In an unprecedented move, the Tel Aviv Rabbinical Court ordered a man jailed for 30 days for abetting his son’s 11-year refusal to grant his daughter-in-law a divorce, calling the case “one of the harshest cases of igun [‘chained’ to a recalcitrant husband] the rabbinical court system has ever had to deal with.”

The head of the rabbinical court panel, Rabbi Shlomo Shatsman, suspended the punishment for 10 days to give the father a chance to appeal. […]

After a series of hearings and investigations, the Tel Aviv Rabbinical Court, in a 45-page ruling, determined that the father “is a central and active factor behind the chaining of his daughter-in-law through his son’s recalcitrance,” and ordered him imprisoned for 30 days, pending an appeal, should he pursue one, before the Supreme Rabbinical Court.