Jerusalem – In an unusual ruling, the Tel Aviv rabbinical court allowed a divorced woman to remarry to a man who is a Cohen.

The special permission granted earlier this year by Rabbi Zvadya Cohen, the head of the Rabbinical Court of Tel Aviv, which is run by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, is rare because in Orthodox Jewish law, Cohens – descendants of Judaism’s priestly sect – are forbidden to marry divorced woman.

But research conducted by the B’Noam Danielle organization, which aims to make religious services more accessible to the Israeli public, revealed that during that two of the witnesses during the woman’s first wedding were related, rendering it void for the purposes of her marriage with the Cohen.

“Her status as a divorced woman has no halachic validity,” Rabbi Yisroel Meir Riani, the founder of B’Noam Danielle, wrote in a statement Thursday about the case.

B’Noam Danielle’s statement did not divulge the names of the bride and groom, citing privacy issues.

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