Friedman-Epstein: Tamar's "matrydom" & R' Schachter folly!

I did a bit of investigation into the case and would like to convey what I have found. Contrary to the publicity of ORA and Rav Schachter who is the adviser and supporter of ORA - the Friedman-Epstein case is a very weak case - and is not that of an actual Aguna. A real case of Aguna is one in which husband disappeared and it is not known what happened. Another real case is one in which the husband is prohibited to the wife and yet he refuses to give a divorce. The present case is simply one in which Tamar decided she didn't want to be married to Aharon - also known as a case of ma'os alei.

Tamar made no complaints of being abused by her husband - she simply wanted out of the marriage. The claim of abuse is solely a circular one. She is abused because he won't give her a divorce and she wants to be divorced because he is abusive!

Aharon was in fact ready to give a get - he had one condition. She was to live in an apartment in Silver Spring so that he would be able to have access to his daughter. He said he would pay the rent. He was only asking for her to do this for one year - after that she was free to do what she wanted. She walked away from the deal and refused to negotiate. One of the most critical facts to understand this case of chilul haShem is that Tamar has consistently refused to accept mediation. It is her way or the highway.

The above facts make clear that there is absolutely no basis in halacha to require Aharon to give a get. Rav Shachter insists that the mere fact that Tamar wants out of the marriage is sufficient basis that Aharon must give a get. There is such a view asserted by Rav Chaim Palaggi - but apparently no one accepts this view. To give approval to ORA to persecute Aharon based on this principle - is simply outrageous. In addition the involvement of Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky in this case is viewed as a major mistake - both politically and halachically - by those familiar with him and with the halachic issues. Rav Belsky and Rabbi Ralbag collectively represent a problematic duo when it comes to gittin - that is for a later post.

Tamar is her own worst enemy and has created a prison of her own making - with the enthusiastic assistance of ORA and Rav Schachter and the passive compliance of Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky.

On the other hand, what is Aharon benefiting by not giving a get? The issue of custody is not clear. There are clearly halachic views that a daughter belongs with her mother and that the father has no basis to demand custody or even regular visiting rights. A simple answer is it is a case of spitting on a person who has tried being fair and going beyond what is required - despite the personal pain. When you galvanize the press and orchestrate demonstrations against him as a "monster" - I don't know too many people who would lie down and say "please step on me again". 

In sum, Tamar could have had a get on very favorable terms from the beginning. Instead she has gotten wrapped up in being a martyr and is primarily focused on the cheers and adulation of ORA.  She is more focused on beating Aharon into submission and humiliating him - than she is on getting divorced and starting life over again. At this point it is up to Tamar whether she wants to change what she views as most important.

Allegations of major extortion operation against Chareidi world

Haaretz

"This is going to be one of the biggest extortion scandals in the history of Israel," a senior ultra-Orthodox figure told Haaretz Sunday, following the arrest of four directors of the popular Haredi website Behadrey Haredim. 

 

The four senior directors of the website were arrested Sunday morning at their homes and the website's offices in Tel Aviv, and taken for questioning in Jerusalem. 

Some of the website's employees told Haaretz they were completely taken by surprise by the arrests, but rumors circulating in Haredi circles for the past year describe a system of extortion by the website's directors against dozens of Haredi figures, some of whom are very well known. According to the rumors, the directors would approach well-known figures and demand a sum - anywhere from several thousand dollars to NIS 100,000 - in return for withholding publication of potentially damaging information. On Sunday, the police interviewed dozens of people who revealed various details about the website in past few years.

Prohibiting Archaos (Civil Courts) & Mesirah

http://www.mishpattsedek.com/KolKoreh-70Rabbis.htm

Suicide-murder after mistaken child abuse allegations

Denver Post

Photos and memories are all that the families have of Tiffany and Dave O'Shell and their daughter, Alyssa, a beautiful baby with green eyes, a mop of red hair and a great smile. At three months, child protection workers took Alyssa and handed her to a foster mother.

"I know he would never hurt her intentionally," Tiffany O'Shell told a Commerce City police investigator about her husband and his treatment of their daughter, Alyssa. "He loves her to death."

Two weeks before, on June 17, 2008, Adams County child protection workers had taken Alyssa and handed her to a foster mother. They did so after a hospital found 11 broken bones in Alyssa's 3-month-old legs, but no bruises or other signs of abuse.

Dave and Tiffany had been allowed to see their daughter just once in those two weeks. Tiffany's lawyer was advising her to divorce her husband if she ever wanted her baby back. Clouds of suspicion swirled around Dave. Police were about to arrest him, he thought, for felony child abuse. He had grown more despondent day by day.

Nobody seemed to hear the family's pleas that there must be some other explanation for all those broken bones. [...]

Suicide rather than being old & gay

NYTimes

BOB BERGERON was so relentlessly cheery that people sometimes found it off-putting. If you ran into him at the David Barton Gym on West 23rd Street, where he worked out nearly ever morning at 7, and you complained about the rain, he would smile and say you’d be better off focusing on a problem you could fix.[....]

It was a topic he knew something about. Having come out as gay in the mid-1980s, Mr. Bergeron, 49, had witnessed the worst years of the AIDS epidemic and emerged on the other side. He had also seen how few public examples there were of gay men growing older gracefully. [...]

The inference was clear. As Mr. Bergeron saw it at the end of his life, the only right side of 40 was the side that came before it.

State religious school bans fathers from school party

YNET

The struggle for the face of state-religious education continues: Fathers of girls at the Noam-Haro'e religious school in Ramat Gan claim they were not allowed to participate in a school event for their six grade daughters' Bat Mitzvah on Sunday. The reason for the ban is modesty – a halachic prohibition on men to watch women sing and dance.[...]

The father, himself a graduate of the state-religious educational system, said classes were mixed in his day. Since then, he said, a radicalization process emerged introducing norms of modesty which he described as distasteful and unprecedented. Gal noted that in some cases separation was imposed as early as pre-school years.

Noam Haro'e is one of Ramat Gan's oldest state-religious schools. However, over the years the neighborhood's religious communities have been replaced by more Orthodox families who direct the school's religious character. According to Gal, "they eliminate the wishes of the silent, sane majority.

Chinuch as tochacha for teenagers & young adults

 The mitzva of chinuch is generally understood to be from about 5 years till bar mitzva. However there is another aspect of chinuch which is giving tochacha. Both are learned from the same verse in Mishlei (22:6).

Kiddushin(30a) says, Raba said to R. Nathan b. Ammi: Whilst your hand is yet upon your son's neck,[you should get him married] which is  between sixteen and twenty-two. Others state, Between eighteen and twenty-four. This is disputed by Tannaim. Mishlei (22:6) Train up a youth in the way he should go: R. Judah and R. Nehemiah [differ thereon]. One maintains, [Youth means] between sixteen and twenty-two; the other affirms, Between eighteen and twenty-four.

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

Rashi explains, When your hand is still on your son's neck - means when you still have power and influence over your son before he gets older and doesn't listen to your admonition you should get him married. ... Another explanation is that the time while you still have influence over him take care to teach him instructions & chastise him and this time is from the age of 16 until 22. Prior to this time he doesn't have the mental ability to accept your instructions & chastisements so much. On the other hand if you try chastising  him and pressuring him with punishments after the age of 22 there is concern that he might rebel - and this main understanding of this gemora. According to his way - meaning you should teach him in his youth the path that he should follow for the rest of his life. The time for this teaching is a dispute as to whether it is between 16-22 or 18-24.

Meiri (Kiddushin 30a), A person should always focus his attention of supervising his children and to continually give instruction and correction whether they are old or young. Nevertheless the proper time to make successfully reprimand him is from the time the mind starts maturing until it is mature. That is from the age of 16 to 24. Prior to 16 he doesn't have have sufficient maturity and after 24 he doesn't really listen anymore. So this is the best time to continually convey reprimands and instructions  regarding the son.:

Gang-raped, burned & murdered - police cover-up

NYTimes

The crime was shocking enough: an 18-year-old woman gang-raped, half strangled, set on fire and left for dead. But what sent hundreds of Ukrainians into the streets and rushing to her hospital to give blood this month was a police decision to free two suspects rumored to be politically connected. 

The uproar has shaken the upper echelons of Ukraine’s government. On Thursday, three weeks after the attack, the young woman died. Viktor F. Yanukovich, the president, and Nikolai Azarov, the prime minister, were among the first to offer condolences — along with vows that the perpetrators would be brought to justice. [...]

For Ukrainians transfixed by her ordeal, she came to embody long-simmering animosities over government impotence and impunity for the privileged in this former Soviet nation. It was only after the street protests and Mr. Yanukovich’s personal intervention that the police in the small southern town of Nikolayev re-arrested the young men. On Thursday, they and a third jailed suspect were officially charged with murder.

Silence & self-rule: Brooklyn's Orthodox child abuse cover-up

This is too much of he says/she says- without providing enough solid evidence - but it does a good job of reviewing the major issues and shows that despite progress - there is still a long way to go.

British Guardian

When Mordechai discovered his mentally disabled child was being molested, he reported the crime to the police. A local man was arrested and charged with repeatedly raping the boy in their synagogue's ritual bath. When news of the arrest got back to their Brooklyn community, the neighbours launched a hate campaign. But the object of their anger wasn't the alleged perpetrator, Meir Dascalowitz, it was the abused boy's father. 

For the last two years, Mordechai says he's been hounded by his community. "The minute this guy got arrested I started a new life, a life of hell, terror, threat, you name it." There were bogus calls to the fire department resulting in unwelcome late night visits, anonymous death threats, banishment from synagogue, even a plot to derail his move to a new apartment. "I lost my friends. I lost my family. Nobody in Williamsburg can talk to me. Nobody means nobody. We are so angry, so broken." 

Mordechai's persecution is part of a widespread cover-up of child sexual abuse among Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox Jews. With echoes of the Catholic priest scandal, for decades rabbis have hushed up child sex crimes and fomented a culture in which victims are further victimised and abusers protected.

Forced Get: Rav Schachter's use of public humiliation

 In order to focus more directly on the serious halachic issues I am copying a sampling of comments from a previous post   Rav Herschel Shacter: Options for Agunot. 

[PLEASE STOP THE NAME CALLING - IT ONLY CAUSES READERS TO DISCOUNT YOUR STATEMENTS]

The issues of concern here are 1) Is there is an widely accepted basis of forcing a husband to give a get through public humiliation - after she has left him and gone to secular court and refuses mediation in a case where she claims she can't stand him (mo'us alei). In particular where there is already a civil divorce and no chance of reconciliation - does a beis din have the right and duty to force him to give a get. This would exclude suggestions which are clearly labeled as potentially l'halacha  but not applicable at present l'maaseh . Explicitly saying that it is perceived as a constructive proposal that needs agreement of gedolim. 2) Is  obtaining a get in this manner  a pyrrhic victory since it is viewed as an innovation and thus many poskim hold that use of humiliation produces at least a doubtful get and thus future children would be sofek mamzerim? 3) Does refusing a summons to a particular beis din - even one that is perceived as hostile or biased -  justify the beis din encouraging a public campaign of humilation and vilification? 4) Is there an acceptable protocol for obtaining a get when the wife doesn't want to remain in the marriage.

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

Rabbi Dovid EidensohnMar 26, 2012 05:27 PM

I have listened to the first section of the lecture by Rabbi Shachter about Agunoth and I think it is completely wrong. He says basically that the various pressures available to coerce a GET, beating, Beth Din commanding the husband to divorce, or passive ostracizing, are things to discuss when a husband supports his wife and they are living together but the wife wants out. However, says Rabbi Shachter, if the wife has left the husband, and surely if she has a civil divorce, we may beat the husband with sticks to force him to divorce. This is completely wrong.

The laws of a woman who spurns her husband and wants a GET are not where RS says it is, in chapter 154 but in chapter 77. There the SA does not mention forcing the husband, as the Rashbo forbids coercing the husband with MOUS OLEI. Forcing is mentioned only in chapter 154 regarding a forbidden marriage where we can use force to coerce a GET. The next category in 154 is when the Talmud clearly demands a GET but does not say to force the husband. In that case, the Beth Din can tell the husband he is a sinner and people can call him a ROSHO, but no humiliation or active pressure is permitted. Ramo says that in such a case, where the Talmud clearly demands a GET but does not clearly state to force the GET, we may do a passive ostracizing. The Vilna Gaon and others say this only applies with two conditions: One, that the Talmud says there must be a GET, and two, the husband can escape the ostracizing by going to a different town. It is not permitted to ostracize the husband passively in a case where the wife wants a divorce, so the ostracizing is not mentioned in chapter 77 where these laws are taught.
The Ramo permits passive ostracizing only when the Talmud comands a GET and not when the wife wants a GET. THe Shach and Chcazon Ish forbid even passive ostracizing even when the Talmud commands a GET.

Thus, Rabbi Schachter is completely wrong, and he has no support for his opinion, and whoever follows his opinion such as ORA with its public humiliation of the husband will produce children considered by normative halacha to be mamzerim.

Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn Mar 29, 2012 05:52 PM

Someone challenged me here: "1) The opinions you are putting forward are not universally accepted. There are a great many Acharonim and Poskim that allow a forced get עישוי כדין." Okay. A great many Acharonim and Poskim. Tell me one.

The halacha is clear: Some men, such as he who marries a forbidden women, is coerced severely and physically. Someone the Talmud demands that he divorce his wife but does not call for coercion, is not beaten, and any coercion is a problem and machlokes, but these are rare cases. We are talking here about MOUS OLEI, and I want you to tell me one major Acharon who permits coercing a husband to divorce his wife with public humiliation when his wife leaves him.

I have been careful in this blog and elsewhere to support my comments with sources. Where are your sources? Even R Schachter has no sources, other than the need to help Agunoth and the airy opinion that all of the sources I quote are only talking about when the wife didn't leave the husband, a ridiculous statement that no normative posek would make.

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

Rabbi Michael Tzadok

Some clarification:

Are you asking specifically in the Friedman-Ephraim case or in general?

Regarding the Friedman-Ephraim case:

1) There is seems to be no valid halakhic reason to compel a Get עישוי גט by any method as the case has not come before a B"D.

2) Public embarrassment however is warranted on the sole fact that Friedman refuses to appear before a B"D. I have above quoted the Sh"A on that matter, see there.

Regarding עישוי גט for a wife saying is is repulsed by her husband מאוס עלי you have two categories:

1) No extenuating circumstances There are Poskim who rule that in such a case there are ways to coerce a get עישוי גט כדין(admittedly none of which rely upon public embarrassment). They are:

a)Rabbi Moshe Feinstein Iggrot Moshe EhE 3:44, 4:106

b)Rabbi Ovadiah Hedayya Yaskil Avdei Ehe 2:8 and 6:17

2)When there are extenuation circumstances. If there is abuse, emotional, physical or sexual, or for a variety of other reasons. In such cases the B"D may ossur the wife to the husband and thus act accordingly:

a) Rav Ovadia Yosef Yabia Omer Ehe 3:18 and 3:20

b) Rav Ovadia Hedayya Yaskil Avdei Ehe 5:67 6:15(and numerous other places)

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

Yitzy Hillel Mar 29, 2012 11:29 PM

L'kavod Harav

After a week of research on the inyan of meos aliu, I have concluded that Rabbi Shachters actions can be defended: In his shiur plight of agunah minutes 48-101 he states that humiliation today is mutar and not even the harchakos of R'tam. In his other shiur that he talks about dead marriages and using any means in those cases, he was very vague about which cases and he must have been referring to cases of coffin osu that were mefaresh in shas otherwise that statements makes absolutely no sense.)

Your teshuva stresses the Rashba, Shach and Chozen Ish as the main sources for your oppinion. I found the following on this issue.

-Rav Sternbuch (5: 344) holds that in our generation we must ignore them and hold of the harchokes of R'tam in certain cases. He chooses the Rivash's Girsa in the Rashba (against the version of the Rashba in the Beis Yosef) which takes out the word humiliation and therefore advises that one can humiliate the guy on some level. He also argues with you and says the Chazon Ish holds that a get obtained through humiliation bedieved would be a valid GET

-Rabbi Yosef in Yabea Omer 8:25 paskens in a case of mius aley that we should apply the harchakos of R'tam. The Titz Eliezer signs off on those harchakos on the bottem of the teshuva. From this teshuva we also see that they are not choshesh for the Maharshdam's shitta which Rav Sternbuch and Rav Elyashiv are choshesh for because they mention the GET issue in their harchakas.

-Based on the above, I feel it is misleading to say that the Harchakos are off limits today, as some of the Gedole Haposkim in our generation have used them.

-I found the sefer Get Meusa (on the otzar hachachma database ) by Dayan Goldberg of Tel Aviv. In this sefer he comes out that obtaining a get through humiliation is not kefia he has a long footnote with sources which I will try to send to you in the coming days.

This sefer therefore agrees with Rabbi Shachter that humiliation is not even the Harchakas of R'tam. Therefore, following the husband from town to town would be ok. Also since this isn't kefia, your lumdus about the get isn't his rotzon wouldn't apply.

-lastly Rav Sternbuch writes that many of the great rishonim (Rambam, Rif, Rashi..)hold that in these cases we can even beat the husband for refusing the get when the woman wants out. Although the Shulchan Aruch doesn't pasken like them, this is something to keep in mind.

You asked to find any source showing that humiliation is ok...I ask you are there sources that clearly show humiliating is kefia and the get would be posel bedieved? The only source that I have found that mefaresh pasuls the get is the Maharshdam, which Rav Yosef and the Tzitz Eliezer weren't choshesh for in Yabea Omer 8:25.

However, I agree that from the fact the Eretz Yisrael Rabbonim don't talk about humiliating and rallies as being an option they perhaps would hold that what Rabbi Shachter is promoting is worse than R'Tam.

Although I attempted to defend Rabbi Shachter, I feel that you are right about getting approval from others before doing drastic changes in policy in halacha especially when the potential nafka mina is mamzerus.

For all those readers who will attack me for my above defense as being pro feminist and YU, I like Rabbi Eidensohn are interested in emes and sources and not name calling and hate. So if you disagree with what I said please explain how my defense is wrong and back up your claims with sources. I will be truly grateful. I think the blog will benefit if we could all stop the hate and venom and stick to trying to discuss issues of Jewish Identity in a respectful and pleasant manner,

kul tuv,

Yitzy Hillel

IDF Givati's "proud" tradition of hazing

YNET

Chareidim happy to see Livni defeated

YNet

Many haredim sees Tzipi Livni as the driving force behind the wave of incitement against them. To them, last night's results were payment in kind.

A source within United Torah Judaism told Ynet that "it isn't gloating or hitting someone when they're down, it is sending a message with a lesson to every rookie politician who adopts a dialogue of hate against the haredi public – it isn't worth your while. It may make a great media slogan, but the public does not accept it, and yesterday, Kadima voters proved they don't either. 

Pakistani wife abuse:Throwing acid in her face

Fox News

Younus' story highlights the horrible mistreatment many women face in Pakistan's conservative, male-dominated culture and is a reminder that the country's rich and powerful often appear to operate with impunity. Younus' ex-husband, Bilal Khar, was eventually acquitted, but many believe he used his connections to escape the law's grip -- a common occurrence in Pakistan.

More than 8,500 acid attacks, forced marriages and other forms of violence against women were reported in Pakistan in 2011, according to The Aurat Foundation, a women's rights organization. Because the group relied mostly on media reports, the figure is likely an undercount.

Chasidic Jew ostracized for reporting son's abuse

CBS News