DEUT1322 The high ideal of married life inculcated by Judaism, added to the experience that an irksome marriage could be ended if absolute necessity arose, raised the lofty standard of Jewish marriage to a very high-level. Though the ethical principles of Judaism are against dissolution, life reveals circumstances, the influences of which sometimes so undermined the basis of marriage as to make any modus vivendi almost impossible. In such cases, it was contended that divorce was the external dissolution of a relation which had already inwardly been destroyed. From the Codes, it would appear that our divorce laws did not press heavily to the disadvantage of woman. Despite the facility with which a union could be dissolved (as would appear from a hurried glance at the sources), the evidence does not suggest that this facility was abused. In the figurative words of one teacher, the alter weeps when a man divorces his first wife (Gittin 90). The Jew, despite the utterances of his detractors, could not divorce his wife upon any slight pretext or whim. He had to find some serious flaw in her [this and following verse]. What this uncleanness was is the theme of a much Talmudic debate. He could not banish her from his home just by mere word of mouth and in an unceremonious, preemptory manner, but after a long and dreary formality which ended in the placing in her possession of a Get. This process was made odious and laborious for two reasons: one, to prevent an undue haste to divorce occasioned by an outburst of anger; two, to afford an opportunity to either party, even at the twelfth hour or during the actual writing of the Bill of Divorcement, to become reconciled.