The big idea: Jewish marriage is a contract — the ketubah, according to the Law of Moses — and Jewish divorce is a contract, the get.
Which means Jewish law can produce a problem that Jewish law then has to solve, and the guide names it.
The agunah: "Difficulties of a wife remaining agunah (anchored) if her husband will not grant a get."
A get is granted by the husband. Where it is withheld, the wife cannot remarry in a synagogue, and no rabbi can simply issue it for her. The word anchored is the tradition's own image.
Why the difficulty exists
- Divorce is by contract, and the contract is granted by the husband
- A get is required before an Orthodox Jew may remarry in a synagogue
- Orthodox authorities work within the halakhah rather than around it
- And only Orthodox authority is accepted in Israel
What is done about it
- Reform and Liberal Judaism, the guide says, find a way round this difficulty
- Through different approaches to evolving laws
- Orthodox responses work inside the law — the same tools, used differently
- So the disagreement is about method, not about whether it is a problem
How to write this well: Everyone involved agrees it is a hardship. Present it as a question the tradition is working on, with the movements differing about the permissible method.
That is accurate and it is also the version that earns the higher markbands, because it explains rather than complains.
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Marriage and family
- The importance of Jewish marriage and keeping a Jewish home
- Orthodoxy intolerant of "marrying out of the faith"
- The need for Jewish children to perpetuate the religion
- A demographic reason stated alongside a religious one
Life and death
- Sanctity of life leads to respectful death rituals
- Variations on abortion and contraception between the traditions
- Cremation not permitted in Orthodox Judaism
- Hevra kadisha, shiva, stone-setting within the year
War
- War is regarded as legitimate
- The guide gives the reason: the commandment is "Thou shalt not commit murder"
- So the question is which killing counts as murder
- A translation point with ethical consequences
The translation argument: The guide's own reasoning on war is that the commandment is "Thou shalt not commit murder" rather than kill.
So a tradition's ethics can turn on a Hebrew verb. That is a genuinely interesting point for a Theme 5 essay, and it connects Theme 2's language material to Theme 5's ethics.
Shechitah: Ritual slaughter — is vital for kashrut, and the guide records the Jewish argument: it promotes, rather than violates, animal rights.
It adds that the Hebrew Bible is sensitive to both animals and nature, giving the sabbatical year for the land as an example. Report the argument as the tradition makes it; the debate about it is live in several countries.
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Read this before writing anything on this topic: The guide's entry is one sentence: Zionism — Jews who support the Jewish homeland in Israel. Variations both there and in the worldwide Jewish community about how best to be faithful to Judaism and yet promote peace and justice for all.
That is a live political dispute, and there is no neutral framing available. This course examines it as a question about Jewish ethical reasoning — how Jews argue about it and from what — and does not adjudicate the politics. Neither should your answer.
The guide's Zionism entry. The examinable content is the range of Jewish views and the reasoning behind them.
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The wider political conflict is beyond what this syllabus asks and beyond what any short answer can treat responsibly. What an examination can ask is the Theme 5 question: how does a tradition apply its core teachings to a contemporary issue when its own members reach different conclusions?
Answer that, using the guide's own sentence, and you have answered the question that was set.
How this is tested. Theme 5 is taught through no more than three contemporary case studies, and the guide supplies several for Judaism: the agunah, shechitah, and the questions around marriage and family.
Examine how Jewish law responds when it produces an ethical difficulty.
Model answer plan
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