The Beth Din of America

The Council's rabbinical court, the Beth Din of America, is where a professional association touches individual lives. It administers gittin, the religious divorce documents without which a Jewish marriage is not dissolved in Jewish law however completely a civil court has ended it. It supervises conversions through a network of regional courts established in 2007, so that a conversion performed under it is accepted by the participating batei din rather than being subject to case by case review. And it hears commercial and communal disputes as an arbitration panel, which under United States arbitration statutes produces awards that a civil court will enforce, so litigants who prefer a Jewish forum can use one without giving up enforceability.

Its most widely discussed instrument is the halakhic prenuptial agreement, which the Council has directed its members to use. The agreement obliges a husband to pay ongoing support until a get is given, which removes the practical incentive to withhold one and so addresses the position of the agunah, the woman whose husband will not release her. It is a contractual solution to a problem that arises inside religious law, and its adoption has been the Council's most visible contribution to the wider Orthodox conversation about the status of women in Jewish divorce.