JERUSALEM: When Jewish husbands skip out on their wives and refuse to grant them a divorce, a 58-year-old rabbi assembles a team of investigators to track them down anywhere in the world and untie the bonds of matrimony.

According to Orthodox Jewish ritual law, a woman abandoned by her husband is considered single and free to marry again only if he gives her a bill of divorce, known in Hebrew as a “Get”.Israel’s Rabbinical Court, which oversees Jewish marriages in the country, said that each year, dozens of husbands maliciously refuse to sign the decree, leaving their wives “anchored” to their previous marriage.

Some of the men also leave the country: that is when Rabbi Yehuda Gordon, 58, and his small team of investigators step in.

He makes about five trips a year overseas, all of them sponsored by the Israeli government, to find “fugitive” husbands and persuade them to divorce their wives.

“It can take years to track each husband down,” Gordon said from behind his desk at the Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem. In 1998, Gordon flew to Siberia on a “Get” mission. After being threatened by police and spending three days in jail, he returned to Israel with a signed document allowing the man’s wife to remarry.—Reuters