Tamar: Any Hope? What Should We Do?

By Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

People ask me frequently: Tamar, is there any hope? What should we do?

Here are my thoughts.

First of all, the only way to end this is for Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky to admit that he and his son engaged in lies and halachic distortions in order to create a Hetar for Tamar. This will never happen. Why? Because Tamar was a yesoma, without a father; her mother a widow without a husband. They obeyed their rabbi, RSK. Instead of giving the daughter stronger visitation with the father, Tamar was told to rely on RSK and his son to do something incredible, to imagine that her marriage disappeared. And she did it. Can RSK and son now admit that they were wrong and that Tamar will have a baby mamzer? I don’t think they will do it, although they will go to Gehenum for not doing it.

Second of all, RSK is ninety years old. If he reaches the stage where he can no longer clearly admit that he made a mistake, that is the end of the line. That is, there are people around who consider Rabbis Kaminetsky and Greenblatt their main rabbis. As long as these older people don’t admit their mistake, rabbis and women can decide to just take a powder from the marriages. This will create many mamzerim and will be a disaster for Klal Yisroel.

Third of all, all of us have to fight this mamzer problem and destroy the fiction and lies propagated by the Kaminetsky clan. At this point, all of the major rabbis who have spoken out on this issue, and there are many from Israel, America and Canada, the cream of the crop, have clearly stated that Tamar’s child will be a mamzer. One way is to copy this post and distribute it and to publicize the websites of me and my brother. My blog is torahhalacha.blogspot.com and my brother’s blogspot is daattorah.blogspot.com .

When the Jews under Yehoshua entered Israel after they escaped from Egypt, they came to the Jordan River. There Yehoshua told the Jews that they must be ready to enter Canaan and to battle for the land of Israel. He stated, according to the gemora in Sota 34A, that if they all go and battle for the land, fine, and if nobody goes, Joshua will go himself! Now, Joshua fighting all of the tribes in Canaan who were known to be great fighters may sound very ambitious. But once HaShem promised the land to the Jews, whoever fights, even one person, will merit HaShem’s help.

Thus it is with us. We live in a generation that tolerated the abominations of the Kaminetskies for a long time. And now it is waking up. My brother and I fought this long before other rabbis came aboard. And we are prepared to go on until this is smashed and destroyed. We owe this to the babies who will come into the world mamzerim and ask, “Why did you not save me from being a mamzer?”