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Marriage

Organization · http://data.judaicalink.org/data/ep/1290772

The institution of marriage in East European Jewish society remained largely traditional until the early twentieth century but also reflected broader transformations in general society. In the absence of civil marriage in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later in tsarist Russia, marriage belonged to the competence of the rabbi, who supervised wedding ceremonies and adjudicated divorce according to Jewish law. In contrast, following the Polish Partitions, the Habsburg Empire maintained an ambiguous separation of church and state in matters of family law. While the new marriage edict (16 January 1783) mandated civil unions and a German exam for all married couples, it allowed clergy to regulate divorces based on their own confessional laws. In the case of Jews, the rabbinic court upheld the requirement of a formal get (writ of divorce) even in cases involving male converts to Christianity. Despite the extension of the Toleranzpatent to Galicia in 1789, the majority of Jews evaded civil marriages and maintained traditional religious ceremonies for many decades thereafter.

Identifiers

Wikidata

Q8445

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