Making Mamzerim in Philadelphia

Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn/Monsey, NY 10952/845-578-1917

I strongly protest the incredible and unheard of sin committed by Shalom Kaminetsky of Philadelphia, probably with his father’s approval, to help a woman remarry without a GET! For years I have strongly protested the actions of Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky who tells people to coerce husbands to force a GET from them, in utter defiance of the Shulchan Aruch and poskim. But now his son probably with his approval has decided to sin even further with helping a married woman to remarry without a GET! Incredibly, we don’t hear a roar of condemnation about this from every mouth. It is quiet. Well, now it is not quiet. I hereby protest the hideous sin of the Kaminetskys: Shmuel’s sin of coercing Gittin and Shalom’s sin of encouraging a woman to marry without a GET. Upon remarriage with a coerced GET or no GET, a woman produces children who may be mamzerim, the ultimate child abuse.

Reb Shmuel Kaminetsky has long called for coercing husbands to give their wives a GET upon the wife’s demand when the marriage is broken. This is in utter defiance of the Shulchan Aruch Even Hoezer 77 paragraphs 2 and 3. There the Shulchan Aruch, Ramo, Beis Shmuel, Chelkas Mechokake and Gro clearly forbid coercing a GET based upon the wife’s demands that she cannot stand the husband. The Gro there #5 says that nobody disagrees. So how can Shmuel Kaminetsky disagree? And furthermore, when Shmuel Kaminetsky signed letters calling on everyone to torture husbands because the wife was tired of them or whatever, did he talk to the husband and hear his side? See Choshen Mishpot 17:5  And did Shmuel Kaminetsky sign these treifeh letters as a favor to his good friend the father of the woman who wants a GET? Is this not highly questionable, to posken for a friend against her enemy? See Shulchan Aruch Choshen Mishpot VII:6  that both sides in the Din Torah must be equal in the eyes of the Dayan. So how could S. Kaminetsky pasken against the husband when he is a best friend of the father of the wife?

And Shalom Kaminetsky’s efforts to get this lady married without a GET without mentioning what rabbis permitted it is also unheard of.  I say this: This woman, if she remarries without a GET, will be forbidden to her old husband and her new husband and will be a soteh living in zenuse. Her child will be a mamzer vadai. And if some rabbi does say that a woman can remarry without a GET, the vast majority of rabbis in the world and the greatest ones are completely convinced that the woman without a GET may not remarry.

It is a great mitzvah that everyone call Shalom Kaminetsky and his father and ask them what source they have or what rabbi they have to permit a woman remarrying without a GET. If they remain in their position of being poskim against the Shulchan Aruch we call upon all parents not to send their children to the Philly Yeshiva of the Kaminetskys and not to support the Yeshiva, and to protest to the Kaminetskys that they are making a chilul HaShem and mamzerim.

The idea that one rabbi or two rabbis can permit a woman to remarry for reasons nobody else ever heard of has no place in halacha. See teshuvose Mahari ben Lev IV:19:3 “Even if most rabbis permit dovor shebierva (if a woman is permitted to marry somebody) but some forbid it, we are stringent and forbid the woman to remarry.” And even if we can understand following the majority of poskim who permit her to remarry as we usually follow the majority in pesak, if we have a majority who forbid the woman to remarry and some rabbi or two claim she is permitted, we surely must follow the majority. If so, how can the woman remarry?

The Philadelphia woman is not an Agunah. I speak to the husband regularly and he is happy to settle with a GET but he wants to organize the visitations of the child and perhaps some other things, as in every GET. Shalom Kaminetsky is destroying this woman’s life. He should convince her to contact me and get a GET and settle with the visitations like every divorced woman.  This way she will not be a zona and her children will not be mamzerim. And if she does remarry without a GET, will the Kaminetsky family accept the child in marriage or will they fear to take a mamzer in marriage?

Dovid Eidensohn