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JERUSALEM — It's a tale that, on the face of it, had all the trappings of a good — a really good — newspaper story. Foreign workers rape a haredi woman, the mother of nine children, as she leaves a mikvah. She and her husband are deeply in love, but because of the Torah, the rabbis decree that he must divorce her. The reason: The husband is a Kohen, descendant of the priestly caste, and he cannot live with a wife who has been violated.

The story was told in the Yediot Acharonot newspaper two weeks ago, and then picked up by all the major media, including newspapers throughout the United States and Europe. The only problem is that it appears now, two weeks after publication, that the whole thing never happened. A number of people went searching for the haredi woman, the children, the foreign rapists, the rabbis. Nobody found anything.

Yediot published a retraction Monday, admitting that rumors were the source of its story. The reporter who wrote the story has resigned.

The story, denounced last week by a rabbi in Tel Aviv's Bnai Brak neighborhood as a hoax, had caused an uproar among Orthodox Jews. It also drew protests from Israeli women's groups.

A group called Manof – the Center for Jewish Information filed a complaint with a journalists' association against the reporter. Perhaps the reporter fell victim to wild rumors being spread about foreign workers. Perhaps the country fell victim to shoddy journalism, and a penchant to believe the worst about the haredim.

An investigation by another Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, found the story to be untrue. The Ha'aretz reporter, who appeared on Israel Television, said she tried for a week to locate the woman referred to in the Yediot report and learned that a rumor about a similar incident had been circulating for some time.

According to noted Jewish philosopher Eliezer Schweid, the whole episode puts into context the fundamental gap separating the religious and non-religious communities. That so many people were willing to believe the story, even though it was poorly sourced from the beginning, is "not necessarily the result of negative attitudes toward the haredim," Schweid argued. "You can't deny that the stands taken by the haredi leadership on these issues — the status of women — provide a background that enables people to believe this type of thing."

Schweid said that the lack of knowledge in the wider public of the halachic norms in these areas, coupled with an underlying antagonism toward the rabbinic establishment for its stand on issues over which it has sole control — marriage and divorce — makes people more willing to buy these stories.

A few days after the story broke, a demonstration was organized in front of the Tel Aviv rabbinate, with signs reading, "Don't rape her again," "Halachah against women," "Medieval darkness" and "Is being raped a crime?" One of the demonstrators, Yael Doron of the Rape Crisis Center, said Sunday that even though the incident in question may have been made up, "Don't make the rabbinate into pure righteous people, because they are not. Maybe this specific incident did not happen, but that doesn't mean they are clean. They have done enough bad things."

According to Schweid, friction over matters of personal status and sexual ethics is one of the most difficult points of contention between the religious and non-religious communities. "The law has given the rabbinate authority over these issues, and the rabbinate doesn't try to solve the problems that arise in a manner that is compatible with the ethical standards of the majority of the non-religious public.

"There is a deep conflict on this, and it touches especially on the status of women. The conventional wisdom is that the halachic stands taken by the rabbinate discriminate against women. It is against the backdrop of this sensitivity that you can understand why people are willing to easily believe these stories."

Interestingly enough, Rabbi Shmuel Jakobovits, head of Ura Kevodi, an organization of haredi intellectuals set up to clarify haredi stands on contemporary issues, said that although the Yediot story may or may not be true, it does reflect a genuine aspect of the clash between the religious and non-religious cultures and ideologies.

"It may be that this particular instance was fabricated, but there is something here that is a matter of conflict," Jakobovits said. "According to the Torah, a Kohen is not allowed to continue to live with his wife if she was raped. What we really have here is a deep conflict between two ideologies.

"The papers and media play it up, because they are eager to show that in the perspective of modern, universalist, human values, there are elements in Torah ideology that are — to their minds — unacceptable. But I say it is specifically issues such as these that are litmus tests of our faith, and of our belief in Torah from heaven."

He said that accepting painful decrees such as these is a "sign of acceptance of the heavenly law." Jakobovits said that although the particular incident may not have happened, "it could happen." He said there are other factors that could come into play that would lead to a more lenient opinion by the rabbinical courts, "and there may very well be only a few instances where this [halachic] principle will be applied. But the principle is there.

"The real issue at hand in Israeli society is the principle, not the actual incident. That is the central issue facing us today — that one side views Torah as supreme and unassailable, while the other side believes that universal values are superior."