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.
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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.