Reb Dovid's Beth Din Should Protest Tamar's Sins

By Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

A few hours ago today, Sunday March 27, I called up Rav Hillel David and protested that nobody knew what Reb Dovid’s Beth Din has ruled. He replied that the Beth Din was created to serve Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky who had asked for it. Other people will not be notified of what the Beth Din paskened. If I want to know what the Beth Din paskened, he said, I must speak to Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky.

I then pointed out that Tamar is with a man not her husband, which is adultery that could easily lead to a child born who is a mamzer. Do the rabbis of the Beth Din not have an obligation to prevent mamzerim being born and women prevented from committing adultery?

As regards the decision of the Beth Din to limit its reach to one person, this is against a clear gemora in Shabbos 54b and 55A, “Whoever has the power to prevent somebody from sinning and does not do it, is punished with the sin he did not prevent.” If the Beth Din with its prominent rabbis could compel Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky to tell Tamar to leave her boyfriend but the Beth Din refuses, the sin of Tamar will go on the Beth Din. If the Beth Din could prevent adultery from Tamar’s part but refuses to do this, the sin of adultery goes on the Beth Din.

I want to mention several things in connection with the above. One, Rav Hillel David was very kind to speak to me as long as I wanted and he answered what he felt was the right answer, although I disagree with it. Two, we do not know the deeper thoughts of Reb Dovid Feinstein. He is dealing with some very difficult people and he may need many weeks to put his efforts into play. Despite this, I feel it is great mitzvah to publicize the ridiculous state of the Torah, where a woman leaves her husband, refuses to work out a GET, and is told that she can remarry without a GET, something that is shown to be a complete lie.

I therefore want to make the following statement: This is the end of respect for Gedolim in America. If Reb Moshe was alive, he would smash the whole swarm with his power. But Reb Dovid does not have this power. He is limited to awaiting RSK’s acceptance of his Beth Din, which undoubtedly required some bending of the sin of RSK lest he just ignore the Beth Din. And if RSK and RNG ignore the Beth Din, many women will feel it is Daas Torah by the opinions of major ninety year old rabbis to leave a husband without a GET. We must therefore complain about the lack of power to stop what must be stopped, but we must respect the reality that it is not so easy to do today what could be done in earlier generations. We don’t have the gedolim anymore.

And if this is the reality, I am calling for a person here and a person there to help me establish a group of old fashioned Jews who want to keep the Shulchan Aruch properly, without adultery, without  mamzeruth, and without begging reshoim to please come to our Beth Din if we will behave.

If  you are interested in this project, please contact me at dddeid@verizon.net or 845-578-1917. Remember, I am happy to do the difficult work. But I need people here and there who can help me. Please realize that if this tragedy of begging RSK to come to Beth Din is not challenged, that is the end of the Torah in America.

My Brother Laces into Rav Dovid Feinstein's Beth DIn

from Daattorah.blogspot.com

Kaminetsky-Greenblatt Heter: The shameful reality is they think we are stupid

As mentioned yesterday, R Sholom Kaminetsky wrote a letter in which he acknowledged that Rav Dovid Feinstein had paskened that the heter was worthless and that he accepted this psak.

Some people felt that this was news worth celebrating - after all didn't the forces of good triumph over the forces of evil? The answer is no! The situation is much worse than before.

What was Rav Dovid Feinstein doing for the last 6 weeks? Apparently he was given one job and that was to decide whether the heter was good or not. Why did he do this? He apparently did this because the Novominsker and others convinced him that he was the only one that Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky would listen to - as in fact Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky wrote to Rav Weiss when he asked him not to protest against the heter. 

Thus Rav Feinstein was paskening solely for the sake of Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky regarding the heter. He was not dealing with what Tamar Epstein should do, nor was he deciding whether Aharon Friedman should give a Get. He was not dealing with the corruption of the halacha in this case with a phony seruv issued by Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky. He was also not dealing with whether Rav Nota Greenblatt was wrong in paskening based on a flawed psychiatric report based solely on Tamar Epstein's biased views about a case where Rav Nota didn't bother to speak to both sides or even verify that the information he was spoon fed by R Sholom Kaminetsky was true.

In short - Rav Dovid Feinstein was used to save the hide of the Kaminetskys. With his psak about the heter he gave Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky and son a ladder to climb down from the branch that they were precariously hanging from that was being sawed off by the major rabbonim around the world who have explicitly condemned the heter.

That is why the heter was not announced publicly but was sent to R Shalom Kaminetsky. It was only his response that was published and that done through the strange publication in Matzav - not the normal channel for such an important notification. There is no written psak from Rav Dovid Feinstein and there is no official letter of response from Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky. It is simply smoke and mirrors. I was told that if there had been an official written psak, that the Kaminetskys would have been subject to direct criticism by the Rabbonim and  by the media and they would not have retracted. Rav Dovid Feinstein and the Aguda avoided this spectacle by making a virtual announcement. This way the Kaminetskys were allow to make it appear that they were innocent bystanders - without Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky actually saying anything. 

Ah but you are saying - but Rav Dovid did invalidate the heter. Isn't that progress? The answer is no. Primarily because Rav Greenblatt has not retracted his mistaken psak. Thus Rav Dovid Feinstein was suckered into making this a machlokess haposkim. It is now his view versus Rav Greenblatt. Tamar can simply say that she received the heter from a major posek and that the heter is still in place. Nothing has changed,

What needs to happen is that Rav Dovid Feinstein has to issue a written psak -  as has been done by major figures such as Rav Shlomo Miller and the Baltimore Beis Din. He needs to explicitly criticize the process of the heter - otherwise it will open a floodgate of phony heterim. Rav Dovid has done nothing to protect us from anyone with mail order smicha doing away with the need for Gittin.

He needs to write that Tamar needs to separate from Adam. Without addressing the status of Tamar and what she has to do - it remains simply a public relations move to save the Kaminetskys.

Finally Rav Dovid Feinstein needs to directly criticize Rav Nota Greenblatt for issuing the heter and trying to deceive everyone that he had nothing to do with the heter. He needs to make public condemnations so that no one in their right mind will think of doing this again. As it stands there is absolutely no downside of privately telling a woman he she doesn't need a get because if she had only known what she knows now she would never have married him. This is the Rackman mechanism - which has gained a foothold through this heter.

Bottom line, Nothing has been done to clean up the stinking garbage of corruption and trampling on our holy Torah. We need the restoration of Torah leadership - not more "leave it to the gedolim to decide" announcements.

ORA Person Wears Superman Outfit to Celebrate More Women Joining ORA to Force Husbands to Give a GET

Menachem Roitter dressed as Superman for ORA:

YOU PUT ON A SUPERMAN COSTUME BECAUSE YOU GOT SOME WOMEN TO HAVE ORA TORTURE THEIR HUSBANDS WITH DEMONSTRATIONS AGAINST THEM AND THEIR OLD PARENTS TO FORCE THEM TO GIVE A GET. BUT MOST RABBIS CONSIDER SUCH CHILDREN BORN FROM A FORCED GET TO BE MAMZERIM. 

What did you do for her with your superman costume? Even superman can't fix a child born from an invalid GET who is a mamzer. When the child grows up and is refused marriage because he or she is a mamzer, you had better find a good place to hide, because that child will really hate you. YOU ARE A MAMZER MAKER!

YOU DEAL IN STORIES OF WOMEN CRYING. WHAT ABOUT BABIES CRYING BECAUSE THE MAJOR RABBIS IN THE WORLD CONSIDER THEM MAMZERIM OR DOUBTFUL MAMZERIM. WHEN YOU GO TO GEHENUM FOR MAKING MAMZERIM, THEN YOU WILL KNOW ABOUT CRYING. 

AGAIN, THE MAJOR RABBIS IN THE WORLD CONSIDER A COERCED GET IN THE VAST MAJORITY OF CASES TO BE INVALID, AND THE CHILDREN BORN FROM SUCH A WOMAN WHO REMARRIES WITHOUT A GET ARE MAMZERIM OR AT LEAST DOUBTFUL MAMZERIM. THE BABY WILL GROW UP WITH THE MAJORITY OF GREAT RABBIS CONSIDERING HIM A MAMZER. WHO WILL MARRY HIM? SUPERMAN?

I HELPED TWO WOMEN IN MONSEY WITH THE WORST AGUNAH CASES. NO COERCION. NOTHING NASTY. JUST TALKING AND GETTING THE COMMUNITY AND THE RABBIS INVOLVED. THE HUSBANDS HAD THEIR DAY IN COURT, AND EVERYONE LEFT SATISFIED WITH NO HATE FOR ANYONE.

MEN TRUST ME BECAUSE I DON'T FORCE THEM TO DO WHAT THEY DON'T WANT TO DO. BUT I CAN TALK TO THEM SO THAT THEY UNDERSTAND AND PERHAPS THEY WILL GIVE A GET, A KOSHER ONE. THEN MAYBE I WILL BORROW YOUR SUPERMAN COAT!

We Need a New Agudah That Will Fight False "Gedolim" and not Praise Reshoim

A New Agudah is Needed

By Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

In our blog torahhalacha.blogspot.com Joe Orlow posted a comment that we have to go beyond the blogs into the community to teach people who are the gedolim and who are the opposite. I think he is right. The failures and tragedies of Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky and the woman he encouraged with his son to remarry without a GET are the failures organizations protesting. It is true that after a while when the pressures from the blogs became very strong, many rabbis did send in letters to the blog with their opinions that any child of Tamar with her boyfriend without a GET from her husband is a mamzer. But there was no organization devoted not to advancing the rabbis in some form or other, but in protecting the community from the bad rabbis.

The Agudah is the prime example of a bad organization that is interested in raising money for Yeshivas, making a lot of fantastic publicity for Torah causes, but not getting involved in the other things. The rabbinical world knew of  the disgrace of Philly rabbis supporting Tamar Epstein Friedman to remarry without a GET. They said in writing time and again that any child she would have from her boyfriend with no GET from her husband would be a mamzer. But the only one fighting it was my blog and my brother’s blog. There was no rabbinic organization designed to fight these things. And furthermore, since the Yeshiva and rabbinical world relies on funding from charitable Jews, and some of these Jews may be relative or friends of Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky or Rabbi Notto Greenblatt, they were reluctant to get involved, and they kept quiet. The Agudah made great efforts in presenting RSK as the main speaker and a Gadol even as the rabbis of the world attacked him for making adultery and eventually mamzerim.

So yes, let us think anew. In each community, there are a few people who are concerned about the truth and true Torah leadership. Let a few people in each community study up on our blogs, and contact me about whatever topics are important, and then, within their communities, let them have a meeting, at first in somebody’s house, or maybe eventually in a shull, and perhaps a rabbis will speak out on what has to be spoken. But let’s go in that direction, and hopefully, HaShem will help us. My email is dddeid@verizon.net and my phone is 845-578-1917.

There is now a situation in the United States that the President and Congress have declared there is no difference between men and women regarding the military draft. This would mean that Orthodox girls drafted into the military would have a problem of suicide. And yet, there is no Jewish organization even talking about this, as far as I know. The Agudah is not interested in this topic.

Thus, we have to fight about women being subject to the draft in America. We have to fight about kosher Gittin, about the disaster of broken families, and about the problems with Yeshivas not producing Gedolim, or producing the kind that are appreciated in the Agudah who pasken not to fight gays and and support Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky as a great gadol.

Rav Dovid's Beth DIn - What Has to be Done Now

Rav Feinstein’s pesak that Tamar’s Heter is Invalid

The world is gushing with joy about Rabbi Shalom Kaminetsky’s letter that he accepts the pesak of Rav Dovid Feinstein that the Heter for Tamar is invalid. I am not gushing with joy. For one, why did it take forty days to pasken that the heter was worthless, forty days when Tamar was living with a man not her husband, and may possibly have a child from him, and the great Torah authorities throughout the world have ruled that the baby will be a mamzer. If a baby is born, will it  gush with joy?

Second of all, there is no retraction as yet from the major players in this evil, Rabbis Greenblatt and S. Kaminetsky. A married woman can assume that they never agreed that they were wrong and that their opinion is still valid. I understand that Rabbi Greenblatt has clearly stated that  his heter is valid, despite the fact that he never spoke to Aharon Friedman, and that those who studied his pesak say that it is lies and distortions and surely worthless in halacha. If so, nothing has been changed. Women, including Tamar, can still leave their husbands without a GET and say that Greenblatt accepted it.

I just called Rabbi Greenblatt and asked him if he agreed with Rabbi Shalom Kaminetsky to accept the pesak from Rav Dovid Feinstein that the Tamar heter is invalid. He did not answer but just asked me this and asked me that and finally just hung up. I was told by people who spoke to him or who studied his approach to this that he believes that his pesak is still valid, and that it is more valid than the pesak of Reb Moshe Feinstein in these matters. If so, since this Greenblatt is considered the major Rov of the South United States as I was told, many women and many rabbis will continue to back him.

As long as Reb Dovid does not give out a clear pesak in writing that Rabbis Greenblatt and S. Kaminetsky accepted his pesak that their heter was invalid, or prove that this is so with either witnesses or their handwriting, he has failed. He has created a situation where women will continue to rely on the heter of Greenblatt and S. Kaminetsky. He has failed so far to forbid Tamar from being with her new boyfriend, so what has he achieved?

At this point, the only one who has publicly recanted if his letter is not a forgery is Reb Shalom Kaminetsky. If Reb Dovid accepts that and closes his Beth Din, he has saved the reputations of the other rabbis who were not attacked. And if that is what he achieved with his Beth Din, he has made much more problems than he solved. I am not sure that Reb Shalom did not accept the hit for this mess in order to save his father and reputation with Greenblatt. Now he will be considered a baal teshuva and will be a very strong candidate to succeed his father in Philly, and the ladies he permitted can continue to rely on the old rabbis who permitted it.

We must continue to demand that:

      Tamar must separate permanently from her husband.

)    Tamar must arrange a GET after she moves to Washington so Aharon can visit his daughter properly

      Tamar must not go back to her boyfriend after the GET. If this cannot be worked out properly, Aharon will have a problem giving the GET.

      Until Greenblatt and S. Kaminetsky openly retract the Tamar Heter, they are to be publicly lambasted as mamzer makers and reshoim.

      If the Agudah retains R S Kaminetsky as a senior rabbi, it is to be attacked.

     It is time to publicly declare the evil of prominent rabbis who help ladies get a GET that is invalid and children born from it will be mamzerim.

Rav Dovid Feinstein's Beth Din Stuck? What should be done?

By Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn

It is now almost five weeks that the Beth Din of Rav Dovid Feinstein has been working on the Tamar Epstein issue, and nothing has been announced. The great delay of almost five weeks in doing anything public shows that the Beth Din is not able to do what it wanted. What did it want?

The following is what the Beth Din was designed to do. After Tamar was given in marriage to a man not her husband and she had no GET to do so, the rabbinical world erupted in fury and proclaimed that any child she had would be a mamzer. But a careful reading of the many rabbinical statements reveals a split in how to deal with the problem. Some felt that the perpetrators of this “marriage without a GET” were wicked people. The Rov of Brisk in Israel said that Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky may not teach Torah anymore. Others indicated that Rabbis Greenblat and Kaminetsky were not real rabbis.  But others did just the opposite. They made it clear that Rabbis Greenblatt and Kaminetsky are rabbis of prominence who just happened to make an error which is the fate of human beings who sometimes err.

I asked one of the rabbis who talked about those rabbis with great respect and yet said that the child would be a mamzer, how this was possible. A rabbi who defies the entire rabbinical world and makes a marriage without a GET that leads to children mamzerim, how can you write about him as if he is a prominent rabbi? He is a prominent rosho. The rabbi explained to me that the goal now is not to bang away at Rabbis Greenblatt and Kaminetsky, but rather, the goal is to convince them to accept that they made a mistake and to forbid Tamar to be with her boyfriend and to admit that the entire process of negating a marriage with very funny tactics was wrong.

This is a very important goal. If the two rabbis implicated in this adultery do not confess their mistake publicly, surely some or even many women will do what Tamar did, to invent some excuse for negating their marriage and to remarry without a GET. Thus the Beth Din wants to convince these prominent rabbis to confess their mistake, somehow hang on to their prominence, but to negate any more Tamars from adultery and mamzeruth.

This goal was the purpose of the Rabbi Dovid Feinstein Beth Din. It was initiated by Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky, it seems with some help from a prominent Agudah rabbi. This is important. Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky, even after the terrific uproar of the great rabbis throughout the world, is still considered by Agudas Israel of America to be a gadol of prime standing. Therefore, the Agudah has a need to save Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky from being declared a Rosho, because if that is accepted, the Agudah will have to fire him, and they have no intention of doing such a thing. Therefore, the Rav Dovid Feinstein Beth Din was accepted as a group of rabbis who could convince Rabbis Kaminetsky and Greenblatt to confess their mistake and somehow to retain their previous status in the Agudah and other places that will willingly embrace them still.

But this goal is extremely difficult to achieve. I was told by two people I respect that Rabbi Greenblatt, weeks after the Beth Din began, firmly believes he did the right thing. Furthermore, he feels that his HETER for Tamir was stronger than anything that Reb Moshe paskened to permit a woman. If this is so, why should he accept that he made a mistake? Obviously, he will never do it. And since he only helped Tamar because of the Kaminetskies, they cannot admit their mistake without hurting him. After all, he did them a great favor by marrying Tamar without a GET when no rabbi in the world would do such a thing.

So what happens now? The Beth Din of Rav Dovid Feinstein will do nothing, and if it does something, it will have to cross a red line and antagonize the great rabbis of the world. So probably it is the end of the Beth Din, although with the Agudah backing it to the hilt it is possible that some clever saving of face will take place. But if the rabbis who made this horror of a woman remarrying without a GET are saved by this Beth Din that is desperate to save itself, the honor of the Torah is destroyed, at least in the American Yeshiva world.

I will present here what I understand should be the decision of the Beth Din, as I heard from gedolim in Gittin and Botei Dinin. One, it must pasken that Tamar separate herself from her adultery boyfriend immediately. If she is pregnant and has a baby the Beth Din must rule it is a mamzer. The two rabbis who encouraged Tamar with her terrible adultery and refused to recant should be declared wicked, not Gedolim, and not rabbis.

At stake is the honor of the Agudah of America and Rav Dovid Feinstein, and the public trust in “gedolim” when now we know better.

I have stated before, and I say it again: Rabbis Shmuel Kaminetsky and Noto Greenblatt are worthy of being put in Cherem ראוי לנדותם but in Monsey we don’t do that to curse them, at least now at this point. But after doing what they have done, they have no right to pasken Torah halochose and are not to be considered worthy of teaching Torah or rendering Torah halacha. Nobody should send a child to the Philadelphia Yeshiva as long as that Rosho is the Rosh Yeshiva. And if his son Shalom succeeds him, surely nobody should go there.

Guest Post from Joe Orlow Re: Why I Fight “Gedolim”

A Torah life is built on obedience to authority. Children obey parents. Students obey teachers. Community members obey the Torah leaders in their town. Local Torah leaders obey national leaders.

A local Torah leader can be the Rabbi of a Shul; a Rosh Yeshiva; a Dayan on a Bais Din; or a Torah scholar without a community position who people turn to for advice.

Parents and teachers are only to be obeyed if they follow the Torah. A child is not obligated to follow an order from a parent demanding that the child transgress the Torah.

Furthermore, the Torah directs each person to select a Rav to follow. The terminology is "Aseh L'cha Rav", "make for yourself a Rav". That is, a Rav cannot come and demand obedience from someone unless that person chose to submit to him. There are exceptions, however.

When the S'micha from Moshe was still given, a Rav could subpoena someone to appear his court.

And historically, when Jews lived in all-Jewish communities, a person could come under the jurisdiction of a Rav without choosing him. A Rav selected by the community at large had to be obeyed even by those who may oppose him. The seven Tuvai Ha'Ir, even if they were not Rabbis, had to be obeyed. But even there, people had a choice. Someone could leave the city or region or move elsewhere.

If a Rabbi in America is a true scholar and his peers recognize his scholarship and defer to his decisions, he can become a Gadol, or even Gadol Hador, "The Great One of the Generation"; or perhaps a title limiting his authority to a region is conferred on him, such as, "The Greatest Gadol in America". Under those circumstances, the Gadol can require obedience.

Yet, curiously, some Rabbis claim that all Jews in America must submit to them without these Rabbis having properly earned the title. They assume the title of "Gadol", a "Great One", by dint of a family name, or having a prominent position in an established Yeshiva, by having studied under a true Gadol, or because many people bring them their questions or come to their Shiurim; or simply because they sit on the Eastern wall of the dais at a convention. Still, the scholarship of these men may be lacking and thus they are without the respect of true scholars and are pseudo-Gadolim.

Aa long as pseudo-Gadolim work within the confines of those places where their supporters treat them as a Gadol, their impact on others outside their followers is limited.

But when a pseudo-Gadol overreaches and makes decisions that affect people who disdain him for his sloppy scholarship, the stage is set for a showdown between individuals and the pseudo-Gadol. A free-for-all can ensue.

Those who consider the pseudo-Gadol as a fraud, a Rasha, and maybe even an Apikoros, begin publicly airing the flaws of the pseudo-Gadol. Meanwhile, the pseudo-Gadol's followers hit back and begin demanding respect for the man.

Each side demands to be left alone.

But in truth, the pseudo-Gadol has only himself to blame. He bought into all the hype. He exposed his own vulnerability by going into battle without arming himself with sources and proofs from the Mesorah.

Pronouncements from on high don't fly in the old fashioned Torah world. And a sure sign someone is a phony Gadol is when he clams up or begins double-talking, saying one thing to one person and another thing to another, or contradicting himself.

So don't berate me for jumping in and piling it on when a pseudo-Gadol raises his hand against one of my friends. Don't tell me to let the Gadolim handle it and that I should stay out and just watch from the sidelines.

Rather, let those who criticize me ask themselves why their vocal "Gadol" all of a sudden is scrambling to rise above the fray, when it was he who threw the first punch? Why is he refusing to discuss the issue at hand openly and honestly? I'll take a stab at answering that question: Because the pseudo-Gadol is used to being obeyed unquestioningly, and when someone catches him playing fast and loose with the rules, he freezes like a deer caught in the headlights.

As for me, to do nothing when I discern the Torah being abused eats away at my soul. For self preservation I am compelled not to stand by idly.