A New Solution to "Agunoth." A
husband refuses to give a GET, and a "Beth Din" declares that the
husband does want to give a GET, despite his refusal to give one and despite
his saying he doesn't want one. The Beth Din says too bad what he says and too
bad what he wants. They then declare that the husband wants the GET and tells
the woman she can remarry. Of course, the children from such a
"solution" will be mamzerim. I understand that people can want to
help ladies, but don't they have some shame when they tell this to Orthodox
people and say that this is rooted in the Torah?
An apologist for this Beth Din has written
in the Baltimore Times, "And while rabbinic authorities offer
sympathy for these women, they maintain they are constrained from action in
many cases by the boundaries of halacha. The result, at times, has the husband
using extortion before granting a divorce, insisting on large sums of money
and/or refusing joint custody of children. According to Jewish law, if the
agunah marries and has a child, the child is considered a mamzer, illegitimate,
and cannot marry."
Let's stop there. This is the process of
demonizing the husband. A man was married for ten years and has five children.
His wife demands a GET and he refuses. Did he refuse because he wants money, or
did he refuse because he wants his children, or did he refuse because he wants
to go to marriage counseling and have his wife, which is crucial for the
children who need two parents in the house? No, along comes the new garbage
Beth Din and demonizes the husband, and once he is a demon, they know that
people will ignore the Beth Din's fantasies in halacha. After all, who will
defend a husband who is a demon?
And thus, the "Agunah" war
becomes an extension of the hate for men so popular today. The Agunah may jump
into secular court and destroy the husband, say lies about him and have him
jailed. have him declared a menace to his children and he can only see them with supervision, and then there are the problems of women who have the
children most of the time and teach them to hate their father. Some husbands
have reasoned that the wife will do all of these things to them unless she
fears about getting a GET. That is the husband's only protection. And there is
some logic to this. Just ask the husbands whose wives have demanded a GET.
These are husbands with a good name. There was never any complaints about
his being violent, etc., But all of a sudden, when the wife wants a GET, the
complaints pour out. And the husband is some time dragged off to the police
station in front of his children. Such a person may be quite bitter. And if he
knows that everything she said about him was lies, he may want a
financial settlement, and he is in his rights to do so. Furthermore, the
basic freedom to split with the husband and destroy his life, and to damage the
children who will grow up without a father in the house doesn't say in my
gemora. In my gemora is clearly states that when you have a child, even if
your wife is evil, you stay married. You have no right to harm your
children because you don't get along with your wife. But the women who want
their freedom don't know that gemora.
A prominent therapist told me that these
broken marriages in Torah families can surely be helped with the proper
counseling. Why do we rush to support a woman who wants to destroy her husband
and damage her children, when we don't really know that she has a right or that
she is right in what she is saying and doing?
I know husbands who were on top of the
world, with good positions, good money, honor and success and lovely children,
and the wife wanted out. She went to work on them and they were wiped out. Sometimes
a house they paid for ended up with the wife and the children and the husband
drained of every penny to pay for incredible level fees as the wife takes him
to this and that and the other secular court, always backed by people who have sympathy
for an "Agunah." This is terrible.
A judge once asked a wife why she is
teaching the children to hate her husband. They are supposed to visit him and
they don't. She replied, "They don't want to go" and that was it.
Another wife called the police and said that her husband had just raped the
little daughter and she had blood to prove it. The authorities rushed over and
discovered the whole thing was a lie. And the rabbis and community activists
still backed the mother and attacked the father. And the judge kept the children
with the mother.
This latest assault on marriage by the
International Beth Din which is simply a few rabbis who banded together with
such a title, is opposed by Rabbi Willig and Rabbi Schachter of the RCA Beth
Din. And then we have another "rabbi" who wants to simply make
marriage vanish, another approach that very few people accept, if any, but
accepted because it is a help for "agunoth." But this
innovator, Rabbi Riskin, agrees that all those who oppose his idea of making marriage
vanish, will also oppose the new idea of the International Beth Din, that when
the husband refuses to give a GET they interpret to mean that he really wants a
GET! Okay, it is a lie, but aren't we helping Agunoth?
May I ask, If you want to help Agunoth, do you not mind making mamzerim? And what kind of help is it to have a woman remarry without a GET when she will sin with adultery? Okay, it is a mitsvah to help ladies, but do you help them when they will end up in Gehenum? And when she goes to Gehenum, what about the people who encouraged her?
Every Yom Kippur, those people who have engaged in coercing a husband to divorce without knowing all of the facts, must face up to the fact that the Shulchan Aruch clearly forbids these things in the vast majority of cases. And anyone who forces a GET, or who engages in secular court to terrorize the husband, or who violates the Torah in any way to get a GET, or who encourages such things, will surely face a Judgment, in a court that does believe in the Shulchan Aruch. And in that court, anyone who violated and disregarded ithe Shulchan Aruch is going to have an interesting time.
