Friday, November 27, 2015

Why aren't Rabbi Jeremy Stern and ORA protesting the false heter that has resulted in Tamar committing adultery?

Over the years we have had many discussions of the problem of women who want to leave their marriages but their husband refuses to give them a Get for various reasons. While we have some significant disagreements in the realm of halacha, I acknowledge there has always been one person - Rabbi Jeremy Stern and his organization ORA - that has consistently taken the side of the woman. He has sincerely devoted much effort to try and help anyone who claims to be an aguna. He has organized public demonstrations of hundreds of people to try and help a wife obtain her Get. He is very knowledgeable about the use of the media and how to create maximum pressure on the husband and his family to produce a Get. The common denominator in all those that he tries to help is that they are all women. They are viewed by Rabbi Stern and his halachic advisor Rav Herschel Schecter  as being victims of the husband, apathy of the public or rabbis who lack their commonsense human sensitivity to suffering.

In short, I am sure if I called up Rabbi Stern at 3 a.m. and told him there was a woman who needed help – he would immediate start working on finding a solution.

So why haven't we heard from him, ORA or Rav Herschel Schecter regarding the false heter that Tamar received? Why haven't they organized public demonstrations against Rav Greenblatt or the Kaminetskys? Why doesn't the fact that Tamar is now committing adultery as the result of rabbinic incompetence cause them to be outraged? Isn't Tamar also a suffering victim? Aren't they bothered by the major corruption of the halachic  process that has taken place. Why don't they heed the call of Rav Sternbuch and other rabbis to protest the disgrace to the Torah?

It can't be that they don't know about it. It can't be that they are unaware of the elementary halachic errors used to justify the "heter". Even more obvious is that they can not be unaware that the  psychological "evidence" used to justify the "heter" is total nonsense.

Perhaps they claim they are working behind the scenes to rectify the error? Or perhaps that they are worried for the loss of emunas chachomim because big rabbis made a terrible error? Perhaps they think the case should be covered up to prevent a chilul haShem of Titanic proportion? Highly unlikely.

Or perhaps they are afraid to publicize that the advice that rabbis give to women sometimes is wrong. Perhaps they don't want to acknowledge that not every strategy that seems to help women get out of a marriage is correct.

It seems that they are paralyzed because the protest against the heter is a protest against their categorical feminist focus and they simply can't do it. If this "heter" is wrong – people might starting thinking other heterim are also wrong.

Rabbi Stern - please prove me wrong. Please stand up and protest Tamar's plight.

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