A rabbinical court in Haifa has fined a woman for practicing witchcraft — but it could have been worse.
The court penalized her by reducing the value of the woman’s ketubah, the amount her husband must pay her in the event of divorce, by half — or about $25,000. However, the wife was acquitted of refusing to cook for her husband — the least the court could do since her husband had committed adultery.
The wife denied her husband’s charge that she practiced witchcraft, but she failed a polygraph test, leading the court to determine that she in fact had been practicing witchcraft.
Death is the punishment for witchcraft in the Torah, but the rabbis found a source that instead allowed them to mete out the financial penalty. The couple went before the court to receive a decree of Jewish divorce, or get.
— jta