The chief rabbi of Zichron Yaakov, located in an area hit by the Israeli wildfires, said couples whose marriage licenses were destroyed in the blazes that swept through Israel last week cannot live together until they draw up a new one.
Rabbi Mordechai Abramovski, in an interview with the ultra-Orthodox news website Kikar HaShabbat, said that the prohibition against living together without a ketubah, or Jewish wedding contract, applies in the case of a fire.
His statements were first reported in English in the Jerusalem Post. Zichron Yaakov is a town in Israel about 20 miles south of Haifa, and Abramovski is the municipal chief rabbi there. He is also in charge of issuing marriage licenses in the Haifa region.
Abramovski said that although Sephardi Jews could rely on the ruling of the late arbiter Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (who said the prohibition in this instance was no longer applicable), no such dispensation has been made for Ashkenazi Jews. Thus, Ashkenazi couples need a new ketubah drawn up before they can live together again.
However, his ruling was at odds with Israel’s chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef and David Lau, who said Nov. 28 that couples could continue to live together without a ketubah burned in a fire but that a replacement ketubah should be procured as soon as possible. They said it is permissible since the rabbinates in which they registered their marriage maintain a copy of the ketubah.
Under Jewish law, couples cannot live together without a ketubah. — jta