Senior Rabbis Make Mamzerim – Why?

By Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn/eidensohnd@gmail.com/845-578-1917

We have worked hard recently to refute the incredible distortions of halacha by Rabbis Greenblatt and Kaminetsky who permitted Tamar Epstein Freidman to remarry without a GET. It took weeks after the sinful remarriage of Tamar Epstein Friedman to arouse some senior rabbis to protest. This blog began serious protests long before then. It was always obvious that the rabbis who guided Tamar Epstein Friedman had an agenda that was not in the Shulchan Aruch. But the fact that nobody but me and my brother protested proved to most people that the senior rabbis who declared that Tamar did not need a GET were perhaps correct. For long months my blog produced limited interest. Finally, when senior rabbis began saying what I was saying for years, that without a GET Tamar would produce mamzerim, my blog shot up. At last, people realized that I was right and that the prominent rabbis who encouraged Tamar to remarry without a GET were wrong.

We are not here to rest on our laurels. True, we publicly stressed the true Shulchan Aruch long before anyone else came along publicly.  But what has been achieved? As of this writing, nothing. Tamar is still with a strange man. The rabbis who are responsible for her remarriage have not publicly recanted. Surely some women will decide to remarry without a GET, based upon these rabbis and what they did. We want to discuss here two things: One is where are we now with prominent rabbis defying the Shulchan Aruch, and two, where will we be down the road with prominent rabbis defying the Shulchan Aruch?

First, where are we now with prominent rabbis defying the Shulchan Aruch? We know of course about Rabbis Greenblatt and Kaminetsky and their ideas about Tamar. Some may think this is an unusual thing. But it is not an unusual thing. Rabbi Moshe Heinemann, the rabbi of Baltimore, is a major sponsor of ORA, the organization that humiliates and coerces husbands to giving a GET. Such a GET is likely a coerced GET that is invalid and the children born from it are possibly mamzerim. I called him up and asked him about this, and he told me something that showed he did not know the Shulchan Aruch. He is not the only one.

The last few years I have been involved in heavy wars with very prominent Rosh Yeshivas and poskim about coerced Gittin. There were two very famous cases where two prominent families had a war. The prominent rabbis of one side published letters signed by many prominent rabbis that everyone should humiliate the husband and shame him and cause him pain and distress until he gives a GET.  I protested that this violates a Rashbo VII:414 that there are husbands who are commanded by the Talmud to divorce their wives and they must do it. If these husbands are living sinfully with a relative say an aunt or sister, we force the GET even with beatings. But if the husband is unable to have children and to make the wife  happy in marriage, although the Talmud commands him to divorce his wife, it is forbidden to do three things: We may not put him in cherem, we may not physically attack him, and we may not humiliate him. On the other hand, says the Rashbo, a woman who demands a divorce from her husband because he disgusts her cannot force the husband to divorce her. “If he wants to, he divorces her, and if he does not want to, he does not divorce her.” Therefore, all of the these ladies who demand a GET because they despise or hate their husbands have no legal right to coerce the husband and if they do coerce the husband, then the GET is invalid. The Rashbo is quoted by the Shulchan Aruch, Ramo, Gro, Chelkas Mechokake and Beis Shmuel as the halacha in EH 77 paragraphs 2 and 3. Nobody disagrees. But Rabbi Heinemann disagrees.

The Chazon Ish even says that if a Beth Din commands such a husband to give a GET and he gives it, thinking that the Beth Din was only following the Shulchan Aruch, but in this case there was no law that the husband must give a GET, the GET is invalid for two reasons: it is a forced GET forced by the pesak of Beth Din, and it is a GET given by mistake, because the husband was wrong in assuming that the Beth Din was correct in their ruling that he must give a GET.  (Chazon Ish EH Gittin 99:2)

But how many Beth Dins and prominent rabbis violate this and command husbands to give a GET when they feel the marriage is over? How many humiliate husbands who refuse to give a GET only because the wife demands a GET and claims she despises her husband? We mentioned above Rabbi Moshe Heinemann, but there are many others.

The problem with Rabbis Greenblatt, Kaminetsky, Heinemann, etc. is one problem: Today, once a person considers himself a Gadol, he ignores the Shulchan Aruch. He and others assume that whatever he says is right, Shulchan Aruch or not.

So, what is going on today? People who achieve a certain status as Rosh Yeshivas or Rabbonim make up halacha. And nobody dares to challenge them. And if they produce invalid Gittin, they produce mamzerim. Rabbi Heinemann on ORA’s website called upon everyone to support an organization ORA because it forced 150 men to give a GET with public humiliation and public demonstrations. But a coerced GET is an invalid GET. And the invalid GET turns children into mamzerim. See the Rashbo I mentioned above. Here is a prominent rabbi congratulating those who make mamzerim and asks people to support them!

And what will happen tomorrow? It is likely be much worse, unless we really make it clear that mamzer makers are not Gedolim. But who will make that clear?

Somebody noted that it used to be that any woman whose husband would not give a GET could hire Epstein to torture the husband and give a GET for sixty thousand dollars. But after the Trenton trial when the FBI caught Epstein and his crew, people won’t do this anymore. Therefore, the only hope for some women is to find a rabbi who doesn’t believe in Gittin, or who twists halacha as Rabbis Greenblatt and Kaminetsky do. Is that going to be the wave of the future? It depends if we fight it and make it clear that Tamar and  others who follow the wrong rabbis are going to have children we consider mamzerim, and that this will be widely publicized.

I heard from Gedolei haDor of this and past generations that there is something wrong with the Yeshiva system. The enormous amount of divorces, broken families, broken children, and broken parents, is just growing and growing. There is obviously something very wrong when people who come from the finest families and attend the finest schools and have fine children tear each other part in divorce battles, in Beth Din and in secular court, without permission of Beth Din.

The Yeshiva system is designed to produce Gedolim. Once somebody has achieved this, and is considered a Gadol, whether as Rosh Yeshiva or Posek, he has achieved what the Yeshiva taught him to achieve. The Yeshiva did not teach him to achieve clear knowledge of the Shulchan Aruch and the poskim, because the vast majority of Yeshiva students are not trained in serious halacha. I have spoken to prominent poskim, Dayanim, etc., and they told me very strongly that husbands must give a GET upon demand. I asked them what they did with the Shulchan Aruch EH 77 par 2 and 3. They admitted that they had not learned it. But they pasken Gittin regularly as Dayanim.

When a “Gadol” thinks something is right, it becomes “Daas Torah,” even if it openly conflicts with the Shulchan Aruch and poskim. Rabbi Gedaliah Schwartz, the senior rabbi of the Modern Orthodox, told me that a frumeh couple married by an Orthodox rabbi and who lived together for a month could separate without a GET and remarry. I had asked him why he sent them away without giving them a GET and he told me “because there was no biah.” I asked him how he knew there was no biah as biah acquires in ways that there are no tears. He had no answer. But the amazing thing in my discussion with him was that he did not know what every person who studies the gemora or Shulchan Aruch knows, that a woman is acquired in marriage without biah, either through a ring or something of value, or a document (shtar). (Shulchan Aruch Kiddushin 26:4) And this ignoramus is considered the major authority of the RCA.

I once had somebody ask Rabbi Herschel Schachter of YU for his source to force husbands to divorce with public humiliation. He replied, “Rabbi Gedaliah Schwartz”. Can we rely on Gittin from such “rabbis”?