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.
