Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Rabbi Says Couples Can’t Live Together If Marriage Licenses Destroyed by Wildfires

JERUSALEM — The chief rabbi of an area affected by the wildfires that cut across Israel said couples whose marriage licenses were destroyed in the blazes cannot live together until they draw up a new one.

Rabbi Mordechai Abramovski of Zichron Yaakov said in an interview with the haredi Orthodox news website Kikar HaShabbat that the prohibition against living together without a ketubah, or Jewish wedding contract, applies in the case of a fire. His statements were first reported in English in The Jerusalem Post.

His ruling was at odds with Israel’s chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef and David Lau, who said Monday that couples could continue to live together without a ketubah burned in a fire but that a replacement ketubah should be procured as soon as possible. They said it is permissible since the rabbinates in which they registered their marriage maintain a copy of the ketubah.

Under Jewish law, couples cannot live together without a ketubah, a document established during the Talmudic era to protect women’s rights in a marriage.

Abramovski is also the rabbi in charge of issuing marriage licenses in Haifa.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.