One of the recurrent themes of my work as the Forward’s Israel correspondent is trying to make sense of Israeli bureaucracy regarding life-cycle events — or, often, to explore the lack of sense that guides the system. I have covered the woman who was regarded Jewish in one city but a Gentile in another, the couples who cannot get married, the people who can’t get buried, and most recently the woman who may force deportation because she took too frum a path when converting to Judaism. But never have I covered a woman who had to divorce the same man twice two weeks apart.

Meir Asoulin and Merav Marili were divorced at the Be’er Sheva Rabbinic Court earlier this month — or so they thought. But they subsequently got a call from the court saying that they needed to do it all over again.

According to the media there was a problem with the signature of one of the witnesses, which is why the court insisted on a re-divorce. Rabbi Yitzhak Dahan, the head of the Be’er Sheva Rabbinic Court, said that it was under pressure — seemingly the reason it missed the problem before the couple and the witnesses leave.

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It’s amazing to think that across the world millions of shoppers pay by credit card every day and sales assistants manage to check signatures, yet at a rabbinic court issuing a divorce, they usher everyone out the door — and declare the couple divorced — before verifying everything. One only wonders what would have happened had one of the divorcees already remarried.

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