Yoel Weiss and Rivky Stein: Update

update: Just received this comment which makes a number of important points

There is much to learn from the saga of Yoeli. Reading the comments on this post, I think too many people are missing the real lessons. 

Reconciliation is a good thing. Therapists, in contrast to accusations made by too many people, are dedicated to הבאת שלום בין איש לאשתו. We are not divorce hungry, and we do not make such decisions for our clients. 

This reconciliation is a rare exception, and a special tefilo for its longevity would be appropriate. As is typical for many cases, the sale to the public that the woman is the victim of an abusive husband is fairly easy and popular. It is ignorant to deny that there are abusive husbands. Very close to 50% of all marriages in which there is abuse, the perpetrator is the woman, and the victim is the husband. Yet, any woman with a difficulty in the marriage can buy the world's pity and support with claims of victimization. And the current unbalanced systems built to protect victims of domestic violence support this reverse victimization of men. I am in as much awe of the reconciliation as I am of the blindness that afflicted those who pushed themselves as advocates for women in this saga. I remain appalled at the extremes of falsehood and fabrication with non-existent dayanim, and the pumping of these fraudulent messages to the secular media. The chilul Hashem aspect of all this is outside of the realm of humans to judge, and HKB”H will deal with this as He sees fit. 

I will not comment specifically about any organization. But the efforts to intervene here without knowing facts were clearly in the wrong, and I would daven that they, too, learn some lessons. 

Lastly, I pray that the children, who were made into victims by the incessant efforts to cut them off from their father, become truly resilient and never experience any ill effects of what was inflicted upon them.

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Statement from Yoel Weiss:

As my wife and I are very public figures who have aroused much interest and strong feelings regarding the breakup of our marriage – I would like to publish an update regarding our current situation.

Baruch HaShem – we have reconciled and are living together as a family with our children. We are aware that this is probably the least expected outcome given the accusations that were made and publicized in all the media. But it is true. We are both firmly committed to making our marriage work and with G-d's help we will succeed.

How this all came about is not something which is appropriate for the present – there are still very sensitive issues that are being addressed. We would appreciate if you would respect our privacy and allow the healing process to work without making us and our children a subject of gossip and Monday morning quarterbacking. Someday it might be possible to calmly explain what happened – but now is not the time.

In addition we have both learned much from recent events regarding saving marriages as well as what not to do when the marriage can not be saved. We have succeeded in helping a number of couples regarding these issues and are looking for a way to help others avoid the pain and degradation that we have experienced. We are presently working on making this advice available in a more structured and useful format. I will update the public as we work this out.

However at the present, all that is relevant is that we are Baruch HaShem a family again.