HaRav Eliashiv Protests Improper Methods Of Coercion In Gittin

Dei'ah veDibur   9 Sivan 5765 - July 6, 2005 

A number of serious incidents have sparked a stormy debate among the halachic authorities of America and gedolei haTorah have asked HaRav Eliashiv to express his opinion. He responded, "They have permitted married women to remarry contrary to Torah law Rachmono litzlan . . . I join the aforementioned rabbonim and geonim in protesting this breach in the ranks of Beis Yisroel. It is quite clear that any discussion about coercing a husband to grant a get should only be held in a beis din composed of rabbonim who are expert Torah scholars, that has an established reputation and whose authority the public accepts."

The furor currently rocking American Jewry has long since spread beyond America and Canada. It has now reached Eretz Yisroel, where the opinion of HaRav Y. S. Eliashiv was sought with the intention of preventing serious damage to the yichus of the Jewish people through the activities of American rabbinical figures who have been scandalously granting married women permission to remarry on the basis of gittin obtained by coercion.

"The situation in America is absolutely terrible in this respect; it is possibly worse than the case of the mamzerim that took place in Eretz Yisroel around thirty years ago," says a pained HaRav Shlomo Eliyahu Miller, Rosh Kollel and Av Beis Din of Kollel Toronto, Canada, in a special interview with Yated Ne'eman. HaRav Miller has undertaken the task of rectifying the situation in order to avert tragic long-term consequences.

Several weeks ago Rav Miller sent HaRav Eliashiv a letter to which many American gedolei Torah and halachic authorities affixed their signatures: HaRav Eliyahu Levin, Rosh Kollel Choshen Mishpot of Lakewood, HaRav Aryeh Malkiel Kotler, rosh yeshivas Lakewood, HaRav Eliyahu Dov Wachtfogel, rosh yeshivas South Fallsburg, HaRav Meir Hershkowitz, rosh yeshivas Stanford, HaRav Yechiel Tauber Av Beis Din of Kollel Machon Hora'ah of Monsey and HaRav Dovid Shustal, rosh yeshivas Lakewood.

The issue under discussion — serious practices involving gittin, to the point where married women have been permitted to remarry while they are halachically not yet divorced.

The text of HaRav Miller's letter reads:

I am writing to Maran with a request that we hear his opinion on a matter of the utmost importance. Untenable things have already been done in America to free married women through coerced gittin after a beis din convened and deliberated in the husband's absence and ruled that he should be coerced, though he was not present (even in a case where he was agreeable to appearing before another beis din that the woman's side did not want to go to).

"Maran has already ruled that no discussion should take place in the absence of the parties, following the ruling of the Shach in Choshen Mishpat siman 13:8. Such a get [extracted after an unlawful discussion] is therefore an unlawfully coerced get, even if there were halachically valid reasons for the coercion. In fact, it seems that the coercion itself was carried out unlawfully, apart from the [problem of the] discussion about it having been held in the husband's absence, in that they conduct their deliberations in secret and do not reveal their reasons for [allowing] the coercion. Now everything is done in secret, without [even] revealing the name of the beis din that permitted the coercion.

"If we do not issue a public declaration stating that no discussion on [implementing] the law of coercing the husband may be held in his absence, the time will soon come when it will be considered permissible to do just that. We will have a situation where it will be absolutely impossible to repair the breach. The situation in America with regard to permitting married women to remarry is dreadful. Irresponsible individuals dissolve the serious prohibition of a married woman's entering into another relationship on the basis of retroactive dissolution of her first marriage, invoking all kinds of feeble supports as well as by issuing rulings in the husband's absence that he should be coerced and by invoking a whole range of weak arguments.

"I am therefore asking Maran his opinion, to be issued as a notice in a similar form to the above, announcing publicly that any and all rulings to coerce the husband that beis din issued in his absence are unlawful and have no validity, to be signed by roshei yeshiva and rabbonim who obey the Torah's call.[...]

After giving the matter extensive consideration, HaRav Eliashiv sent his reply to the American and Canadian rabbonim. He wrote:

"The gaon HaRav Shlomo Eliyahu Miller and the rabbonim and geonim with him wrote to me about the terrible breach whereby people who are not fit to do so, presume to become involved in coercing the giving of gittin and that there have already been cases where they have ruled that the husband should be coerced when he has not been there to hear the case against him, and they have unlawfully permitted married women to remarry Rachmono litzlan. They have asked me to join them in publicly protesting this breach.

"I join the above rabbonim and geonim in this protest against the breach in the ranks of Beis Yisroel. It is quite clear that any discussion about coercing a husband to grant a get should only be held in a beis din composed of rabbonim who are expert Torah scholars, that has an established reputation and whose authority the public accepts."

What has led to this uproar? Have matters in America really reached the point where rabbonim permit married women to remarry on the basis of gittin that have been unlawfully obtained?

"The letter only contains a small example of the terrible state of affairs in America," HaRav Shlomo Miller told us, in a special call to Yated Ne'eman from Toronto. "Various people exert pressure to permit agunos [women who are separated from their husbands but are still lawfully married to them] to remarry in such a way that it is done in a very serious manner, without witnesses." [....]

"Mamzer Factory" or "Making Mamzerim" - explaining the use of these terms

I received a letter strongly attacking my brother and others who used such terms as "making mamzer" for a beis din that gives a get after the husband has been strongly pressured.

This is a partial excerpt of the letter:

PLEASE ask you brother and others to stop using the expression “ making mamzerim” it is beyond idiotic and is just inflammatory if you study the sugyot on BB47b 48a and gittin [88 correction] 68b; rambam 2gerushin20 with the KM you will find that no matter how compulsory the Get, it is pasul NOT batel on a torah-level she is divorced, even if we make her arrange another Get on a torah level there can be no mamzerim here look at the language of the rambam: even if the BD are wrong,even if they are amateurs, the get is “merely” pasul [there is no such thing as mamzerim drabanan]

now you will say “we don’t hold like the rambam , he’s a daas yachid" he’s not! all the geonim hold like the rambam, just that rabeinu tam couldn’t possibly know that we hold like rabbeinu tam. true, so we don’t currently follow the rambam, but making mamzeirim??!! control yourselves.

===========

Guest post replying to this letter by Rav  Dovid Eidensohn [a full discussion of mamzerus and force is found in the article at the bottom in scribd]

I have written previously that coercing a husband to divorce in a way that is not sanctioned by the poskim makes mamzerim. Somebody asked if this is so how can I explain four things: BB47b,Gittim 68b,Rambam Gerushin 2:20 with Kesef Mishneh. And he adds, “You will find that no matter how compulsory the GET, it is pasul NOT botel on a Torah-level she is divorced, even if we make her arrange another GET on a Torah level there can be no mamzerim here. The writer adds other remarks and then suggests that when it comes to mentioning that one who is coerced to divorce produces mamzerim I should “control myself.” Well, I will try to control myself, and I will try to respond to the above points.

Let us begin with the last item and work backwards. First, the Rambam and the Kesef Mishneh. The Rambam says that a coerced divorce is void only by rabbinical decree and is kosher by the Torah’s standards. My article answers this with the Kovneh Rov’s teaching that the Rambam agrees that a coercion to divorce only helps in the Torah if the husband accepts the opinions of the sages who consign him to coercion. “It is a mitzvah to obey the sages.” But if the coercers are not respected by the husband, say in the cases that we discuss here, that some rabbis demand that people humiliate the husband and force a GET, and I tell the husband that the Rashbo, Radvaz, Beis Yosef and Chazon Ish forbid this and that the coercing rabbis are ignoramuses or worse, in such a case the husband does not obey the coercing rabbis and does not think they are his authorities. Therefore, the GET is invalid by the Torah not just the rabbis. And if the GET is invalid by the Torah, the children are mamzerim diorayso.

Next to last is Gittin 68b. There is nothing there about Gittin. It is full of higadito.

Next are two pages of gemora Bovo Basro 47b and 48a. I don’t know exactly what he wants with these two pages. I don’t want to invent his question and then answer it if he may have another problem. Let him say clearly what his question is. The best I can do is to say that he found on these pages a source for the Rambam who says that if the husband respects the rabbis who coerce him then the GET is kosher by the standards of the Torah. However, if the husband does not respect the rabbis such as in the cases I am dealing with the Kovna Rov says that the GET is not valid by Torah standards. Therefore, the gemora says that coercion can help because “it is a mitzvah to obey the sages.” But if the husband does not respect the sages, especially if his rabbis tell him he should not divorce and should not be coerced, the GET forced on him by the rabbis he does not respect is invalid by the Torah’s standards. Furthermore, the major source for this law of coercing a GET is in Gittin itself, where the gemora clearly disagrees with the Rambam’s opinion and the pages in Bovo Basro mentioned above. Therefore, major poskim say that the final opinion is that the GET is invalid by the Torah standard, as I present in the article.

Coerced Gittin Make Mamzerim Sources

Friedman Epstein: Tamar Epstein claims she is free - but her husband denies giving her a get

Times of Israel   Last week there was a weird news report from ORA that announced that Tamar Epstein was now free of her marriage to Ahron Friedman - but they refused to talk about the senstive details.

It soon became obvious why they didn't want to talk, when her husband Aharon Friedman denied giving his wife a get.

That leads to the obvious conclusion that Tamar did not in fact receive a get from her husband but rather she found some rabbis who were willing to follow in Rabbi Rackman's footsteps and announce the  marriage was a mistake and that she had never been married.

It is going to be very embarrassing when the details come out - because there is no legitimate basis for saying the marriage was never valid.

!ברוך מתיר אסורים With tremendous gratitude to G-d for freeing the chained! After scores of rallies, thousands of letters,  and years of persistent advocacy and hopeful prayers... We are very excited to announce that   TAMAR IS FREE!!!   We are so happy for Tamar and her family, and relieved that this tragic saga has finally come to an end. We would like to thank you for your support in our fight for Tamar's freedom. MAZAL TOV! ORA: The Organization for the Resolution of Agunot  www.getORA.org | 551 W. 181st St, #123, New York, NY 10033 Donate Now!

Sleep’s Role in Obesity, Schizophrenia, Diabetes…Everything

Scientific American    Is sleep good for everything? Scientists hate giving unqualified answers. But the more sleep researchers look, the more the answer seems to be tending toward a resounding affirmative.

The slumbering brain plays an essential role in learning and memory, one of the findings that sleep researchers have reinforced repeatedly in recent years. But that’s not all. There’s a growing recognition that sleep appears to be involved in regulating basic metabolic processes and even in mental health. Robert Stickgold, a leading sleep researcher based at Harvard Medical School, gives a précis here of the current state of sommeil as it relates to memory, schizophrenia, depression, diabetes—and he even explains what naps are good for. [...]
So what is sleep for? Memories are processed during sleep. But sleep doesn’t have just one function. It’s a little bit like listening to tongue researchers arguing about whether the function of the tongue has to do with taste or speech. And you want to say: ‘Guys, c’mon, it’s both.’ There’s very good evidence now that sleep, besides helping memory, has a role in immune and endocrine functions. There’s a lot of talk about to what extent the obesity epidemic is actually a consequence of too little sleep. [...]

What are implications of sleep for psychiatric disorders?
If you take an adult who has both sleep apnea and depression, you’ll find that they are very tightly linked. If you have depression, there’s a fourfold increase in your likelihood of apnea and if you have apnea, there’s a fivefold increase risk of depression. If you take someone with both depression and apnea, and treat the apnea with CPAP [continuous positive airway pressure], you can get their depression scores to drop below clinical levels.

If you take kids comorbid for sleep apnea and ADHD—in the case of children the apnea is usually caused by enlarged adenoids and tonsils—if you remove the tonsils and adenoids you’ll get a larger reduction in the ADHD symptoms than if put them on Ritalin.

If you take people with bipolar disorder and sleep deprive them, you’ll flip them into the manic state.

If you look at depressed people, REM sleep comes much earlier in night. When treatments for depression fail to reverse this effect, the likelihood of recurrence of the depression is much higher.  And depriving depressed patients selectively of REM sleep can produce a dramatic reduction in their symptoms, although they return as soon as the deprivation is stopped . [...]

Bnei Brak man arrested for alleged sexual abuse

Kikar HaShabbat

גבר חרדי כבן 33, תושב בני-ברק, נעצר על-ידי המשטרה בחשד לתקיפה והתעללות בגיסתו. הבוקר (חמישי) מובא החשוד לבית משפט השלום בתל-אביב.

לפי הפרטים שנודעו ל"כיכר השבת", לפני תקופה התלוננה נערה חרדית בת 16 כנגד החשוד, קרוב משפחתה, כי התעלל ופגע בה ובשתי אחיותיה הנוספות בנות 14 ו-15.

לטענת הצעירה, החשוד ניצל את עובדת היותו בעלה של אחותן ופגע בהן בשעה שהתארחו בביתם כשלפעמים אף הפעיל כוח כנגדן.

במשטרה עירבו את הרבנים והעסקנים ופתחו בחקירה שהעלתה כי בעבר נחשד האיש במעשים דומים אולם לדבריו "הפסיק עם זה" וכעת התלונות כנגדו עוררו מחדש את החשדות נגדו.

Reform Judaism ‘reboots’ to focus on youth

Times of Israel    What do you get when you bring together 5,000 of the Reform movement’s faithful for a conference in sunny San Diego in mid-December?

For pep, there were the spirited prayer services, the morning-till-night stream of musical performances and Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, or URJ, who compared the challenges facing the movement to giant waves, crying “Surf’s up!”

“Big waves require more skill and courage to ride, but if ridden artfully they enable us to go faster and further than ever before,” Jacobs said, a giant screen projecting a swell behind him.

For the intervention, there was session after session devoted to the challenges facing the movement, especially the question of how to engage young adult Jews who, by and large, are steering clear of Reform synagogues.

“I think the Reform movement needs to remember that no matter how much we double down on great programming, it might not increase the likelihood that those young people are going to walk in,” Rabbi B. Elka Abrahamson, a Reform rabbi who is president of the Wexner Foundation, said in a conference session focused on the recent Pew Research Center survey of US Jewry.

“I think that’s really hard for this gathering to keep in mind because we are the people who love what we do, and we just think if we do more of it and do it better and do it more often and do it faster that they’re going to come,” said Abrahamson.[...]

Reform membership is dwindling, synagogues are struggling to secure their bottom lines and, as Jacobs noted at the last biennial, 80 percent of Reform Jews are “out the door” by the end of high school. Many never return: Fewer than half of Reform parents have their children enrolled in some kind of Jewish youth, camp or educational program, the Pew survey showed.

Schlesinger Twins case injustice raised in British Parliament

Help Beth

Scarves and Halacha by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

Five Towns Jewish Times   It is cold weather season, and the coats, gloves and scarves are coming out.  Scarves are definitely “in” and constitute a billion dollar industry with such top designers as Burberry, Prada, Missoni, Alexander McQueen, Cole Haan, Chanel, Etro, Lanvin, Hermès, Nicole Miller, Ferragamo, Emilio Pucci, Dior, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton.  These designers manufacture square scarves (mostly for women), triangular scarves, and the most common, rectangular scarves.

It is said that the scarf originated in ancient Rome, where it was called the “Sudarium” – perhaps the origin of the Talmudical term “Sudar.”

Scarf lengths and widths vary greatly as well. Most scarves are over five feet long and often are very wide.  And while there is no question that our practice is not to wear Tzitzis on a scarf, the question arises as to why exactly we don’t.

The Mishna Brurah (16:4) rules that the minimum shiur for a garment to be obligated in Tzitzis is a length of 3/4^ths of an Ammah in length and ½ an Ammah in width.  There are various halachic opinions about the Amah too.  Rav Chaim Noeh (1890-1954) zt”l posits an Ammah of slightly more than 18 inches, Rav Moshe Feinstein (1895-1986) zt”l proposes an Ammah of 21.25 inches, and the Chazon Ish (1878-1953) zt”l proposes almost 23 inches. [...]

As far as the other two reasons cited in the Bais Yoseph, it could be that the Vilna Gaon and Mogain Avrohom rejected the first ideaof  ha-alah being an exempt type of wearing from the words of Tosfos in Menachos 41a “Tcheiles.”  Tosfos writes that this would also necessitate the wearing of Tzitis.  As far as the second reason, that the scarf is considered a head-garment not a body garment, in the more northern countries, where it is rather cold, we do actually use it on the neck and not on the head.

There may be another rationale to be lenient, and not round off a corner as the Chofetz Chaim seems to recommend.   When one does wear a scarf that is more than nine inches wide, the scarf is often folded in half – width-wise.  If that is the case, there may be another reason to be lenient because it could be that the minimum requirement necessitates that the garment be worn that way as well.

Ostreicher has escaped from Bolivia and is in U.S.

NY Times   In an odd twist to a serpentine tale, two discrete stories emerged on Tuesday about how a Brooklyn businessman who was jailed in a squalid prison in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, for 18 months, then placed under house arrest, managed to escape and make his way to the United States. 

At a press conference in La Paz, Bolivia, Justice Minister Cecilia Ayllón described a remarkably lax house-arrest arrangement with little supervision and suggested that the businessman, Jacob Ostreicher, had been gradually testing the boundaries of his confinement, including trips to La Paz, until he simply slipped away “clandestinely.” 

“We now see that the only purpose of all of this was so that in a given moment he could flee the country,” Ms. Ayllón said. 

Mr. Ostreicher, who is in his mid-50s, went to Bolivia several years ago to manage a rice-farming enterprise he had invested in. He ended up being accused by the Bolivian authorities of laundering drug money, a charge he denies. Prosecutors never formally charged him, but in June 2011 he was jailed in Palmasola prison, a notorious complex with 3,500 prisoners that is ruled internally by an inmates’ committee. Mr. Ostreicher claimed that he was assaulted and humiliated until he paid off functionaries of the committee.[...]

Rabbi Moti Elon won't serve prison time for sexual crime against minor, court rules

JPost   Prominent national religious figure Rabbi Moti Elon, who was convicted in August of two counts of indecent assault by force against a minor, will not serve time in prison, the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court ruled Wednesday

Although the state attorney had requested he get 8-18 months in prison, he was given a six month commuted sentence to be served in community service. He also was given three years probation and ordered to pay the complainant NIS 10,000.

The rabbi’s defense team had asked that he be given community service instead of a jail term.

Sagi Ofir, of the Jerusalem State Attorney's Office said that he hoped the sentence will serve to deter future sex crimes.

He did not say if the state intends to appeal the sentence. [...]

About Happiness by Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn

Guest Post by Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn/Jewish Outreach Congregation, Monsey, NY 

We discuss here a major reason for family and marital problems: good intentions! In fact, the worst thing a person can do is to destroy their children. But children suffer terribly in a bad marriage. But each parent says, “That awful spouse of mine. It is a mitzvah to correct/punish him/her.” And there is no end.

Once a Jew did something so terrible it was unheard of for a Jew to do it. A Rov was asked to explain this. He replied, “I don’t know why he did it. But one thing I know. He did it for the sake of heaven.” The Rov explained that all of us have evil inclinations that pressure us constantly to sin. But we know that the idea is evil and so we are limited in how much sin we do. But if a person decides that he is doing a good deed with his evil, what is there to stop him or limit his evil?

The Talmud says that a father sees his child misbehaving and hits him. The son can get so angry that he hits the father back. The father is punished for causing the son to sin. Thus, even when we do something for the sake of heaven, to teach our children how to behave, we have to make sure of the bottom line, that it be positive and not a disaster, chas vishalom.

There are good intentions that create bad deeds. And then there are good intentions that create good deeds, but too much of them, until evil results.

The Chofetz Chaim as a youth learned so much and slept and ate so little, that he  became very sick and could not learn for a long time. Doctors could not cure him. Finally, Reb Yisroel Salanter prayed for him and he got better. For the rest of his life, the Chofetz Chaim taught people that we pray daily that HaShem should “remove the Satan from before us and behind us.” What is wrong if the Satan is behind us? asked the Chofetz Chaim. But when the Satan sees that a person is really serious about being a Tsadik, the Satan tells him to do good things, but to do good things that will in the end become destructive and thus evil, as with the Chofetz Chaim who lost much time in learning because he learned too much and slept too little.

When I was young in Yeshiva someone began learning so strongly that everyone predicted a lovely future for him as a great Torah scholar. Indeed, he became a teacher of Torah in a prominent Yeshiva, but his extreme devotion to learning eventually destroyed his ability to learn seriously, and he went to work.

The Chofetz Chaim was a short person. He ordered everyone in his Yeshiva to go to sleep on time, but many students felt fine staying up late. So the Chofetz Chaim would stand on a chair and reach up to the light switch and turn it off. But this didn’t solve the problem. Thus, when people are sure they are doing the right thing, they even defy the Chofetz Chaim!

Therefore, the wise parent or teacher, considering punishing somebody “for the sake of heaven,”  finds someone to refer questions to.

In the past generations one of the very wisest of the sages was Rabbi Mayer Chodosh, famed as the Mashgiach of Chevron Yeshiva and perhaps the major talmid of the Alter of Slobodka. Once, a child in a Yeshiva profaned the Sabbath. Another child was caught stealing. The teachers involved in the case wanted to humiliate and punish the children in the worst way, but knowing that they must ask a truly wise person first, they came to Rabbi Mayer Chodosh. He told them, “Is a teacher a Rabbinical Court entitled to punish people? A teacher has a function of producing a successful student, not destroying the student with punishment and humiliation.” He warned them not to deviate from his advice, and made a program for the children who eventually turned out to be fine Torah people. Had they been punished and publicly humiliated, the pain and shame would never have left them, and who knows what would happen to them.

Another time somebody came to Rabbi Chodosh with his very young son. The son began pulling on the tablecloth and it seemed as if the dishes would fall on the floor. The father rebuked the son, but after a while, the son did it again. The father became upset at the son, and then Rabbi Chodosh intervened: “Your son is not being wild when he pulls on the tablecloth,” said Rabbi Chodosh. “Your son noticed that a cup is upside down. He pulled the tablecloth to get at the cup and fix it. Now, you fix the cup, turn it over, and your son will not pull on the tablecloth anymore.” And so it was.

Had the father hit the child or yelled at him, the child would not understand. Who knows what the child would think of his father?

Another father with a young child came to another great Mashgiach, Rav Eliyohu Lopian. It was Shabbos and the child began to play with stones, which are muktseh. The father told the child to stop playing with the stones. But a while later, the child went back to playing with the stones, and the father  rebuked him, with a sharper tone. Rav Lopian told the father: “Your son is too young to understand about the laws of Shabbos. You are not teaching him how to keep Shabbos. You are teaching him to disobey you.”

Our task is to make our children happy, and not see in their childish actions excuses for yelling at them. Indeed, the Torah teaches, “Serve HaShem with joy.” “Its ways [the Torah] are the ways of peace.” Somebody busy criticizing and scolding can turn children and others off, and end up making more problems than solutions.

A sage in Israel who is known for his wisdom about family and marriage told me the following: Everything depends on the children learning to do mitsvose with joy. If the child is trained to appreciate the joy of doing a mitzvah, he/she will enjoy obeying the Torah. But a child raised to fear the Torah as something painful may reject the Torah.

The same idea was taught by HaGadol Reb Moshe Feinstein zt”l.  Commenting on the huge loss of Jewish children in the early generations of America, Reb Moshe explained that in those days keeping Shabbos meant losing a job. Shabbos thus became associated with pain and suffering. People don’t want a life of pain and suffering. Sometimes, even today, keeping the Torah may be hard. But a clever parent finds a way to make a child want to do the mitzvah.

Friday afternoon is perhaps the hardest part of the week. Everyone is rushing and under pressure. My son Yaacov Zelig with some family members made a Friday afternoon learning program in America and Israel whereby parents write in or call in that their child learned on Friday fifteen minutes, and the child goes into a Goral lottery. There are various prizes, sometimes fifty dollars and sometimes more. Hundreds of children are busy learning, and one father said, “I should pay you when my children learn, because it saves our household Erev Shabbos!.”

The Holy Shelo was one of the greatest rabbis who ever lived, and is one of the very few people honored with the appellation “the holy one.” This holy man teaches that we must bribe our children at every stage of their lives. Little children get what little children want, and when the child comes of age we “bribe” him by telling him that if he learns a lot of Torah, he will find a nice shidduch!

Now somebody may refuse to do this because does the Torah not tell us to serve HaShem without ulterior motives? So how can we raise children with bribery? But the Talmud clearly says, “Let us learn Torah even not for pure motives, but for ego, etc., because from impure motives one will come to pure motives.

And then there is the great mitzvah to make one’s wife happy. The Zohar and Rashi explain that the mitzvah in the Torah “and he should make his wife happy” means, “make her happy, not himself.” But of course, if the husband makes the wife happy, the wife will make the husband happy. Making someone happy is not a selfish mitzvah. But the greatest happiness awaits when you cause another to be happy.

When parents seek to make each other happy, the children learn from this how important making another person happy is. And the whole family learns the joy of happiness.

The great enemy of happiness in the family is when somebody decides that a punishment is needed because somebody did something bad. When punishment becomes a great mitzvah, the Satan then uses this “great mitzvah” to destroy families and children.

If someone has a comment or a question, you can write to me at writeus1@verizon.net. And if it is urgent, I can be reached at 845-578-1917.

Weiss Dodelson: Dodelson supporter says Weiss supporter lied about settlement details

Guest post by emes vshalom (a Dodelson supporter) responding to the post - "Negotiation documents reveal the minor gap between the two sides" by a Weiss supporter. I don't see why the Dodelson supporters need to use such nasty abusive language instead of simply asking for an explanation. 

There really is only one issue that needs to be clarified after reading emes vshalom's rebuttal. Why didn't the Weiss's agree to the settlement - assuming that emes vshalom's facts are correct. Dodelson's claim that it is simply because the Weiss's don't want to give a get. That is rather absurd after what has gone on. My laymen's understanding is that by giving the Get before the agreement is approved by the court - there is no guarantee that the deal will be binding on the Dodelson's and it will end up that Gital has the Get and the Weiss's have nothing.

The simple question is does Rav Shalom Kaminetsky understand the facts the way the Dodelson's do? If he does then that would mean he is a fool to continue negotiations. But since we all know that he is obviously not a fool and yet he is continuing the negotiations - he apparently doesn't agree with the Dodelson's view. I am also not sure he is insisting that everything be done at once - as emes vshalom claims.

====================

To me, as someone who is admittedly biased, as I am a supporter of Gital's, it's very confusing that the Weiss family & their allies seem to continue to lie & misrepresent the truth. The fact is that when you have complete knowledge of the facts, it looks as though the Weiss's never were prepared to give a Get (to me anyway). When R Sholom Kamenetzky (whom the Weiss's commissioned to continue these negotiations) worked out a deal that should have been amenable to all sides, the Weiss's refused to sign on. It included all of the concessions that the Dodelsons made in that email, plus an agreement to have the remaining issues be subject to binding arbitration by R Sholom. Oh, and by the way, it included a 6 digit monetary payment from the Dodelsons to Weiss. R Sholom had (and it is my understanding that he still has) one condition; that everything be taken care of at one time. Meaning the Dodelsons give Weiss the money, Weiss gives Gital the Get, and both parties sign the arbitration agreement at one meet. 

Dodelson agreed to this, Weiss did not.

I'll let you decide for yourselves why.

Also, I won't be responding to any comments, as I think this post speaks for itself. If you think any if the facts are untrue, feel free to reach out to R Yisroel Weiss, as he published his email in a previous post. He should be able to confirm these facts.