Mavoi Satum

Mavoi Satum is a leading Israeli organization helping agunot and mesuravot get (women denied divorce). Mavoi Satum assists women individually while promoting broad legal-religious reform in order to advance long-term, permanent solutions. One out of every seven Jewish women in Israel is at risk of becoming inextricably stuck in an unwanted marriage. Israeli law, which gives absolute authority over marriage and divorce to the religious courts and empowers men as the sole executors of the divorce process, systematically leaves women vulnerable to extortion, manipulation and abuse as they try to exit marriage. Thousands of women, mesoravot get, are living through this nightmare, neither married nor divorced, stuck for years or even decades in a state of limbo, prevented from leaving their unwanted marriages and unable to build new lives for themselves. Mavoi Satum, a not-for-profit organization established in 1996, takes a unique approach to helping mesoravot get by working simultaneously on the micro and the macro – that is, by helping individual women while advocating for broader reform.