Rabbi Simcha Krauss, who in the face of harsh attacks from colleagues headed a New York-based  rabbinical court that has helped scores of Orthodox women obtain Jewish divorces from recalcitrant husbands, died on Jan. 20 in Jerusalem. He was 84.

As a pulpit rabbi in Queens in the late 1990s, he was among the first rabbis to permit women to have separate Sabbath services so that they could read from the Torah, a privilege that strict Orthodox practice reserves for men during public worship. Then he caused a stir in 2014 when he agreed to lead a newly formed rabbinical court, the International Beit Din, in Riverdale. The court became known for searching out technical flaws, loopholes and acts of deception in order to void marriages when the husband refused to grant a bill of religious divorce, known as a get.

“When you’re older, you’re less afraid, so you do what you believe in,” his son, Rabbi Binyamin Krauss, recalled him saying. “So that’s what he did. He let them talk, and he did his work.”