Currently, hundreds of women in Israel  are trapped in unhealthy marriages. Many of them suffer from physical and verbal abuse at the hands of their husbands. They do not have the emotional or financial means to attain their freedom and so they remain agunot – women who are trapped in their marriages and incapable of attaining a get - religious bill of divorce.
In Israel, Jewish people can only get divorced through the rabbinic counts, but many women feel totally disempowered in these all male environments. Often, the reason they need to divorce is connected to intimate, painful and embarrassing details of their marital lives which they are uncomfortable disclosing to male advocatesor to rabbis. Judges in the rabbinic courts are therefore unaware of how these women suffer, they see nothing wrong in the marriages and they are reluctant to grant divorces. These women continue to suffer in silence.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Chief Rabbi of Efrat and Chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone Institutions recognized the problem and was determined to find a solution. He appealed to the Chief Rabbis of Israel to allow women advocates to represent female clients in the courts, but the Chief Rabbis demurred. Recognizing the suffering of agunot and seeing no other way of making a change, Rabbi Riskin appealed his case to the Civil Courts. After a lengthy battle, in August 1991, the Knesset amended the law to enable women to practice as advocates in the Rabbinical Courts.

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