By Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn
When the news came out that Tamir
Epstein Friedman remarried without a GET, nobody knew why and how this could
happen. Little by little from speaking
with Rabbi Greenblatt and other sources an idea of what happened emerged. But this itself that a rabbi should remarry a
woman without publicly explaining a) why he did this and b) what rabbis signed
with him to permit it - is a very strange thing. The vast majority of rabbis
who heard of this are strongly opposed to the remarriage and fear that a child
born from it would be a mamzer. A prominent
rabbi from Yeshiva University called me and was so much opposed to the
remarriage of Tamir that he started to
sputter with fury.
I am writing this for a variety of
reasons. One, since prominent rabbis arranged this remarriage without a GET,
many other women will follow Tamir and get annulled marriages from Rabbi
Greenblatt and Rabbi Kaminetsky. And since the vast majority of rabbis say that
babies born from the remarriage of a woman without a GET are mamzerim, we will
have a crisis when these problem children reach marriageable age, and even
before, when the terrible label is known. I therefore, number one, want to show
that there is no reason whatsoever to rely on what Rabbi Kaminetsky and Rabbi
Greenblatt did, and they remarried a woman who is still married to her first
husband. Furthermore, since the second marriage is not recognized, the
remarried woman now becomes forbidden to her first husband and also her second husband. And if
she stays with the second husband, her children will be mamzerim, and she will
be known as a woman sinning with adultery.
Let me say this immediately. I do
not blame Tamir Epstein Friedman for what she did. She has always, as her
father before her, turned to the Kaminetskies as her Rov. Her father died
before all of this started, and she is simply doing what the Kaminetskies tell
her. Her mother gave her lawyer sixty thousand dollars to pay for a gang to
kidnap and beat the husband Aharon and force a GET out of him. The gang
attacked after Aharon had dropped off his daughter at his mother-in-law’s
house. Aharon managed to escape the attacking goons and eventually the FBI
proved that the mother’s lawyer, Goldfine, had sent a sixty thousand dollar
check to the goons to kidnap and torture Aharon until he gave the GET. This has
nothing to do with Tamir Epstein Friedman, although her mother and her mother’s
lawyer are surely in deep legal trouble, as kidnapping is a capital crime in
America. The Kaminetskys father and son will answer for their sins in the next
world, a process begun now in this world, as people are furious at them for
doing such a thing and making mamzerim.
I called up Rabbi Notto Greenblatt
and told him that he performed a
marriage on a married woman. He replied that “Gedolim” permitted the marriage
and whoever disagrees has Chutspah.” I responded that the Chazon Ish says that
if a Beth Din requires a husband to give a GET when he is not obligated to do
so, and the husband writes it, the GET is invalid for two reasons: One, the
Beth Din pressured him with their authority, and the pressure of honoring Beth
Din when the Beth Din has no legal right to pressure invalidates the GET by the
standards not of the rabbis but of the Torah. Furthermore says the Chazon Ish,
if the husband had known that the rabbis spoke without the authority of the
Torah and had erred, he never would have given the GET. Therefore, the GET is
invalid as a mistake, by Torah not just rabbinical standards.
Rabbi Greenblatt hung up on me.
Anyone who reads the Shulchan Aruch
or gemoras knows this. Even if “Gedolim” ruled on something but were mistaken,
their ruling is cancelled. Not only do we have an extensive coverage of this in
Choshen Mishpot 25, when the mistakes of great rabbis are cancelled, and when
the rabbis have to pay for their mistakes, but we have an entire trachtate in
the Talmud Huriyuse about the mistakes not of just great rabbis but of the
greatest rabbis, the Sanhedrin, who cause all of Israel to sin and sacrifices
must be brought to atone for this.
And now Rabbi Greenblatt has done a
strange thing to marry a married woman without explaining why, and he considers
all of the prominent experts on Gittin to be “chutzpah.”
Well, Rabbi Greenblatt, a lot of
chutzpah is out there, because all of the senior rabbis that I spoke to are
furious with those who made this ridiculous
marriage and maybe mamzerim. And since the story broke recently,
people who are familiar with all of the
great authorities on marriage and what they hold about annulling marriages have
been hard at work, and no Gadol has been discovered. Precisely the opposite.
Senior rabbis have signed against the second marriage; the major rabbis of America, Israel and
Canada. Even prominent Modern Orthodox rabbis such as Rabbi Herschel Schechter
are disappointed with the Kaminetsky invention.
Months before Tamir remarried, a prominent
Dayan went to HaGaon Reb Nissim Karelitz of Bnei Braq to discuss this, and Reb
Nissim said that the woman may not remarry without a GET. That Dayan told me
that when he was in Israel Dayanim came to him with disbelief that anybody
could perform a marriage for a woman who is already married and has no GET.
Yes, what the Kaminetskies did is unbelievable, but it happened. And what we
have to do now is to make sure that everyone understands that what the Kaminetskies
did is pure rishuse that will produce mamzerim. As for Rabbi Greenblatt and his
“Gedolim” he refuses to name them and nobody has discovered a “Gadol” who
agrees with him.
There are those who point to Reb
Moshe Feinstein that he permits some women to leave their husbands without a
GET only if no GET at all is possible. But since the husband Aharon Friedman
wanted to give a GET if the custody could be improved and perhaps other things
as with all divorces, Reb Moshe would forbid Tamir from remarrying without a
GET.
Second of all, Reb Moshe’s ruling
is in defiance of the major poskim generations before him and also in defiance
of Rav Henkin who was the older Rov and probably greater than Reb Moshe.
Furthermore, there is an open gemora forbidding the woman to leave her husband
without a GET in Kesubose 73b. How can
anyone permit a woman to remarry even with a husband who is truly a monster,
when this conflicts with open gemora, a ruling of the Shulchan Aruch and the
Gro and the Beis Shlomo, that we pasken like Rovo and the woman needs a GET
because it is a doubt of the Torah, and the fact that the greatest gedolim
forbade a woman to remarry without a GET even when the husband was truly a
monster.
I also heard from HaGaon Rav
Avigder Miller zt”l that some of Reb Moshe’s leniencies he retracted as he got
older and the world got more frum. I was told by the Gabei of Reb Moshe clearly
not to use a certain leniency mentioned in Igeres Moshe. If so, we cannot rely
on Reb Moshe, especially when we know that Rav Henkin, who lived at his time
and was older and more senor to him, forbids this. Rav Henkin says that some
did want to make conditions even after marriage that could free the wife, but
four hundred rabbonim attacked this leniency and ruled that no conditions can
free the woman once she is in the state of Nisuin or intimacy and surely when
she has a child from her husband, as Tamir did.
Thus for generations rabbis here and there invented
the right to toy with marriage, but the were greatly outnumbered by rabbis who were
much greater than they were. As Rav Yosher Ber Soloveitchik said of one suggestion
to make a change in marital law: All of the Ends are Ended
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