban attributed to Rabbenu Gershom in the Middle Ages. Each of these steps represented a major shift, but the second was clearly driven as much by external as internal forces, so it did not spread to the Sephardic community. One must also note the absence of strong leadership, either halakhic or philosophical, in this direction. Female status questions were of
little importance to Jewish thinkers until modern times and the advent of the liberal Jewish movements.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, some of the issues discussed in this paper have disappeared, but monogamy remains problematic, especially in the face of a new development: we may have attained it in one sense, but not in another, as we now have frequent consecutive marriages. With divorce frequent, half of Jewish adults will have more than one spouse during their lifetimes, and a fair number will have more than two. This will be due not to death as in previous periods, but to divorce. This means that although monogamy exists, the urge toward polygamy and polyandry has taken a different turn. It differs from previous situations and Presents a different threat to monogamy and even more to the family as the most significant unit in Jewish life. This means that
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