The Lieberman clause is a clause included in a ketubah

Ketubah

A ketubah is a special type of Jewish prenuptial agreement. It is considered an integral part of a traditional Jewish marriage, and outlines the rights and responsibilities of the groom, in relation to the bride.-History:...

, a Jewish wedding document, created by and named after Talmudic scholar and Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Jewish Theological Seminary of America

The Jewish Theological Seminary of America is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism, and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies.JTS operates five schools: Albert A...

 professor Saul Lieberman

Saul Lieberman

Saul Lieberman , also known as Rabbi Shaul Lieberman or The Gra"sh , was a rabbi and a scholar of Talmud...

, that stipulates that divorce

Divorce

Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...

 will be adjudicated by a modern Bet Din (rabbinic court) in order to prevent the problem of the agunah

Agunah

Agunah ; literally 'anchored or chained') is a halachic term for a Jewish woman who is "chained" to her marriage. The classic case of this, is a man who has left on a journey, and has not returned, or has gone into battle and is MIA...

, a woman not allowed to remarry because she had never been granted a religious divorce. It was first introduced in the 1950s by rabbi

Rabbi

In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

s in Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

's Conservative movement

Conservative Judaism

Conservative Judaism is a modern stream of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s.Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism,...

.

Background

According to Halakha

Halakha

Halakha — also transliterated Halocho , or Halacha — is the collective body of Jewish law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions.Judaism classically draws no distinction in its laws between religious and ostensibly non-religious life; Jewish...

 (Jewish law) when a couple gets divorced it is the man who has to present the woman with a bill of divorce, called a get

Get (divorce document)

A is a divorce document, which according to Jewish Law, must be presented by a husband to his wife to effect their divorce. The essential text of the is quite short: "You are hereby permitted to all men," i.e., the wife is no longer a married woman, and the laws of adultery no longer apply...

. Without one the couple is still viewed as married, whether a civil divorce is obtained or not. In the past, if a woman was refused a divorce because a man would not give his wife a get, the rabbis of the local Jewish community were authorized, under certain circumstances, to force the husband to do so (e.g., his refusal to be intimate with his wife as well as not giving the get, or other such serious matters). However since the Haskalah

Haskalah

Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...

, local Jewish communities lost their autonomous status, and were subsumed into the nation in which they existed. The Jewish community lost its civil powers to enforce marriage and divorce laws. The unintended result was that rabbis lost the power to force a man to give his wife a get, and Jewish law does not allow a woman to give a get to the husband. Without a get, a Jewish woman is forbidden to remarry and is therefore called an agunah (literally "an anchored woman").

For decades traditional voices within the Rabbinical Assembly counseled that Conservative Jews should take no unilateral action on this issue, and should wait for solutions from the Orthodox community

Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...

, or joint action with the Orthodox community. While numerous solutions were offered, none were accepted. Eventually liberal voices within the Rabbinical Assembly won out, and the movement authorized unilateral action.

Lieberman developed a clause to be added to the ketubah

Jewish view of marriage

In Judaism, marriage is viewed as a contractual bond commanded by God in which a man and a woman come together to create a relationship in which God is directly involved. Though procreation is not the sole purpose, a Jewish marriage is also expected to fulfill the commandment to have children. The...

 (Jewish wedding document). In effect, it was an arbitration agreement used in the case of a divorce; if the marriage dissolved and the woman was refused a get from her husband, both the husband and wife were to go to a rabbinic court authorized by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Jewish Theological Seminary of America

The Jewish Theological Seminary of America is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism, and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies.JTS operates five schools: Albert A...

 and heed their directives, which could (and usually did) include ordering a man to give his wife a get.

According to leaders of the Conservative movement, a meeting was held between the leaders of the Rabbinical Assembly

Rabbinical Assembly

The Rabbinical Assembly is the international association of Conservative rabbis. The RA was founded in 1901 to shape the ideology, programs, and practices of the Conservative movement. It publishes prayerbooks and books of Jewish interest, and oversees the work of the Committee on Jewish Law and...

 (RA), representing the Conservative movement, and the Rabbinical Council of America

Rabbinical Council of America

The Rabbinical Council of America is one of the world's largest organizations of Orthodox rabbis; it is affiliated with The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, more commonly known as the Orthodox Union, or OU...

 (RCA), the largest organization of Orthodox rabbis, in an effort to find agreement that the clause was valid from the standpoint of Jewish law, and would be included in both Orthodox and Conservative documents. All at the meeting, including the highly respected Orthodox rabbi, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, were said to have agreed that it was halakhically valid, and would be used.

However, the Orthodox movement never acted to include the clause, and eventually most Orthodox rabbis seem to have united in their rejection the clause as a violation of Jewish law. As a result, it has only been used for wedding documents and ceremonies in some (but not all) non-Orthodox denominations of Judaism.

Changes in Conservative usage

This clause is still used in many ketubot (wedding documents) used by Conservative Jews today. However, in the intervening years there has been growing concern regarding the legal validity of this clause due to the United States stand on the separation of church and state

Separation of church and state

The concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....

. For that reason, state courts have disagreed in terms of recognition of this clause, in a religious document, in a civilian legal setting.

As a response to this concern, a separate letter was drawn up, and signed by the prospective bride and groom, acknowledging that the conditions of the ketuba had been explained to them, and that this letter would be recognized by them as a separate civil document, enforceable in U.S. courts.

However, even some Conservative rabbis grew to have misgivings about the religious validity of this approach, eventually leading the Joint Bet Din (rabbinical court) of the Conservative Movement to develop alternative approaches to the problem of the agunah, which include but are not limited to hafka'at kiddushin, retroactive annulment of the marriage.