Jewish Women, Marriage Law, and Emancipation: A Civil Divorce in Late-Eighteenth-Century Trieste

Abstract

An important aspect of Jewish emancipation was the regulation of Jewish marriage by civil law. This article examines the impact on Jewish communities and particularly on Jewish women of the entry of modern states into this domain. It reconstructs and analyzes the divorce of Rachele Morschene of Trieste, who in 1796 became one of the first Jewish women to obtain a civil divorce in Christian Europe. Indeed, she successfully negotiated both the new civil marriage law of the Habsburg monarchy (1783 Josephinian Marriage Patent) and Halakhah to become divorced both civilly and religiously. Her case illustrates Enlightenment and natural-law views of marriage and health because she strongly argued the mortal danger posed by her husband's venereal disease. The novel legal situation led to negotiation of procedure and authority by Jewish leaders and state officials as well as greater room for Jewish women's initiative in divorce than traditionally allowed by Jewish law and custom.