Saturday, November 28, 2015

Tamar Epstein's Heter reaches the press- "Former ‘chained’ woman remarries in Memphis"


A former Silver Spring woman who was a central figure in the ongoing efforts to reform how the Orthodox community deals with men who refuse to grant their wives a Jewish divorce has remarried.

Tamar Epstein married Adam Paul Fleischer on Sept. 24, in a ceremony in Memphis, Tenn....

Because they are still married in the eyes of Jewish law until they receive a get, such women are known as “chained” women, or agunot in Hebrew. With several religious authorities viewing a husband’s refusal to grant the document as tantamount to spousal abuse, Friedman had been banned from communal activities in several locales, including in the Washington area, pending the Silver Spring man’s granting of a get....

The process by which Epstein was allowed to remarry has come under scrutiny, according to several sources. At issue is whether her marriage to Friedman was satisfactorily annulled....

Several people told Washington Jewish Week that Tamar was told she was a free woman by a Philadelphia rabbi who declared that Friedman had severe mental issues that existed prior to the couple’s marriage, including paranoia and obsessive compulsive disorder, and that had she known of these conditions, she would not have married him. Therefore, halachically she could move on with her life, the rabbi declared....

Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, vice president of the Rabbinical Court in Israel, wrote a blog post in protest of Epstein’s remarriage.

A decision by some rabbis that the Epstein-Friedman marriage was over even though Epstein “had lived with her first husband for an extended period of time and she had borne a daughter from him,” is not the way it works, he said.

“I saw the [ruling] that ‘freed’ her. I hate to say this, but the [ruling] is total nonsense. Taking the approach of this [ruling], it is possible to destroy the whole framework of halachic marriage,” he wrote. “Such an approach is destructive to Judaism and uproots the basic laws governing Jewish marriage.”

According to Sternbuch, Epstein is still married to Friedman “in every respect.”...

[Rabbi] Kranz, who believes Epstein must receive a Jewish divorce before she can go on with her life, called the matter “a tragedy, a really big tragedy.”

No comments :

Post a Comment

ANONYMOUS COMMENTS WILL NOT BE POSTED!
please use either your real name or a pseudonym.