Monday, April 16, 2012

Get Me'usa: L'chatchila vs. Bedieved????

A simple question has been raised. It seems that even though there are rishonim who allow pressure of various types for a man to give his wife a get - the Achronim require being very cautious because of the possibility the get was not given freely. In short they are choshesh that the pressure produced a get me'usa and thus is invalid.  

What happens if the concerns are ignored. It apparently means at most that there is the possibility that the get is invalid but it is not certain. It also means that we are concerned at most with the possibility that someone might not want to marry the woman - but not that the children are in fact mamzerim. Thus if woman want to take the chance that they might lose a part of the population as possible husbands - what is wrong with allowing this to happen - especially she has a number of major rabbis advocating she do so?

14 comments :

  1. the problem isnt necessarily that the woman will have a "tough" time finding a husband to marry, the problem is her future children may have such a problem, esp if confronted with a (mesader) get who has a reputation for "questionable" gitten.

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    1. just to play devil's advocate - but if we collectively stop questioning the practices of certain rabbonim - doesn't that coverup help the validity and thus the acceptance of the get?

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  2. This is very much a meta-halachic (for lack of a better term) question. It comes down to how you view that Posek. If you consider him to be a Rasha, you're not going to accept anything he does. A case in point would R Sherman invaldating ALL of R Druckman's gerusin- even the those done ke'halocha- because he's passul to be a dayan and therefore there was no B"D for the geirus. On the other extreme you have the letter of the Noda B'yehuda during the R Y Emden/ R Y Eyebeshutz machlokes. He writes that after reading something, "Had I not known that the author was R Yonason Eyebeshutz, I would concluded that he was a Sabatean." That is, R Yonason's greatness precluded him from being suspected of wrongdoing.

    Most people are somewhere in the middle. As R Yisrael Meir Lau said during the Mihu Yehudi controversy, "The question of who is a Jew, is more a question of who is a Rabbi".

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  3. shaul -- "If you consider him to be a Rasha, you're not going to accept anything he does."

    thats only a modern phenomena (RYE / YAAVETZ case excepted; and i'm sure they accepted each other gitten, polemics aside.)

    and he invalidated R Druckman's geirut, not gitten.

    i think it would be fair to say that in the future, any ptur signed by R Rackman z"l will be investigated, at the very least.

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  4. The question is not one question but several. Because the way it is phrased there is no clear distinction between various levels of force. Secondly, if there is such a point, that when a sefer or posek says that something is coerced and invalid, he only meant lichatchilo, you have done away with the fear of invalid Gittin through coercion. Also, we have an obligation to help an Agunah, so if something is permitted, why forbid it just to be frum? Is this frum? Therefore, we have to assume the worst, that when a posek forbids a woman to remarry with a coerced GET, he meant it, period.

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    1. Secondly, if there is such a point, that when a sefer or posek says that something is coerced and invalid, he only meant lichatchilo, you have done away with the fear of invalid Gittin through coercion.
      ===========
      That is exactly my point!

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  5. DT wrote: " It also means that we are concerned at most with the possibility that someone might not want to marry the woman - but not that the children are in fact mamzerim."

    Why wouldn't we be choshesh that the children are mamzeirim? They are sofek mamzeirim.

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  6. M'doraisa a Sofek Mamzer can marry any Jew. But Chazal forbade marrying a Sofek Mamzer. So a Sofek Mamzer cannot marry a regular Jew, a vadai mamzer or even another safek mamzer.

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    1. There is no issur of marrying an unknown mamzer or sofek mamzer. The problem is only when the status is given and the case publicized.

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    2. Anyone can publicize this. It will be public knowledge, especially by her first husband who can announce it, giving her future children the status of Sofek Mamzeirim.

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    3. Reuven,
      I was once involved with a sofek mamzer and the Gedolim of the past generation were involved. It was terrible because there was a big machlokess between them. I was the messenger boy and I saw first hand what a problem a sofek mamzer ix.

      A sofek mamzer cannot marry a mamzer, a Yisroel, or a sofek mamzer. And now we have Rabbi Schachter and ORA creating a whole new class of people who may be real mamzerim.

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  7. Great point ! In addition the question of what is called a Get Meusheh and what can cause it needs Gedolei Poskim -who are also lomdinim- to decide between all the opinions of the Rishonim and Achronim.

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  8. . It seems that even though there are rishonim who allow pressure of various types for a man to give his wife a get - the Achronim require being very cautious because of the possibility the get was not given freely. In short they are choshesh that the pressure produced a get me'usa and thus is invalid.

    What happens if the concerns are ignored. It apparently means at most that there is the possibility that the get is invalid but it is not certain.


    I don't know that we(or they) are not worried about the creation of mamzerim. That same accusation of creating mamzerim was leveled at Rav Ovadia in the 70's when he sought to free Agunot. His response, as codified in Yabia Omer 6 EhE 3, discusses the concern.

    Though it seems that just as often the question revolves around whether we can tell the difference between halakha and humra, and politics.

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