This graphic collage depicts the moments of the writing of the Get, the ritual divorce decree, given to me by my husband of 32 years. As I sat alone at one end of a large conference table in the teachers room of a Jewish day school, in the presence of five men who were authorized by Halakha to dismantle my married status and thereby my life as I knew it, one was reading a text, one was listening to a recording device, and my soon to be ex was engaging the head of the beit din in idle conversation. The sofer was doing his job and writing out the document that would be ultimately delivered into my hands, while I looked on.
For various reasons, I was alone and had come without anything to read. For all intents and purposes, I was completely invisible. All I had to keep me company was a small iPod containing pictures of my grandchildren. It was while looking at these, that I realised that I could and should use the camera feature to record the day for future use.
Several years later, once some of the pain and anguish had settled into a dull ache, I constructed this piece. The Hebrew text is taken from the last page of the Babylonian Talmudic tractate Gittin, which generally discusses In a very "clinical" way, the different aspects of writing a Get and the proper conditions under which it can be given. This is one of the few moments in which the tractate approaches the human side of the issue, and it very much describes for me a small piece of the pain and loss I felt that day, not just of my life and the love and meaning that I had ascribed to it, but in a great sense, my belief in the Rabbis and their practices.
Babylonian Talmud Gittin 90a:
R. Eleazar said: If a man divorces his first wife, even the altar sheds tears, as it says: (Malachi 2:13-14) (And this you do as well, cover the altar of the Lord with tears, weeping and moaning, so that He refuses to regard the offering nor to accept it from you. Yet you question why?) Because the Lord is a witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have broken faith, though she is your partner and covenanted spouse.