Joe Orlow talks about Chaim Levin’s complaint that a Beth Din accepted a GET from a man who was a vegetable. Comments from Rav Dovid Eidensohn.

 A report about a Bais Din in Eretz Yisrael has been brought to my attention. The Bais Din was petitioned by a wife seeking a divorce from her husband. The husband is in a state where he is uncommunicative. Let me expand here for a moment why I use the term "uncommunicative". There are cases where people come out of comas after years. A while back there was an article about a normal boy who was "missing" a part of his brain. The amazing thing is that when someone does not have activity in this part of the brain, doctors will declare this person "brain dead". Yet this boy, without this section, was fine. 

Experts like brain surgeons and others who study the brain probably have many cases that don't fit the accepted medical models. This is important to consider in light of the following. The Bais Din decided that they could act on the husband's behalf. This is without precedent in Halacha, according to my understanding. The husband, being alive, cannot give his wife a Get. So his wife remains his wife. But the Bais Din decided that were the husband to be communicative, he would communicate that he wants to give his wife a Get because he, the husband, is in an apparently permanent uncommunicative state. So the Bais Din "divorced" the wife.   

The Bais Din issuing this ruling was overruled by a higher court in the Bais Din system known as the "Rabbanute". The higher court decided the wife remains married. Then the higher court of the Rabbanute was overruled by a civil court. The civil court said the Rabbanutes's lower court ruling remains in effect and that the wife is divorced. This raises two questions:

(1)   What kind of education and vetting is there for Rabbanute judges? Clearly, the lower court did not act according to Halacha. [Comment from RDE –Major rabbis in America such as Moshe Heinemann in Baltimore, Hershel Schachter in New York, and Shmuel Kaminetsky in Philadelphia promote forced Gittin by humiliating husbands and such devices, something clearly forbidden by all commentators to the Shulchan Aruch in laws of Kesubose 77 paragraphs 2,3. Plainly, these rabbis, the cream of the students of Rabbi Aharon Kotler and Rabbi Yosher Ber Soloveitchik, do not follow the Shulchan Aruch, as all of the commentators there forbid pressuring a husband to give a GET. I spoke to Moshe Heinemann and to a student of Herschel Schachter while the student was on the phone with Schachter, and I am sure that Schachter does not know the laws of Gittin either. Shmuel Kaminetsky is considered by the Agudah to be a Gadol but the major poskim rabbis who criticized him for telling a married woman to remarry with no GET and make mamzerim had only derision for him. The Gaon from Brisk in Israel said that Kaminetsky is forbidden to teach Torah.]

 (2) What kind of high court puts itself in a position where it can be overruled by a civil court? [Commentary from RDE - This took place in Israel where the majority are not Orthodox Jews. And yet, the government accepted Orthodox rabbis to have official government positions. Having little choice because of their minority status, many prominent rabbis accepted that Orthodox rabbis will have governmental power but not Conservative or Reform rabbis, and with this came the problem of the government courts who can overturn at least some rabbinic decisions.]

 In the U.S. we are in a similar position where unlearned and/or renegade Batei Din are releasing women wrongly from marriages. Furthermore, civil courts, under so-called "Get Laws", force Gittin, thus leading to women wrongly released from marriages. This leads, in some cases, to Mamzerim being born.

[Commentary by RDE – Joe is right about that and in his original paper continues about the great problems of Kiddushin making women helpless if the husband does not want to give her a GET. Let me explain a bit. I believe that a woman who won’t honor Kiddushin by remaining with their spouse even when the marriage is broken until the husband gives a GET willingly, is forbidden to make Kiddushin. And to remain single is also a sin, as taught in Shulchan Aruch. The only solution is to marry with Pilegesh. Pilegesh is a real marriage and the children are the true family of the parents. The basic condition is for the woman to come to the husband’s house and live there with him as husband and wife, with the understanding that there is no Kiddushin, but Pilegesh rules, so that either spouse can leave whenever they want to, with absolutely no penalty. The couple must behave as a married couple regarding not having relations with others. If somebody wants to marry with Pilegesh another thing is to have a rabbi tell a few other rabbis and people in the community that these two, the husband and wife of Pilegesh, are not married with Kiddushin. Again, in my blog torahhalacha.blogspot.com I devote more detail to Pilegesh. Anyone interested can write to me email at eidensohnd@gmail.com or call me at 845-578-1917.]