A close friend of my was speaking with a godol in Yerushalayim yesterday and mentioned that there are rabbis who claim that once there is a civil divorce and no chance of reconciliation - that the wife has the right to demand a get. His reaction was that such a rabbi was a rosho and was causing others to sin.
I think a big part of the problem - the source of the problem - is that as a society we have completely forgotten what marriage is about, and the functions of the laws which regulate marriage. We end up with people who support the traditional law just saying "this is the law" - which is correct, but not so useful. They do not know how to say "this is why the law is good and correct".
ReplyDeleteSo on the other side we have Shachter, the rabbanut, and many more, who have no uderstanding of marriage, trying to force their cluelessness into the halacha. They feel that women should be free to leave when they want, as they want, taking along whatever they can, so they find some way to force that into the halacha. They know how to talk a lot and quote the right names, giving a sense that they are committed to the halacha, and as far as public debate goes, it is impossible to convince most people that they are wrong.
The only useful counterargument will be a discussion of marriage from a practical social standpoint, and not from a technical halachic standpoint. Why do we marry, why are men required to support women in marriage, why can't women walk out of a marriage - there are reasons for all of this. And when people know the reasons, they suddenly stop supporting (agunas) homewreckers. They realize that if marriage is not binding then marriage makes no sense, and if marriage makes no sense, having children makes no sense, and society comes to a swift collapse in a great orgy. Shachter, the Rabbanut, et.el. are not saving women - they are destroying society - but people will only understand that as they appreciate the function of marriage as more than keeping a woman happy for a while.
Well, but this does not address the problem of bias.
DeleteA man can have a strong impact on his ex-wife's life by withholding the get.
If a woman withholds the get, it doesn't have the same impact, and is easier circumvented.
If a man is unfaithfull (i.e. lies with another woman than his wife), rabbis encourage the wife to forgive him and uphold the marriage. (What about STD?)
If a woman is unfaithfull, she will be divorced immediately and looses all rights.
The former stability of marriage was largely due to the fact that women could not cope alone, for pure economical reasons: they often had no proper training, no job, etc...
I think that all thoses biases are not right way of promoting stability in marriage.
A succsessful marriage takes two to work. You cannot just allow one party to do whatever they want because the other party is not allowed to leave.
Is it possible to post and discuss other issues besides GET/Agunahs?
ReplyDeleteCan't we end with 'Different true strokes for different folks' according to halacha?
The problem is that this is not simple a case of eilu v'eilu. This issue has major ramifications for Jews all over the world and therefore we can not simply walk away and say "time for the next topic."
DeleteSo yes I will bring up other topics - but this issue needs attention.
If and when you have an answer for the child nobody marries because he may be a mamzer because you were busy with other issues, then you can talk about other issues.
DeleteThe problem with this whole ordeal is that Rabbi Eidonsohn and his brother are the only 2 rabbis in the world who i have seen to publicly address these issues. Claiming what gedolim say about the issue is no support. You need Rabbonim publicly rebuking the ORA and Rabbi Schachter in their name if the otherside wants to get support.
ReplyDeleteNachum,
DeleteI completely agree with you. I recently attacked some people in a public letter and people congratulated me but they said, "Where is everybody else?" There is, however, an answer to this.
A decent and Torah scholar rabbi knows all about the Friedman case but refused to get involved. He said he was afraid, and he has reason to be afraid. A person who works for the public can lose his job for offending one powerful person. My brother and I are independent and fight without this fear. Anyway, our parents didn't teach us how to be afraid.
So this godol thinks it is a good idea to put a stumbling block in front of the wife...
ReplyDeleteIs he at all interested in the sanctity of marriage?
6ft, He believes in the sanctity of marriage as HaShem invented it, not like Rabbi Schachter and ORA invented it.
DeleteAnyone who calls AGUNAHS - homewreckers has finally allowed his stripes to show!!!!
ReplyDeleteThere is an extreme opinion that the woman's need for freedom is paramount and negates the needs of the husband and child, but there is another perspective, that when you marry, you stay married. The gemora accepts divorce, but only very reluctantly. But when there are children to be hurt, the gemora is very negative. Someone was without a working marriage for over a decade. A rabbi asked him why he doesn't get a divorce, and he said, "My children would not do a good shidduch if I divorce." I don't say this is right or wrong, I just say that some people go to extremes to protect their children, and they certainly have a point. And to encourage support for people who are in essence destroying their children is surely a questionable act.
DeleteI have spoken to various senior Gittin authorities, and all of them disagree with Rabbi Schachter and consider ORA doing an evil thing that can produce an invalid GET. One major authority told me he just had a problem with Rabbi Schachter permitting an aishis ish without a proper GET and he added, "He doesn't know what he is doing." There is a letter from Rabbi Schachter posted in the Friedman case whereby he says that Rabbi Kaminetsky who backs Mrs. Friedman/Epstein has a status that whoever disagrees with him threatens the respect for the line of rabbis from the prophets. These are not the exact words but the basic idea as I understood it. The problem is that today we have no Torah Semicha and no individual can coerce another individual, not even Rabbi Kam.
DeleteI agree 100% with Caren May!
DeleteOkay. You want to stop talking about invalid Gittin. So, what would you say to the child born from such an invalid GET who is consisdered by me to be a possible mamzer and nobody will marry him so as not to drag the problem into further generations as well. Will you be proud of what you just said?
Delete6ft, this Gadol thinks it is a good idea to follow the Torah given at Sinai and not to invent a new one to help Agunohs when you are creating mamzerim.
ReplyDeletePosek HaDor Rav Elyashev shlit"o told me that any Beth Din that seeks to change the halacha to help an Agunah loses its authority as a Beth Din.
If you want to really help Agunoth, make sure that no lady marries with Kiddushin, then they can leave a non-marriage any time they want. But if they accept Kiddushin, there is a Torah process to follow. That comes from Sinai, from HaShem, and one who changes it is a rosho.
Great comments, Binyamin.
ReplyDeleteYou really hit on a most critical point. The ORA / Herschel Schachter / Jeremy Stern / Orthodox Feminist automatic divorce on demand agenda is a deadly threat to the survival of the Jewish family, and thus a threat to the survival of society itself.
Torah observant Jews really need to re-evaluate their understanding of the function and importance of Jewish marriage, and learn to appreciate that the Jewish marriage laws have deep and significant rationales behind them. We must reject the corrupt, non-Jewish mentality that marriage can be just wantonly discarded by either spouse, like discarding a pair of shoes.
"If you want to really help Agunoth, make sure that no lady marries with Kiddushin, then they can leave a non-marriage any time they want"
ReplyDeleteare you sure this is a solution? Because I heard that, according to some opinions, a get is required when it is publicly known that a man and a woman are "together", which is thought to be the case automatically when they have a child.
So the only 100% foolproof solution I see is: marry non-jews!
This is incorrect, if they consciously skip Jewish marriage.
Delete(To be fair, their are battei din which will require a get 'just-in-case' if they live together long-term, including the rabbanut in Israel from what I understand, but I am not aware of any source for this.)
Just to be machmir, we can have couples register with their local Rabbi that they do not want their relationship to be a marriage, and then there is no question at all.
>So the only 100% foolproof solution I see is: marry non-jews!<
DeleteThere are some pretty ones out there they say...
Excellent, excellent point. Let me enforce it for you, if I may. Rav Henkin and the senior governmenet Rov in Jerusalem in the past generation held that any couple married, even Reform or whatever if they are together we accord them the status of being married and they need a GET. Reb Moshe and perhaps most people rejected this, and when OTSAR HAPOSKIM was published Rav Henkin was angry that his opinion was not accepted properly, and he was the senior Rov in America at the time.
DeleteI once spoke to a group of conservative rabbis who wanted to move towards Orthodoxy, and I asked them why they are making kosher marriages and doubtful Gittin, because even they were not accepted as witnesses on a GET by Orthodox people. The solution I proposed was an act of marriage that could not turn into AISHIS ISH even according to Rav Henkin. And that is, when the couple clearly declares that it is making a marriage whereby the woman is an equal partner with the husband and both make the marriage, in such a case the marriage is not valid according to the Torah. You could argue with this, but one this is for sure, it would surely go a long way towards finding a Rov to permit the children, because there would be no Torah laws involved, because sofek mamzer is mutar by the Torah, see SHeb SHem in the beginning. And of course no frum person should defy the Torah and do this, but at least, if you want to be e rosho, don't make mamzerim.
I don't mean this comment to disrespect great Torah figures. I am merely wondering why myself, or anybody, or even you, should be moved by the statement of anonymous "great Rabbis" from Israel and their opinions about decisions of local public Rabbis.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, (and some of you may go crazy about this, but again I mean no disrespect) why does Rabbi Eidenson get away with a vague statement from Harav Elyashiv Shlita about taking away the authority of B"D from other Rabbi's. I frankly, don't even understand what that means. Even if Rav Elyashiv said this, if great Rabbi's here have determined the Halacha to be different, why should they back down? Does a statement from Rav Shmuel Kamenetzky or Rav Herschel Schachter need to adhere to Rav Elyashiv's psak? The main problem that I see is not in the different activity in America but in the fact that a separate halachik decisions across seas will cause a nightmare of yichus in the future. This does not give anybody a right to diminish a psak of a Talmid Chacham because another Talmid Chacham believes different. ( I understand that R' Eidensohn has brought many sources to verify the present Halachik issue. For this he is to be commended and respected. Perhaps he is even correct! My main issue is with the fact that we can say things like Posek Hador and everyone must jump to the tune.)
I want to reiterate one more time. I have as much respect for Harav Elyashiv as I can have for any human being. I met him twice and both times it required serious time and effort, (as well as deviousness:) )on my part. I am however nervous of a scare tactic that demands blind allegiance to someone, whom is anointed by mere mortals such as you and me, as the greatest. To the rest of the concrete issues that Rabbi Eidensohn quotes and organizes, Kol Hakavod.
.
DeleteThis is not that case of requiring someone to blindly follow a gadol against local rabbis because he is daas Torah. This is the opposite - one or two rabbonim - have no right to unilaterally declare a major change in the nature of gittin. When one wants to innovate he has the burden of justification. The majority of poskim - not just Rav Eliashiv - do not permit public humiliation to obtain a get from someone who simply declares she wants to get out of the marriage.
You say the majority of poskim, but what about the Rabbanut, which seems to jail get refusers all the time (and surely jail is a form of public humiliation, as well as coercion)? Do you think the Rabbanut's approach to gittin is all wrong too? And when you say "majority of poskim" are you saying just charedi poskim, or also dati leumi and centrist orthodox poskim?
DeleteYes, the Rabbanut is a completely illegitimate institution. It is a secular body staffed by rabbanim, who fully accept the limitations that the law places on them in applying halacha, they fully accept the involvement and the pressure of the secular judicial system, and they are quite selective in their own interpretation of the halacha. (Oh, and they get an very generous salary to keep this up.)
DeleteI find it extremely disturbing that anyone would rely on them for the kashrut of a get. (Even drinking water here has a hecsher from the Eidah - but for eishes ish the rabbanut is fine. go figure.)
Obviously not all of their gittin are a problem, but I am just saying that they cannot be relied on at all, and anyone who is considering marrying a divorcee has to make sure there was no pressure at all, without assuming that the rabbanut cared at all about that. They did not.
It is a pleasure to find someone who talks honestly and openly in such a heated atmosphere with such a hot topic. I feel your question deserves a response. I wrote a book about my experiences with Gedolim of the past generation entited The Torah That Was, the Torah That Will Be. On the one hand, a gadol is a human being. On the other hand, he has worked on himself more than most people, and KLal Yisroel relies on his opinions to guide them in Torah. Once we accept someone as a Rov or Torah authority, we must show respect for them. There is as Teshuva in Rashbo that we obey our Rov, that is the one we accept for our community, even if many great rabbis disagree with him. Because this is the honor of Torah. The majority of Haredi or Yeshiva Jews consider Rav Elyashev their rebbe. Now, I have a letter of approbation from Reb Moshe Feinstein for one of my seforim, and in the sefer is a brutal war with Reb Moshe on a Rivis issue. If I had not written that, Reb Moshe would have had tsaar that he failed with me as a talmid who must fight back. But after the fighting back is finished, if I am still a Talmid and he is still the rebbe, I behaved and all of us have our opinions but we have to behave.
Delete"who SIMPLY declares she wants to get out of the marriage" ... None of your poskim know that or the case first hand, and herein is the problem
ReplyDeletepitputim,
ReplyDeleteI entirely agree with your stance in that I don't talk about who is right or wrong. I only talk about the mamzerim who will come into the world when RHS encouraged coerced Gittin. My brother Rav Daniel prefers going into the nitty gritty and researches thoroughly until he is ready to talk about who is right and who is wrong, but I am a chicken and prefer to stick to halochose in general, unless I have to take a stand to support a clear halacha.