by the deaths of countless individuals through natural disaster, famine, or massacre, substantially increased the number of agunot. In spite of all ameliorative efforts, the lot of the agunah remained an unhappy one.

Beginning with the second half of the 18th century, the Enlightenment and the Emancipation wrought havoc with the traditional pattern of Jewish life. The admission of Jews into political citizenship, civic equality, and economic opportunity was directly and explicitly linked to the surrender of the authority of Jewish traditional law and to the loss of the legal status of the Jewish community, which now became in effect a voluntary association with no coercive power.

In some quarters today, both the Emancipation and the Enlightenment are decried as totally evil, though one sees little evidence of a wholesalestampede to turn in citizenship papers and return to the ghetto. (The only possible exceptions are some Hasidic groups that have never left it.) The fact is that both modern movements brought substantial benefits to Jews and Judaism–but they exacted a heavy price, in the form of assimilation and alienation.

The rapid growth of secularism and the establishment of civil marriage and divorce in nearly all Western countries coincided with the mass migration of millions of individuals from one country to another. These factors gave rise to a large increase in the number of agunot. Women loyal to Jewish tradition were, of course, the chief victims.

Categories of Agunot

In sum, four principal categories of the agunah have emerged in modern times and are on the increase:

1. A man divorces his