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.
