Agunah—the chained wife עגונה

A marriage is dissolved by a bill of divorce, given by the husband, or by his death. If the husband has disappeared—gone on a journey, not returned from a war, drowned at sea—the wife remains neither married nor free. The word agunah means "tied."

What the sages did. Everything they could without touching the foundation. Testimony is normally accepted from two men; here "for the sake of the agunah they were lenient": they accepted the word of one man, and of a woman, and of a slave, and hearsay from a stranger, and even rumour under certain conditions. A whole tractate examines what news counts as proof: did the witness see the face, did he recognise the clothes, was the water "of which there is an end in sight."

Men going to war. From antiquity a soldier before a campaign gave his wife a conditional divorce—valid if he did not return. So it was done in David's armies, as the sages explain; so it was done in modern times, in the world wars, and so it is still done in Israel.

And today. The trouble has changed its shape. There are fewer men missing without trace and more husbands who can give a divorce and will not: out of spite, for money, for the terms of a settlement. Rabbinical courts compel, states help in various ways, and still women sit for years. This is a case where a reference book must say plainly: the question is open, and it hurts.