Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses the importance of properly naming the city in the Get. This brings to mind an interesting slice of reality from about 100 years ago. In the Introduction to the eighth volume of the Iggeros Moshe, there is a biography of Rav Moshe that goes on for dozens of pages, and has the veracity of being written by his grandchildren. One of Rav Moshe’s first rabbinic positions was to serve as Rabbi of the town Luban. To give you an idea of the powerhouses of learning that some of these Lithuanian Jewish towns contained, they said that the wagoner of the city knew Shas and Poskim, and the shoemaker (whom Rav Moshe lived by for a time) spent so much time learning, that no one knew when he actually found the time to repair shoes (see page 37).

One of Rav Moshe’s early rabbinic rulings was how to spell Luban in a Get (p.17). This is an important historical note. As we just remarked that this town was chock full of lamdanim, and thus if a divorce had been written in the last several hundred years, it is a fair presumption that someone would remember how Luban was halakhically spelled. We must assume that there hadn’t been a divorce in Luban for many hundreds of years! Rav Moshe lived through tumultuous times, such as the communist revolution and the upheavals subsequent from the haskala and industrial revolution. During these modernizing and turbulent times, the idea of divorce either became more manageable, or the institution of marriage and family was undermined, or both.

In the end, it is fair to assume that at least part of the absence of divorce in Luban (and possibly other shtetlach) was due to stigma and social pressure. Is this a good thing? How many women (and men) were suffering in a dysfunctional marriage but felt no way out? On the other hand, there is a protective aspect to social pressures and sanctions. Perhaps people took marriage more seriously and treated their partners with greater regard, as the sacredness of the institution was more deeply felt. We may surmise that the way they sacralized other parts of their lives, submitting to duty and fear of God on a scale that is less frequently found today, so too they treated marriage with deference.

Were they happier and more fulfilled, or were they less happy, living in frustration? I don’t know, but we cannot turn the clock back. Today we have to find happiness and fulfillment living our lives as Jews of a modern world, with its perks as well as its drawbacks. We have less of a sense of the holy, but we have more freedom and resources. Choose wisely.