"When a man [...] has found something obnoxious in [his wife] he may write her a bill of divorce. [...] And when she has departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife. And if the latter husband rejects her [...] or dies, her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she is defiled; for that is abomination [to'eivah] before the Lord; and you shall not cause the land to sin, which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance." (D'varim 24:1-4)

Sometimes the torah presents us with difficult passages. It's tempting to ignore them, there being plenty else in torah to occupy us. When our sages faced difficult passages, though, they instead sought to interpret them. Earlier in our parsha is an excellent example: the torah tells us that if a son is rebellious, indulging in gluttony and ignoring his parents, his parents are to take him before witnesses and kill him. The rabbis drew from the text many restrictions that would make it difficult to carry this out, and in the end declared that it never happened. In that spirit, let us look at this passage that seems to take a poor view of women.

Let us look first at the reasons for divorce. Our text says the husband finds something "obnoxious" in her. Beit Shammai says this refers to immorality; he can divorce her because of some moral transgression. Beit Hillel, on the other hand, says he can divorce her if she burns his food. (Gittin 90a, mishna) This sounds frivilous, but I side with Hillel here.

In Shammai's view, a divorce levels an implicit charge against the woman. Worse, it is one she can't defend herself against, because the man didn't bring it to a beit din where she could respond. That charge, that suspicion, will follow her around in the community. What an awful thing to do to her.

In Hillel's view, on the other hand, the divorce could be about anything -- and, in fact, could well be about the man's pettiness. He is as likely to look bad as she is. What kind of man divorces his wife on account of the soup? Shammai's interpretation damages the woman's reputation; Hillel's preserves her dignity.

If a divorce signals immorality then it should be difficult for the woman to remarry, but the torah talks about the case where she does. And, once she does remarry, if that marriage ends the first husband cannot take her back. He does not have the option to say to her "nyah, he wouldn't keep you either; you should come crawling back to me". He does not have that power; once she has gone on with her life, he's done. (As an aside, we can ask why he is still, or again, seeking a wife.)

Does Hillel's view treat divorce too lightly? Do we trivialize marriage by allowing it to be broken up over something as petty as cooking? Marriage, kiddushin, is holy. Our tradition tells us that God spends his time post-creation making matches, and it also tells us that when there is a divorce the altar weeps. But, all that said, we permit divorce -- the well-being of the people in the marriage supersedes kiddushin itself. Marriage is holy, but people are more holy. Divorce is unfortunate but sometimes necessary.

The passage that talks about "defilement" and "abomination" is troublesome. The text says the remarried woman is defiled, and the feminine language in the Hebrew supports this reading. The word for abomination, too, is feminine. The pronoun here is actually written incorrectly, spelled "hu" (masculine) but vocalized "hi" (feminine); this is not uncommon in the book of D'varim so isn't necessarily significant, but perhaps it is a hint.

I read this passage as saying that she is defiled to him, to the one who divorced her. Clearly she is not defiled globally, as she is permitted to remarry. I think the to'eivah, the abomination, here is not in her or in marrying her, but specifically in trying to reclaim someone he has already dismissed and who has gone on with her life. Just as we do not remind a convert of his idolatrous past, we do not force -- nor even permit -- the divorced woman to go back to her unpleasant past.

There are still plenty of problems with women's roles in marriage and divorce. The torah does not provide for a woman to initiate a divorce, and the problem of the agunah, the chained woman who cannot remarry because she doesn't have a bill of divorce from her husband, is a major issue (more major than it needs to be). But sometimes we can read the text less negatively than it seems at first glance, and maybe by doing so we can find new insights and ways to address these problems.