Alan Sokobin

II

Divorce, in the American legal system, is a creature of state or jurisdictional statute. The power of the legislature to legislate divorce is unlimited except as restricted by the Constitution .” Civil divorce procedure raises issues in the Jewish community that are not important for governmental courts that issue orders for a civil divorce but may have an immense consequence for divorcing Jews who may wish to remarry in the future. The Reform move­ment dealt with the issue by negating the need for a Jewish court.” The Orthodox and Conservative movements have struggled with several questions.” It is obvious that if a divorcing couple chooses to go to a Bet Din to receive a Get, there is no essential problem in order to find an equitable method to issue that Get. The difficulty for Jewish law rises when the couple does not voluntarily present themselves before a Bet Din.*! The Rabbinical Assembly met the issue head on by issuing a rewritten form of the Ketubah, the reli­gious marriage document, to include a requirement that the cou­ple will appear before a Bet Din to receive a Get in the event that the marriage fails.*? Recently, there have been efforts on the part of some Orthodox Rabbis to achieve the same end by use of a prenuptial agreement.*’ There is a legally binding arbitration agreement, which expands the potent conditions of the marriage.* An exceptional example of a secular jurisdiction attempting to respond to the particular needs of the Jewish community is to be found in a modification of the New York domestic relations law to

aid Jewish women in the process of receiving a civil divorce.”

II

Arbitration has been the legal process of choice in the Jewish com­munity for some two millennia. It has been noted that there is a judicial process within the Jewish community that is“as old as the Bible itself.”# The first reference to the appointment of judges was prior to reception of law at Sinai.* The first post-biblical reg­ulation dealing with the processes of dispute management pro­vided that all disputes over property required a court of three ordained judges.*® This requirement for a tri-party court was expanded to all matters in private disputes.” Ordination was required to function fully as a judge and ordination was limited