Part Five of the Yeshivas and Broken Families

If we study the Talmud and its related works, we see that ancient Israel raised its men to achieve four things: One, a Jewish man was trained to seek greatness in Torah. Two, he had to earn a living. And according to Rovo, if he learned Torah, he should strive for wealth, so that he would not be pressured by fiscal problems when he was learning. Thirdly, he had to learn Derech Erets and how to deal with his fellow, whether in family and marriage or general society, even with gentiles. Fourth, he had to learn basic worldly things, as the Talmud says, "Greater is one who toils with his hands than the G-d fearing."

A person as a child was trained to learn Torah, but also trained in the other things. Thus, Rambam says that one may not marry until he purchases a house (no mortgage) and has a steady income. Now, if people married at the age of seventeen or eighteen, and they learned in Yeshiva their whole young life, when did they get the money to buy a house? And how did they suddenly have a steady income? Obviously, the training of a child was to do what an adult should do. As the Shulchan Aruch in Orach Chaim tells us, after Shacharis one must go to work, because all Torah without work is waste. And without a steady income one enters into borrowing and eventually stealing and endless sins.

Working did not begin when the person was ready to get married. He was trained during childhood to prepare for life exactly as an adult would do: the major part of his time was learning, and part time the person works. If a child begins this program as a child, a decade plus later he will have extensive experience in business and other fields. He will have earned enough money to buy a house. He will have had years of setting money aside for investments. Thus, the students of Rovo told him that they owned real estate and it supported them so they only had to work part time. This began in childhood.

When such a child reach adulthood, he married solid in money, solid in Torah, solid in Derech Erets, learned by practical dealings with people for many years in business./ Because he was involved in Derech Erets, he also picked up basic skills needed to be "one who toils with his hands" that was greatly lauded by Chazal.

A wife in such a situation had a good income, a nice house, money for what she needed, clothes that cost more than her husband's clothes, because Rambam says that the husband must honor his wife more than himself, and this means spending on her, as Raishis Chochmo says. The husband has learned Derech Erets and can get along with people, and his wife benefits from this. And if something has to be done around the house, the husband is experienced with working with his hands. Such a woman is surely blessed and happy. Why in the world should there be, heaven fore fend, problems and divorces?

But what about today? Somebody goes to Yeshiva. He learns many years. He hears this shiyur and that talk but rarely does he master Torah. Rather, he masters the lecture that shows how clever the Rosh Yeshiva or Magid Shiur is. After years of this, he has forgotten the complicated shiurim and has only smatterings of this or that. I know somebody who has spent years trying to finish Shass Bieeyune, and he only needs a few more masechtose. But he is paid in Kollel not to finish Shas but to listen to lectures that the Yeshiva forces him to attend. And Shass may take years and years. So we have no Gedolim. But furthermore, we have frustrated Bnei Torah. Years of this kind of learning  rarely produces someone great in Torah. He surely rarely becomes great with wealth. Derech Erets? The Yeshiva culture is to encourage the greatness of a Talmid Chochom, that people owe him great honor and money. This is the opposite of the mitsvah taught in Rashi and the Zohar that "and he shall make his wife rejoice" means he makes her rejoice in marriage, not himself.

The wife may not appreciate her role in all of this. She works hard in a job to support her  husband to become a Gadol, but as time goes on, no how much he learns, the job of being a Gadol goes only to the family of the Rosh Yeshiva. Others just keep grinding away with no end. And the wife is not getting younger. More and more children arrive and she sees no end to her labors to support a husband who will need support for ever. When she mentions this to her husband he tells her that Daas Torah requires her to honor her husband. Without going into the gory details, we have a picture of why there are broken marriages and divorces. Yes, "A Yeshiva is Hashchoso." It destroys men. It destroys women. It destroys children.

Yes, there are a few people who can truly become Gedolim. But the present system is surely not the path to this. If so, why of the many thousands who have learned for many years in Yeshiva and Kollel, we have major Rosh Yeshivas who support gay rights and coerce husband with invalid Gittin producing mamzerim? And they, rachmono litslon, are considered by the Yeshiva to be "gedolim" that everyone must obey!

Part Four of the Yeshivas and Broken Marriages

What happened when all of a sudden going to Yeshiva was popular? This took place in the sixties, after the passing of HaGaon Reb Aharon zt"l. The new generation was a time of great turmoil in America. The Viet Nam War was going full blast.  Americans were going there to die and suffer greatly in the heat and swamps, never knowing when a bullet would fly at them. Victory was elusive, but death and wounding was not. Students who were being drafted rioted. Throughout America, the students and the hippies revolted. Colleges became centers for rebellion against everything sacred. No longer could an Orthodox Jew go to college.  And who wants to go to college and get drafted? A Yeshiva student was exempt. Therefore, Yeshiva became popular.

Someone in Yeshiva could go for a few years on the sums of support demanded for marrying a Kollel fellow, and people were found who would pay it. In addition, the huge sums of the Poverty Programs were enlisted for those learning who had little money. Beautiful buildings went up, lovely families were established, even while the rest of the country wallowed in the agony of rebellion and drugs. Many parents who lost their children in college looked enviously at the Yeshiva students.

At that time, those few students who had learned before the changes, and who had suffered from the privations of the early years, became Rosh Yeshivas. This was a time when the rabbis in America had not supported the Yeshiva movement. There were open wars with Mr. Mendlowitz and America's rabbis. There was even an attempt to isolate Reb Aharon from the rabbis, but it failed and the senior rabbi who initiated it died suddenly, in the middle of his preparations. Thus, the new generation of successful Yeshiva rabbis was one without true rabbinic leadership. Rosh Yeshivas were not trained in halacha and rabbinic services, but now, they were asked questions by their many students and their families, and the general community. But they did not have the preparation to answer many of these questions. Therefore, they initiated the idea called "Daas Torah" meaning, they would say whatever they thought. Rosh Yeshivas now assumed the mantle of Gedolim, without knowing as much as a Gadol should know. Anyone who disputed their findings was considered a rebel against "Daas Torah." There was a vacuum in true halacha, so evident when the major Rosh Yeshivas made invalid Gittin. As a very senior Rosh Yeshiva once said to me, "You know Gittin. Tell me, where does it say about the names of the GET?" I told him where in the Shulchan Aruch it said about how to write the names in a GET. The Roshei Yeshivas had to write Kesubose. But they did not study the laws of Gittin and did not know how to write the names. I once saw a Kesubo and saw that it was invalid. I asked who wrote it, and was told a certain major Rosh Yeshiva.

Let us now return to our original question. Why is there divorce among Torah Jews? And we will now, having prepared the basic ideas, will turn to specifics that cause the divorces and broken families in the Yeshiva world. We turn now to Part Five of the Yeshivas and Broken Marriages

Why the Broken Families and Divorces? Part 3 - More on the Yeshiva

In part two of this we mentioned two gedolim, one of the past generation and one of this generation, who agreed that "A Yeshiva is Hashchoso." This stunning remark, made to me when I asked one of them what to do about a video store in Monsey, indicates that we don't fight with video stores. We fight inside, in our own world, and make sure that people are happy and successful in their lives. Then, they don't have to run to bad places. But if we have Yeshivas that leave people frustrated, we are in for the worst. This incredible remark was an explosion to me. But the basic message was not at all surprising. Let me explain.

I learned by HaGaon Reb Aharon Kotler zt"l for two years, before his petira. When he left the world, the whole system changed. It changed for reasons that were both positive and wonderful, but they changed. What was the change, and why was something that was so wonderful and positive something to worry about and complain? Because the fact is, when the world changed radically for the better, when people began to flock to learn in Kollel, when money poured out of the Poverty Programs from President Johnson, I got out. I felt that I was a talmid of Reb Aharon and I wanted to remember the Torah as it was when I learned by him. The new stuff was not for me. From then on until the present day, whenever possible, I made myself a pest at the feet of the great rabbis, but I stayed out of the conventional Yeshivas, if such a thing was possible. I spent hours talking to Hagaon Reb Moshe Feinstein zt"l when he visited Monsey often to visit his family here. I was always nervous that somebody would come and take away "my" Reb Moshe, but in the years when I pestered him, I only remember three people asking him a question.

I might add, that in Lakewood there were few people who spoke regularly to HaGaon Reb Aharon zt"l. There was first of all a great generation gap. And then there was Reb Aharon, a ferocious fire in Torah, and people stayed away in droves. I jumped in because I was pure azuce ponim. That is how I pestered Reb Moshe and all of the others. But most people were too normal to act that way. Good for me.

What was wrong with the new world, with its flow of Torah Jews, its growing Kollelim, its new and beautiful buildings for Yeshivas, whereas I had buildings that were real dumps? The answer to that is to go back to the time of the Vilna Gaon and Reb Chaim Volloznher, when modern day Yeshivas were first established. Those Yeshivas catered to people who had nothing, who often went hungry, sometimes for days. But they learned with all of their strength. The new Torah world was awash in money. This did not mean that Kollel people themselves were loaded. They were not. But the element of hunger, of fear of the future, was not there. When I learned in Yeshiva I knew that if I ever married it would be a miracle. Later on, a good boy didn't worry about that. He only had to figure out what ridiculous sum he would demand as kest, or support. It got to the point that a girl who wanted to marry a Yeshiva/Kollel boy had to pay a fortune. People became masters at taking money from the government's Poverty Program. My family, when I finally married, never touched that money.

Years later, I sat next to my mechuton, the Matasdorfer Rebbe, at the wedding of a young son. He asked me, "How do you have such good children?" I answered him, "We never touch that money." He was impressed. Yes, yes, he nodded.

As time went on I attached myself to various tsadikim and Gedolim who were fighters for holiness and goodness. I began to see that Agudas Israel with the new Rosh Yeshivas, were on the other side of the fence. I once called up the Agudah for help in battling gays. Two major Rosh Yeshivas answered me, "It is forbidden to fight gays. We are against hate." I hope  you don't believe me. But it is public record that the Agudah supported the gays in a government defense bill where somebody tacked on a measure to severely punish anyone who hit a gay. To my knowledge, the Agudah was the only major religious body to do this.

And when I called up my friends who worked in the Agudah about this, they said, "True, you have traditions from past generations to fight gays. But today, our Rosh Yeshivas are the Gedolim, and everyone must listen to them." Well, people who support gays are not my gedolim, and I don't listen to them.

Later on, it was this Yeshiva element of Rosh Yeshivas, the "Gedolim" Rachmono Litslon, that signed letters that everyone is obligated to coerce a husband to force him to give a GET, something that is absolutely wrong from the standpoint of the Shulchan Aruch. But the new "Gedolim" are not experts in the laws of Gittin. They teach about the ox that gored the cow, and they pasken all questions with their logic. And what they say, even if it is the opposite of the Shulchan Aruch and senior rabbis in all generations, is what we must do. It becomes "Daas Torah." HaShem Yerachem.

In this twisted "Torah" world, we have mamzerim from invalid Gittin, and we have broken families and divorces. Now we turn to the basic problem of divorce in the "Torah" world, in part 4.

Why the Broken Families and Divorces? Part Two

In Part Two of Why the Broken Families and Divorces, we want to know two things: One, why the intensive efforts in schooling in Yeshiva schools did not save men and women from a hideous divorce. Two, and this is sensitive, we want to know if there is something in the Yeshiva world itself that caused these things. Is that possible?

Years ago, Monsey was a paradise. It was just apple orchards and simple lifestyles plus some Yeshivas and shull; nothing remarkable other than a bear or snake that was used to the woods in Monsey as a habitat. One day somebody put up a video store on Main Street in the center of town, not far from Yeshivas and shulls. This was a scandal. I went with a friend to the Gaon Rav Shalom Mordechai Schwadron zt"l who visited Monsey then, raising money for his causes. I told him about the video store and anticipated that he would give a fiery lecture about it and tell us how to stop it. But although he had always treated me very warmly, this time he put on a special "frozen face" that only a professional actor such as he could do. I repeated myself, "Rebbe! A video store" but he completely ignored me. His face war turned away from me and I got the message that I didn't exist. Well, I thought, I am used to talking to Gedolim only because I am Mr. Azuce Ponim. If he wants to make a face, I will call up the azuce ponim. I raised my voice and said, "Rebbe! Hashchoso!" That was what he was waiting for. The great mashgichim - Reb Shalom was a Talmid Muvhok of the greatest, Reb Eliyohu Lopian -  knew how to put you in "in the sack", which was where I was going now.

Reb Shalom suddenly came alive. His eyes sparkled fire, as he slowly turned towards me, his hands moving in  cadence with his mood, until he pointed right into my face and said, slowly and professionally, "A Yeshiva is hashchoso!" My azuce ponim went sailing into outer space as I felt myself sinking and falling, falling, and a still voice said to me, "Just be quiet. He said this in public. He has to answer. Be patient."

I just waited. Reb Shalom saw that he had struck a home run with his attack, and he chuckled and said something in Yiddish about my new silence. I just waited. It was his turn. Then he turned serious and began to explain his complaints about the Yeshiva. I was so stunned that I don't recall his exact words, but he had made his point. Video stores are not the problem. Yeshivas are. Now, why that is so still eluded me despite the phrases or so I heard from Reb Shalom. So not much after this, when I was at my son's Chasunah, a major Rosh Yeshiva entered. I jumped him as I always did to an Odom Gadol, and sat with him for half an hour with my complaints about a certain Yeshiva organization. He listened and said nothing, but he did not dispute anything I said. Then I told him about the statement of Reb Shalom, that "A Yeshiva is Haschoso." He suddenly perked up and nodded a firm assent. I was amazed. But "two are better than one" and these two were for me the "a thing shall be clarified by two witnesses" and I resolved to see what they were trying to tell me. Now, I don't know what they thought. I can only say what I think, in my limited ability, to be the reason for their remarks.

In this, part two, we have already said a mouthful, and any statements of mine will have to await Part Three. But I will say this here: In the past few years, I have had mighty battles with the major American Rosh Yeshivas about Gittin. I attacked them publicly for encouraging the humiliation of a husband and destroying his father's job and his uncle's job. These Rosh Yeshivas meant business. They were going to force a GET. And as we have seen on this blog, a forced GET just because the wife wants a GET is invalid. I publicized heavily the sources to show that these Rosh Yeshivas were wrong. I spoke to the leading posek of that group, who is a major posek in America. He told me his reasoning. I wrote thirteen pages to show that he was completely wrong. The Gedolim in Israel agreed with me and put out letters attacking humiliating a husband and coercing a GET.  I called up several of the Rosh Yeshivas who signed letters commanding everyone to coerce the husband to give a GET. They had no source for what they were doing. I was told that many if not all of them had not even spoken to the husband before they issued terrible letters about coercing him. These Rosh Yeshivas are part of the problem of "A Yeshiva is Haschoso." But how this happened, will have to wait until Part Three.

Why are there so many Horrible Broken Marriages and Divorces? Part One

Why are there so many horrible broken marriages and divorces? First of all, just what is so horrible about divorce? For the husband, divorce is a disaster because he loses his wife, he loses access to his children other than visits, he probably loses his home, he must give his ex-wife a fortune in support, and often he ends up losing his income or job, either directly or indirectly because of the divorce or broken marriage. If the divorce goes through a Beth Din he pays a lot of money for the Beth Din, for toanim, and if the case goes to court he spends a fortune on legal fees, and may be in fear of prison and the judge who can easily ruin his life with a ruling about the children or payments, even jail.

For the wife a divorce is a disaster because children always need a father on the premises, especially children troubled by a divorce and by an absent father. And if the mother plays the game of teaching the children to turn against the father, the children may eventually go back to him, and be upset with the mother for denying them a father for so long. The mother is also all alone in dealing with the family, and is not always able to deal with rough children, especially boys who need a firm hand.

For husband and wife the stigma of being divorced is painful. And then comes the question of remarriage, and the pain of who rejects and who accepts the divorced person is a sad spectacle. Often the mother is driven to think: If I would have stayed with the first one, with all of his faults, it would be better than what I am faced with now. HaGaon Reb Yaacov Kaminetsky zt"l  once told a Gittin Rov. "Tell the lady who wants a divorce to think if she would take her husband as a zivuge shayni." That is a sobering thought. But sometimes, it occurs too late. And of course,  a single mother with children is limited in her income, and it is unlikely to improve. She has to marry off her children, and maybe herself, all alone.

So why are people breaking marriages and seeking divorces? When we talk about people who are Torah Jews, steeped in musar and yiras shomayim, the number of broken families is incredible. What is going on?

There are several factors. One is that marriage in general has gone out of style in America and surely elsewhere. No longer are the majority of Americans in functioning marriages. Some are technically married but only because they have no intention of remarrying, so they remain married with no actual marriage. Others never married in the first place, but go along as if marriage is not important. And everyone realizes that even somebody who wants to be married must run the gauntlet which often ends in broken marriages and divorce. Some feel it is better not to marry. Today, even some children from Torah families are refusing to think about shidduchim. There is a huge element of single people of all ages. Getting married today is scary.

Another factor in the huge divorce rate is that there are people of all types, even in the Torah community, who have taken upon themselves the obligation to warn people about staying in a bad marriage. Now there are people who actively encourage people to face the fact that their marriage is bad, and to consider a divorce. A lady who put her husband in jail told me that she does not want a divorce. But the ladies she respected told her to do it. Sometimes parents are so upset about something the other spouse did that they encourage a broken marriage. This is a major problem.

In this, Part One of our discussion of why there are broken marriages, we have described the basic scenery of marriage today, in the Torah world. It is in danger. And we see that the highest level of Torah families are engulfed in hideous battles, even going to secular court, even publishing in secular newspapers attacking the other side. I never heard of such things. But one thing I know, tomorrow will be much worse. Therefore, we have to think deeply into this. What is going on? Why is the holiest of all institutions, the home, being destroyed? (The Zohar says that BERAISHIS the first word in the Torah, spells BAYIS ROSH.) We have discussed here in Unit One the basic scenery of despair. But now let us turn to Unit Two. We want to know why all of the Torah being learned, all of the good education a couple receives, does not enable them to survive the vicissitudes of marriage today. We turn now to Part Two.

The Halacha of Coercing a Husband to Give a GET with Humiliation

There are various levels of coercions permitted to force the husband to give a GET, as taught in Even Hoezer 154. One is when the husband must divorce because he married somebody forbidden to him, even if it is only forbidden dirabonon. There are also cases where the husband has physical ailments that no woman could tolerate. In these cases a husband may be coerced even with a beating until he gives the GET and says "I want to give the GET."

Then there are other cases, lesser than the above, when beatings are forbidden, but minor coercions are permitted. Therefore a man who cannot perform in marriage must divorce his wife. But if he refuses, he is not beaten or put in Cherem. But he may be told that he is wicked for not obeying the Talmud that commands him to divorce his wife. See EH end of 154 and Rashbo Teshuvose I:1192.

But most demands for divorce are simply the complaint of the wife that she can't stand living with her husband. In this case, no coercion is permitted. See Even Hoezer 77 paragraphs 2 and 3 in all of the commentaries including the Gro #5 there who elaborates on this and says that nobody permits coercion in such a case, and this is the opinion of the Shulchan Aruch, the Ramo, the Beis Shmuel, and the Chelkas Mechokake and nobody disagrees.

Furthermore, the Gaon Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashev zt"l rules in his teshuva sefer that there is no mitsvah upon the husband to divorce. "If he wants to divorce, he divorces, and if not, not." Therefore, the terrible practice of many American rabbis and others to coerce a husband whenever the wife leaves the marriage is wrong and if the husband is coerced with beatings or with Cherem or with great loss of money or with humiliation the GET is invalid and if the woman remarries with the invalid GET her children are mamzerim. (But nobody should pronounce on the child mamzerus until a prominent Beth Din or posek has examined carefully the whole situation.)

Letters have gone out from Gedolei Yisroel in Israel in the past and present generations that any Beth Din that coerces husbands to give a GET because of the demands of the wife, that such a Beth Din loses the status of Beth Din, and any Gittin given by it are not accepted. The wife needs another GET from a kosher Beth Din. I heard this myself from Posek HaDor Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashev zt"l, that he takes away Chezkas Beth Din from any Beth Din that coerces a husband upon the demands of the wife.

One of the great sins done by these rabbis is to call upon people to publicly gather at the home of the husband and humiliate him. The organization ORA is notorious for this. They torture husbands, call up his employers, torture his family, even old people who can can get sick from these public protests and tortures, and do what they can to force the GET. Such a forced GET is invalid and the women born from ORA's coercions are usually mamzerim. In the coming generation there will be many children that are mamzerim, and the rabbis who created them are true child molesters, because making a mamzer is cruel to the child.

The Rashbo in Teshuvose VII:414 says that when a woman demands a GET because she cannot tolerate the husband we try to make peace and if there is no hope for that than we still cannot coerce the husband to divorce. "We never force the husband to divorce. But if he wants, he divorces, and if he so chooses, he does not divorce."

This is true for a woman who is upset with her husband but the husband can function as a husband. But a husband who cannot function as a husband and the wife demands a GET we talk tough to the husband and tell him clearly that he must divorce his wife, "but we do not put him in Nidui, and we do not humiliate him, and we do not cause him any physical pain." We thus see clearly that the Rashbo forbids coercing a   husband even one who cannot be a husband, and is therefore obligated by the Talmud to divorce, if the coercion is a pressure of humiliation or beatings. Surely an ordinary man who is not commanded by the Talmud to divorce may not be coerced with humiliation just because the wife cannot stand him.

And those rabbis who do coerce husbands with the organization ORA or otherwise to give a GET, have caused invalid Gittin, and the children born from an invalid GET are mamzerim. In the next generation there will be a tragedy of children who are considered by senior rabbis to be mamzerim. And these rabbis who defy the Shulchan Aruch, the Gro and the Rashbo, with no source differing, will have the sin of making mamzerim and permitting a married woman to remarry without a GET.

The Radvaz in II:118 brings the Rashbo and agrees with it. And so does the Beis Yosef in TUR Even Hoezer page 73b d"h כתוב. The Chazon Ish also agrees see Even Hoezer Gittin 108:12.

But we have ORA and others backed and encouraged by rabbis who "disagree" with the Rashbo, Radvaz, Beis Yosef and Chazon Ish, even though they have not got a single person who agrees with them. If they do, let me know it. I have a lengthy refutation of what one of them decided was a source who disagreed. I showed my findings to gedolim in Israel and they agreed with me. I asked them to hang up signs all over Israel that one who humiliates the husband makes mamzerim and they did so. Lately, this group, mainly the Beth Din in Bnei Braq, has published a sefer endorsed by gedolei hador Rav Chaim Kanievsky, Rav Shmuel HaLevi Wosner and other Torah greats in Israel attacking coecing the husband to divorce. But ORA and the assorted rabbis who want to help women disagree.

The Halacha of Coercing a Husband to Give a GET with HumiliationA student of one of these rabbis once called me up and let me have it for disagreeing with his rebbe. I told him, "Everything you say about me is fine. But I ask you one thing. Ask your rebbe, right now while I am on the phone, what his source is to humiliate a husband that he relies on to defy my sources of the Rashbo, etc." The fellow agreed and soon came back to me with the source. The source was the rabbi in the RCA and the rabbis in Washington, DC. But the rabbi in the RCA once told me that he permitted a husband and wife to leave his Beth Din without a GET, because he invented some reason to take away the kiddushim, which shows that he is in a new world where there is no Shulchan Aruch. And the rabbis in Washington DC are not experts in Gittin, but relied on this New York rabbi, who says that his source is the rabbis of Washington.

Okay, when I ask this, people can ignore it. But when the children who will be mamzerim ask it, what will these rabbis say? And when nobody wants to marry them because the greatest rabbis in the world consider them mamzerim, will the rabbis who encouraged their birth marry them to their children?

Rabbi Eidensohn Will Speak in Lakewood, NJ on Monday, Nov 27

Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn will speak on Divorce and Broken Families: Why?

NOVEMBER 27 MONDAY

2-5 PM

At MUNICIPAL BUILDING OF THE LAKEWOOD TOWNSHIP

Second Floor Room C

231 3rd St

Lakewood Township, NJ

Admission Free - For Men

Broken Marriage - Try to Repair It or Go Further?

QUESTION:

I have a broken marriage. Should I try to repair it or give up on my wife and children and start all over? I am not a young man.

ANSWER:

Without knowing you or your wife or your children I can't advise you. I merely point out that at your age if you continue as you have in the past few years, battling here and there and everywhere, you may never remarry and may never have children who live in your house. That is one thing.

Second of all, if  you know exactly why the marriage broke up, and people you respect and rely upon agree with you that those were the reasons, you can think about fixing the marriage, although that is a very difficult thing to contemplate at this late stage, after years of problems and separation. But if you have no clear idea why the marriage broke up, or  you don't have a clear idea how to fix the problems, and  you are running out of time to remarry, you have to decide what to do.

In these matters there are certain experts, at least a few of them, who are really successful and experienced. If  you get opinions from them, you may save yourself a lot of aggravation.

But at any rate, stay in touch with me if for no other reason than to get some moral support. When a person sees his life draining away, and his children growing up without him, he needs a lot of help just to stay in one piece. We really have to accept this challenge, just to fight to hang in there. It is not an easy thing. The rabbis have taught that a woman can be the greatest happiness for a man or the opposite. And when it is the opposite, it is worse than death. Broken Marriage - Try to Repair It or Go Further?

Paying Money for a GET. Is this extortion that invalidates the GE?

QUESTION:

I read with interest your blogpost:

Halacha of Marriage and Gittin: Question - Can a Beth Din Force a Husband to Give a GET?

I have a question of my own that I would like you to discuss on your blog if possible.

You mentioned that a GET arising from (media) pressure towards the husband is invalid and future children from that wife with a subsequent husband are mamzerim. Please can you clarify whether a GET that was achieved by money being paid to the husband is equally invalid as it is also a form of coercion? I would welcome such a halachic ruling as it would undermine extortion by husbands who seek to blackmail wives for their GET.

Many thanks,

ANSWER:

Paying the husband to give a GET is not extortion. The wife who wants a GET has caused the husband great suffering and has usually taken away his children to some degree that causes him much misery. Why should she not have to pay him something for this? The Torah does not give the woman a right to just leave the husband and take her children, unless the husband gives the GET willingly. If the husband wants to suffer all of the financial losses and emotional pain of the wife taking his children, and maybe his house, and his good name, that is one thing. But if he has no obligation to give a GET, and the wife pays him to give it, nobody extorted money from him and the GET is valid. This happens all of the time and nobody ever said it was extortion. But if the wife's side threatens the husband with loss of money, if he doesn't divorce, that is an invalid GET.

Destroyers of Marriage -Making Mamzerim

A while back I was talking to a major Rov in Israel about Shalom Bayis. I told him that I wanted to make a program for Shalom Bayis whereby neutral people would deal with the problems of the marriage. And I added, "And not the mother or the father of one of the spouses." The Rov forcefully nodded his assent . When there are problems in marriage, that itself is not the end; nor is it the beginning of the end. But when somebody gets involved to protect one side, and pours gasoline on the flames, the marriage and family can be destroyed.

There are people who deliberately try to break a marriage. This may sound fantastic, but I have seen it. Once somebody called me up with a complaint about his wife. It sounded like he was really aggravated, and it was hard to understand just what his wife had done to him. I asked him who he was talking to and he told me so and so. I asked, "Isn't that person just divorced?" He said, "yes." I said, "Get him out of your house." I never heard any more complaints.

Destroyers of Marriage -Making MamzerimThen we  have the rabbis and the dayanaim who want to help women and not men. This may sound fantastic. But New York State made a GET law that forces men to give a GET. Somebody spoke to me today and told me that he is frequently in Manhattan courtrooms because of his divorce situation. And he and other men are told clearly that the law requires them to give a GET or else. This law was passed by Orthodox rabbis and prominent Orthodox individuals who wanted to help ladies get a GET. And of course, they will say that they want to help men also. But a forced GET is a forced GET and it is invalid. The Vilna Gaon says clearly that nobody disagrees with this. So what is the source for the rabbis who made the New York State GET Law to force a husband to divorce his wife? The Chasam Sofer says clearly that if some rabbis permit coercion and some disagree, and the  husband was coerced by somebody who permits the coercion, the GET is invalid completely and the children born from it are mamzerim. But here we have a minority of rabbis and people who defy the greatest rabbis in the world, who have protested these coercions, and have said they don't recognize the GET of anyone who coerces husbands to divorce, and all they care about is their opinion that has no source at all in halacha. See Shulchan Aruch Even Hoezer 77 paragraphs 2 and 3. All of the opinions forbid coercion of a GET simply because the wife wants it. Coercion is permitted only when the husband marries a forbidden woman or some other very serious matter. But today, right and left, we have rabbis who invent halacha and produce mamzerim. In the next generation there will be two sets of Jews, and one set will not be able to marry the other ones.

A man who obeys the New York State Get Law and divorces his wife, under the pressure of the court, has issued in invalid GET. The children the wife has after her divorce with another man are born while she is still married to the first husband. They are probably mamzerim. And nobody talks about this.

A know of a group of prominent rabbis who banded together to force a husband to give a GET and there was no halachic base for the coercion. I publicized my opinion with the sources that these rabbis are making a mamzer factory and the mamzerim born are destroyed, who will marry them. Thus, these rabbis are guilty of child molesting.

Yes, these things are going on today, and the ones promoting and practicing them have fine position in the rabbinate and among Beth Dins. And there is not a shred of proof that their opinion produces a Kosher GET.

Thus, those who encourage broken marriages and those who encourage broken Gittin will have to answer a Beth Din in the Other World that agrees with the Shulchan Aruch. What will they do then?

Registering Women for Military Draft in America in 2016

Forcing Women into Combat to Satisfy Radical Liberals

By Rabbi David E. Eidensohn/845-578-1917/dddeid@verizon.net

As an Orthodox Jew with daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters, I am deeply concerned about the government’s efforts to draft women into the American army. It seems likely now that in 2016 all American women must register for the draft or face heavy fines and jail. This would force Orthodox Jewish girls to live among men in some strange country. My concerns are religious. But there are concerns mentioned by the military and by women and others in general. Do women really have the ability to fight men to the death on the battle field? The Supreme Court has ruled that unless women are declared fit for combat duty they cannot be drafted. They can join the army voluntarily, but not be forced to join it.

The following is a from a report released by the US Marines on October of 2014:

Interim CMR Special Report − October, 2014

US Marine Corps Research Findings: Where is the Case for Co-Ed Ground Combat?

Abstract

This is an Interim Special Report on the multi-phased research effort, initiated by Marine Corps Commandant General James Amos to gather quantitative data identifying the physical strength requirements of combat arms units. The goal is to find ways that women can be integrated into the combat arms without lowering standards. Researchers are finding this difficult (actually, impossible) to do, owing to naturally-occurring physical differences that make men significantly stronger…To date, twenty female officers attempted the extremely tough course but were not successful…Nothing produced by the research so far indicates that women can be physical equals and interchangeable with men in the infantry. Nor is there any evidence that women want to be treated like men in the combat arms. (emphasis mine) End quote.

            The future of America is on the line. Do we sacrifice our military for the radical women lobby? And since when do you force through a measure opposed by the military to satisfy politicians?  Why does congress not have truly open hearings to discuss this matter?

I remember the great fanfare that took place when a woman flew off an air craft carrier in the Pacific. The woman took off, and went right into the water. Her life and her very expensive plane are now gone. How many more women must die to satisfy the fantastic demands of radical feminists?

I recall a newspaper article about a reporter in Afghanistan with American troops. He noticed a boy soldier, someone very small. He approached the soldier and saw that it was a woman. Now, the enemy soldiers over there are very large and ferocious. Who in his right mind would send a “boy” sized soldier to fight such people? The fanatics.

Many women realize this. They need the army for their reasons, but feel they can serve without going into actual combat where women are not strong enough or vicious enough to perform properly. But the politicians ignore them.

It is thus that the inclusion of women in killing and physical tasks they are not equipped for is likely to happen. It will happen even though many women and others oppose this. Some oppose it because women are not natural killers and lack the strength for serious and prolonged fighting, killing and death. Others oppose it because the army if it accepts women in combat will have to lower its strength requirements, which is fatal in today’s world. We are talking about weakening the American military.

In Iraq a senior officer inspected the front line troops. He walked and walked and nobody intercepted him. Finally, he stepped right into the concealed place of some soldiers. They were a man and a woman and they were not busy with warfare. The new army in its fighting faze will be filled with unwanted pregnancies, rape and such things. The army will be damaged.

The great scandal is that congress has not called hearings on this. Everything is being carefully stage managed to produce the extreme wishes of the radical feminine lobby. And these women will die first. And if they are captured, the lucky ones will be beheaded.

Marital Intimacy - Obligations

Marital Intimacy is an obligation. One who marries another has an obligation to perform properly in marriage, and marital intimacy is one of the obligations. The ancient Persians were very fastidious people and would not be together without clothes. A Jew who wants this custom may be divorced, because it is wrong. The obligation is to give a complete marital pleasure.

Here we run into what we discussed previously that Torah marriage is not a partnership. A partnership means that I work because you work. A partnership usually doesn't work because everyone assumes that they work harder than the partner. Torah marriage is two people who marry to do kindness to the other. It is reciprocity. As we explain, and as I explain in my book, Secret of the Scale, marriage is a process of the husband doing kindness to the wife and the wife to the husband. Ideally, this should be a pure act of kindness and not because I want a good response. But obviously, this works better when both people are schooled in kindness and come from a good marital home where giving and loving made a paradise. But when people marry and don't have these attitudes, good luck.

In the book about the famous tsadik Rabbi Aharon Moshe Stern of Kaminets, we read many pages about kindness and marriage that brings us into a new world of tsadikim in marriage. We meet Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Aurebach who had a wonderful marriage for fifty years and when his wife died he refused to ask her forgiveness, although all Jews ask forgiveness then. He explained, "I never did anything to her that I have to ask her for forgiveness." People were amazed. Fifty years together and not one thing? But Rabbi Aharon Moshe Stern replied, "What is so special? If you get married, of course you have to do kindness with your wife, so how can you do something else?"

Rashi and the Zohar teach that the passage in the Torah "and he will make his wife rejoice" means marital intimacy. And it means that the husband has an obligation  to do kindness to his wife, not to please himself. Of course, if the husband pleases  his wife, and arouses her, he will surely benefit. But the idea is to do kindness, and the pleasures comes later.

We find in the parsha of Vayaro "And G-d appeared to him." It doesn't begin the reading by explaining who "him" was. It just says "him." Because Avrohom was sitting at the door of his tent looking for travelers he would invite for a meal and do kindness to them. A person who lives for kindness thinks only of another, not of himself. Therefore it says, "And G-d appeared to hiim" without mentioning his name, to show the pure intent of Avrohom, that he sat at the door of his tent looking for ways to perform kindness, and not thinking at all about himself. This is the kindness that makes a marriage like the above tsadikim had. Can you imagine the joy of such a house?

Thus an obligation of marriage is to do kindness to the other. Ideally, the marriage is an endless cycle of giving and the other one giving. Once you start taking, watch out.

Regarding martial intimacy, we mentioned Rashi and the Zohar that the husband must proceed out of kindness, to make his wife happy. And she too, must be a good Jewish wife and mother, and everyone knows that the Jewish mother is the epitome of kindness. How else could she raise many children who are a burden in their youth and need help when they grow older?

In fact, in terms of kindness, the woman may be greater than the male. Perhaps for this reason we find the gemora teaching that a Jewish woman easily gains the Other World and its paradise, but men may have to struggle. Kindness opens up all of the doors, and ego and selfishess open the other doors where nobody wants to go.

There is an obligation on the husband and wife to recognize that in all of their lives, they will only have marital intimacy with their spouse. Thus, they are obligated to adjust themselves to the needs of the other. Again, if a successful marriage is predicated on kindness, this is easier obtained. But if marriage is based on partnership and demands, this may not come so easily.

If for any reason the marital intimacy doesn't work well, the couple must get help. There are people who can help, and even though not everyone can find a cure from every doctor, if you persevere, you will find the right one for you and fix things.

There is something terrible about the obligation of marital intimacy. That is, each of us have desires, biological and emotional, that are stronger than we are. The wrong moment, the wrong person, can destroy us, as we mentioned earlier about the great tsadik who glanced at a woman and seized a heavy ladder that only ten men could lift and ran to sin with her. If we ignore the needs of our spouse, who knows if they will fall pray to their powerful desires? Unfortunately, even in the Torah world, there are many people who stray from the proper path, as Rambam and the gemora tell us, and as we mentioned in another post. Today there are terrible problems in this regard.

A rabbi told me this story. A young man who was becoming religious worked as a taxi driver. Once a lady got into his taxi and they ended up sinning. The young man said to her, "Listen, I am just becoming religious, and I did this for the pleasure. But you are a very respected woman whose husband is known as a great tsadik. How could you do this?" She replied, "My husband is a great tsadik. So he ignores me. A few times a year is not enough. So I do it like this." That husband is not a tsadik. He is a rosho. He has violated the obligation of "and make his wife rejoice" which applies to all men all of the time. And he has destroyed his wife because of his wickedness.

All of us will eventually come to the other world, and there are various entrances. Some of us will rap on the door we want and will be guided elsewhere. And a lot of these people will complain bitterly tht they intended to achieve holiness or some other good deed with their wickedness, and they will be asked to please go away to where they belong.

It is absolutely crucial to live knowing what is truly  a good deed and what is a sin. When we deny kindness to someone for some religious reason we are doing a very dangerous thing.

Marital Intimacy: Clarify for the Confused

Marital Intimacy is a very confusing thing. And because it is a very confusing thing, it must be clarified. Otherwise, the marriage is in danger. First, what is confusing about it.

Take the Shulchan Aruch itself. One place it says "whatever a man wants to do with his wife let him do it." And another place advises  him to be holy and removed from base deeds. This confusion, and the efforts to resolve them, have damaged or destroyed many families. Let us therefore clarify the confusion.

"Whatever a man wants to do with his wife let him do it" means when he wants to do it for biological and emotional reasons. Such a man who refuses his strong inclinations is in danger of flipping out and fulfilling his desires the wrong way, even with other women not his wife. Because this sounds like an extreme idea, because we are talking about Torah Jews who don't go around flipping out and sinning, we must prove this point.

The gemora says that on Yom Kippur a rabbi met Eliyohu HaNovi and asked him what HaShem feels about the Jewish people on such a day, when Jews are so holy and wonderful. Eliyohu HaNovi replied that in that city where many scholars lived, 300 virgins sinned with men on Yom Kippur. This is an incredible statement and perhaps nobody could believe it, so let us examine the whole gemora there, and we find understanding. It seems that in the time of the Holy Temple the service on Yom Kippur was led by the High Priest, usually an older man, and it involved much dealing with sacrifices and going here and there. Ideally, the High Priest would get a good night's sleep and have the strength to work a whole day. But the rabbis did not want the High Priest to sleep Yom Kippur night, let he while sleeping become tomay, impure, and be unable to perform the sacrifices on the morrow. But since everybody was asleep, how could the High Priest stay up all night? Therefore, the citizens of Jerusalem stayed up all night and walked around in the streets near the Temple where the High Priest was. They talked and walked, walked and talked, and the noise kept the High Priest up. Since everyone poured into the street, and there were no lights as we have today, here and there men singled out a woman to talk to her, and one thing led to another, so that 300 women sinned.

The rabbi asked Eliyohu HaNovi what HaShem said about that. He said, "HaShem says, 'at the door sin crouches.'" This means that the Satan is at the door. Just give it an opening, and wham.

We see that good intentions destroyed 300 virgins and their male counterparts. Why were people walking around all night? To keep the High Priest awake. And in subsequent generations, in Babylonia, where the Jews were exiled after the Destruction of the Temple, Jews continued this in the above Babylonian city, without a High Priest, in order to remind themselves of the glory of the Holy Temple. Intentions were good, but the results were disastrous. Thus, this story and others in the Talmud and Torah remind us of the great power of temptation. As Rambam says,  There is no city without sexual sin.

Thus, we have a choice. Be with our wives, or end up sinning. If  you have no biological or emotional drive to perform x and y, fine, be refined and holy. But if you have a genuine need to do something, you must do it, or you are in great danger.

Briefly, this clarifies the contradiction in the Shulchan Aruch and gemoras. Each person must know what they need, and they must fulfill their needs in their own home. To ignore one's strong desires is dangerous, and many have stumbled in this sin.

The Talmud tells of a beautiful Jewish woman who was redeemed from pirates and until things could be arranged for her she was put into a loft where the holiest rabbi in town lived. In order to make sure that even he did nothing wrong, the provided a ladder that had to be moved by ten strong men, knowing that the rabbi could not move it and thus could not sin with the woman. The rabbi was busy learning, and, inadvertently, he happened to glance up and see her. He was seized with desire. He grabbed the ladder, and realized that he was about to commit a terrible sin, and he could not stop. He therefore cried out, "Fire! Fire!" Everyone came running to save the rabbi, and they saw him on the ladder. So, they said. This is a rabbi. He has more lust than anyone else. The other rabbis complained to this rabbi that he had made a disgrace of rabbis. But he said that he would to anything to avoid such a terrible sin, and that is all that he could do.

In another post, we will go into more details, but for now we only want to establish that everyone must know what their drives are and satisfy them. In marriage, the husband must satisfy the wife and wife the husband. Anyone, husband or wife who is not satisfied, may do the worst sin. We know that throughout our history, great and holy people who were smitten with desire sinned. So, don't trust in yourself. Do what the gemora and Shulchan Aruch says: If you have a strong drive, satisfy it. And satisfy your spouse. If you have no special drive and are satisfied with ordinary intimacy, fine. In that case, if you seek out thrills you may be going in the wrong direction.

Question - Can a Beth Din Force a Husband to Give a GET?

Question: Can a Beth Din Force a Husband to Give a GET?

Answer: A Beth Din has no power to invent an obligation to coerce a husband. However, if the husband is obligated by the Torah to give a GET or be coerced, it is a mitsvah upon a Beth Din to force the husband to divorce. However, the husband who are to be coerced to divorce are very few, such as a husband who marries a woman forbidden to him. Furthermore, a husband who cannot function in marriage is required by the Talmud to give a divorce. But if he refuses, the only coercion permitted is to tell him that he must divorce and if he refuses he will be considered wicked. But if somebody marries a woman forbidden to him Beth Din can beat him until he gives the GET and says, "I want it."

Therefore, the vast majority of divorces are when a wife tires of her husband for whatever reason, and demands a GET. In such a case, Beth Din is forbidden to coerce a GET. Furthermore, Posek HaDor Rav Elyashev zt"l ruled that such a husband has no obligation, no mitsvah, to give a GET in the first place. We discussed some of this elsewhere on this blog, about the rights of the husband.

The Chazon Ish in his work on Even Hoezer Gittin 99:2 writes, "When Beth Din demands that a husband give a GET but did not beat him with sticks, and thus obligated him against the ruling of the Torah [that does not require a coercion] does this constitute a forced GET [that is invalid]?"

The Chazon Ish writes that if a Beth Din demands a GET when the Torah or Shulchan Aruch does not demand a GET even if it has to be forced, then the GET given by the husband is invalid, for two reasons.
One reason is because the Beth Din is being forced by Beth Din, and the force of Beth Din, even the force of a mitsvah, invalidates the GET. That is, it is a mitsvah to obey rabbonim. But the GET must be given without any coercion. If the husband gives the GET because the mitsvah to obey rabbis coerces him, the GET is invalid.

Secondly, the GET is invalid because if the husband would have known that the Beth Din erred in demanding a GET, he never would have given it. He gave it because he does not know that Beth Din erred. Thus, the GET is gives is given by mistaken, and is invalid.

This is a very important point. Beth Din and Rabbonim cannot invent halochose. When the Shulchan Aruch clearly states that we do not coerce a GET and we do not pressure the husband to divorce, and rabbis and Beth Din say that husband must give a GET and coerce him with their ruling, this is a mistaken Beth Din and the GET is invalid according to the Chazon Ish.

I have spoken to prominent rabbis who have ruled about forcing husbands to divorce and I asked them their sources. It is obvious that the source was that they wanted a GET for the woman, but they had no source in the Shulchan Aruch for this, and there are plenty of sources tht say the opposite, such as the above Chazon Ish. This is a tragedy going on now that will produce in the next few years many mamzerim, HaShem Yerachem. The Gedolei HaDor for the past two generations have demanded that rabbis cease and desist with their inventions, and have demanded that coercing a GET must have the approval of gedolei Hador, but the rabbis who force divorces continue on their merry way. The children from their work will be considered mamzerim or possible mamzerim by all those who follow the Shulchan Aruch and the Gedolim. 

Question - Wife went to secular court and not Beth Din

1. QUESTION:

   1. November 9, 2014 at 2:15 PM

   Dear Rabbi.
   
   My ex-wife & I spoke about a possible divorce prior of my ex-wife leaving the marital home. I clearly told her that in the event of a divorce I would go to a Bais-Din first, and I object to go to a secular family court, as we are both orthodox observant Jews. When my ex-wife left the marital home (with the children), she immediately went to secular Family Court, ignoring my objection. When I brought my objection to her Rabbi, he also ignored my objection. Prior to my ex-wife going to a secular Family Court I never got a Hazmanh from a Bais Din, nor was any permission to go to a secular family court granted. After 6 month my ex-wife decided to go to a Bais Din after failing to force a ‘Get’ in the secular Family Court. This Bais Din, which was managed by her own Rabbi, knew about her going to a secular Family Court, and knew about my objection. At that point I already lost terribly as a Pro-Se litigant due to lack of financial ability to be represented by an attorney. My questions are as follows:
   
   1. Do I have an obligation NOW to respond to this Bais Din?
   2. Doesn’t Jewish Law forbid going to a Secular Family Court?
   3. Can my ex-wife break a fundamental Jewish Law of ‘Mesiara’ and ‘Erchaoth’ and still demand a ‘Get’ from a Bais Din?
   4. Doesn’t it consider a betrayal for the Torah, as she really didn’t ‘need’ the Bais Din thus far???
   5. Do I have any obligation to go to a Bais Din while my ex-wife already litigated (and won) all financial & children custody issues at the secular Family Court?
   6. Her Bais Din wrote a ‘Siruv’ (Jewish Contempt of the Court) on me. Is this ‘Siruv’ valid?
   7. Is this ‘Bais Din’ allowed to issue a siruv on me based on the information above mentioned?
   
   Thank you for your time.

   RESPONSE
2. 
   
3. 
   
4. I don't know who you are and I don't know anything about your case other than what you said. I therefore cannot assume that I know what actually happened. I can, however, respond to you regarding your questions of Jewish law, how the Shulchan Aruch would look at things, but whether or not this applies to anyone, especially this case, is not something I know enough to discuss. And listening to one side of a dispute does not convey the whole story and one may not pasken on that basis. In the event that you want me to be involved in your personal case, discuss the matter with your wife, and if I can talk to you and her, I can suggest a plan that may satisfy both sides. But for now I am not talking to you to respond to how you should behave in this particular case that I know nothing about. I am merely using these questions as they came to me to bring out basic procedures in Torah law.
5. Let us take your questions now:
6. 1. Do I have an obligation NOW to respond to this Bais Din?
7. I don't know anything about your particular Beth Din. It seems you don't want to appear before it and they wrote a Siruv against you. There is a general mistake made by people in your circumstances. They see that the wife does something wrong, to go to civil court and not a Beth Din, and they see that rabbis are going after you, not after her, and you feel that the rabbis are wicked and you don't want to respond to them. This is a mistake. When you are given a claim by somebody, good people or bad people, by a Beth Din you respect or one that you do not, you cannot ignore it. You cannot refuse to enter into discussions to deal with the claimant. Now, technically, in certain cases, you may find an excuse to consider them out of the pale of Torah, and maybe you are right that they are like Reform rabbis, but still, nobody wants to leave things hanging like that, and living with a Siruv that can destroy you.

Therefore, when a claimant, even a wicked one, has a claim against you, you must respond. In this case, the Shulchan Aruch has two opinions whether the Beth Din itself would consider the wife's claims, because she sinned by going to secular court. But while it is true that Ramo rules this way, and his opinion is usually decisive, in this case the Tumim who was a mighty genius and authority, completely disagrees with the Ramo, at least in some circumstances. So, if a Beth Din refuses to get involved, that is the Beth Din's business. But for you to deny the claimant an opportunity to deal with her claims is not smart, will result in a siruv, as it already has, and denies you the opportunity to turn the tables on her.

What you should have done is to respond to the Beth Din's demand that you have a Din Torah by agreeing to the judgment. But you can refuse to go to the Beth Din of the claimant. You can say that you will respond to the claimant in a different Beth Din. Or, you can respond that as long as she is in secular court, or as long as she refuses to relinquish all of her gains in secular court, you refuse to go to Beth Din. Now, the Beth Din may refuse you on some of these points. But you are not a plain refuser. You are a refuser with a reason. That makes a difference. 

Now, if after all of this, the Beth Din comes after you, you respond to them that you want it in writing, that even though she won her claims against you in secular court, and only comes to Beth Din to finish you off by asking for a GET, that you must accept their demands. Say also, that even when the Beth Din reiterates its demand that  you come to them for the Din Torah, you want another Beth Din. There are Beth Dins that are on the side of the Shulchan Aruch, even in such cases. At that point, the Beth Din must accept your decision if you have a Beth DIn that will back you. Rabbi Knoefler in Lakewood might be a good Beth Din for you. Once you have a Beth Din to fight for you, you are strong, and she is in trouble. The first  Beth Din is also in trouble.

If your wife refuses the Beth Din that you chose, you enter the phase of zabla, meaning, each of you pick out one dayan. You will pick a Dayan and she will pick a dayan. Then begins the selection of the third Dayan, which is made by the two selected Dayanim. Hopefully, they will agree on a third dayan and they will settle all of the issues.

That is the basic answer for  your questions. But let us finish off the other questions.

1. 2. Doesn’t Jewish Law forbid going to a Secular Family Court? 
2. Yes.
3. 3. Can my ex-wife break a fundamental Jewish Law of ‘Mesiara’ and ‘Erchaoth’ and still demand a ‘Get’ from a Bais Din? 
4. That is up to the Beth Din to decide. If they err, they err as a Beth Din, and it won't help you to tell them that. But yes, this could possibly be an error.
   4. Doesn’t it consider a betrayal for the Torah, as she really didn’t ‘need’ the Bais Din thus far???
5. Maybe you are right. But it doesn't change matters. You must respond and mount your claims or get squashed.
6. 
   5. Do I have any obligation to go to a Bais Din while my ex-wife already litigated (and won) all financial & children custody issues at the secular Family Court?
7. What about the children? You must win them back in a Beth Din. You must reverse the civil court's ruling against you. The Beth Din properly constituted is your great strength.
8. 
   6. Her Bais Din wrote a ‘Siruv’ (Jewish Contempt of the Court) on me. Is this ‘Siruv’ valid?
9. It doesn't matter if we don't discuss this issue. You must get to a Beth Din for your sake, for the sake of the children, but maybe not the Beth Din that you don't like, as we explained earlier.
   7. Is this ‘Bais Din’ allowed to issue a siruv on me based on the information above mentioned?
10. I can't talk about your actual case. I explained already the basic parameters in all of this, and the bottom line is that you need a Beth Din that  you trust and  you can get one with Zabla, when each side selects one dayan and the two select one they both agree to. If she refuses to accept any Dayan that your selection wants, that is another question.
11. 
    
12. Went to Secular Court Not Beth Din

Interested in a Divorced Lady, How to Proceed

Question:

Dear Rabbi Eidensohn,

I'm a single Shomer Shabbos Jewish man. I recently met a divorced Jewish lady whom I'm interested in.

I'd like to determine whether the lady I met received a kosher GET, without damaging my relationship with the lady.
What do you suggest I do to investigate the GET? At which point in the relationship should I investigate the GET?

Thanks for your advice. 

Answer

This is an extremely important question. It is and has always been important. But in earlier generations, every city had its own Beth Din of very prominent rabbis and people relied upon their Gittin. But today we have private people springing up all over the place, and they call themselves a Beth Din and give Gittin. Especially today, when we have no great Gadol like Reb Moshe who can call out people who don't deserve to give Gittin, it is very difficult to know who to trust.

The first question is who gave the GET. Does the person know the laws of Gittin? Who trained him to be a GET producer? In some cities, there are prominent rabbis who will attack anyone who starts up with Gittin who should not do that. But in many cities nobody controls things, and all kinds of people give Gittin. We had a case not longer ago when an FBI agent went to the largest Beth Din in America and received a document from them that a husband, who didn't exist, was being summoned and pressured to give a GET. That Beth Din is still busy giving Gittin, despite the fact that a major player in that rabbinic organization is sitting in jail for hideous sins. So today, who knows what a Beth Din does?

Thus, to marry someone with a GET we have to know some things:

One, we want to know the name of the rabbi who gave the GET. We have to contact him or have somebody contact him who can clarify his situation. If he lives and works in a city, usually there are people there who know him and his qualifications. Where did he learn? Who gave him semicha? Who else received a divorce from hiim?

Any papers issued by that rabbi or Beth Din should be examined.

The husband or ex-husband of the divorcee should be contacted. If he claims that he was coerced into giving the GET or has other nasty things to say, this must be clarified, because these things do happen today.

It might be important to find out if the marriage of the divorced woman was a true Torah marriage or maybe it was Reform marriage or something similar so that the divorce was not so necessary.

It is not fair to date a  divorced woman and get her interested in you and then you investigate her GET and find there is a problem. You should first  ask about the GET, find out the divorcing rabbi, and perhaps a few people who know about her and her divorce, and get to the facts.

Wife Demands GET, Give it to Her or What?

A wife demands a GET. Does the husband have to give it to her? Should the husband give it to her? Can the husband demand an effort to save the marriage, such as marriage counseling? Or should he just give it to her and let her take the children?

We have to answer these questions from two perspectives. One, is halacha. What does the Torah command the husband when his wife demands a GET? And secondly, we must know something else. Does the wife have a right to break the marriage and take the children from the husband?

The reason we have to ask the second question before we answer the first question is as follows. I have spoken to many people who are Torah Jews and learned, and when they feel that the wife has a right to divorce her husband, they insist on the Torah agreeing with them, even after I show them that the Torah does not agree with them. It doesn't help with some people to prove the Torah's opinion as long as they are sure that morally the wife has a right to leave. Therefore, we cannot just proclaim the Torah position. We must think carefully into a divorce, and its implications. Then we will think about the moral issues. And when we see the moral issues explored properly, we will turn to the halacha.

I have worked for years with broken marriages and women demanding a GET. A GET destroys. Husbands are broken, children take medication, families are devastated, hate grows and festers. Yes, a divorce is a disaster, for the husband, the wife, the children and the family.

When we realize this, we can better  understand the Torah position that the wife, in the vast majority of cases, cannot force her husband to give a GET, and if she does coerce the GET, it is invalid.

 Let us take a regular marriage. Two people from fine Torah homes with excellent background in Yeshiva and Bais Yaacov marry. They have a few children. Then, the wife has had enough and demands a GET. Does she have a right to do this? Does the husband have a right to refuse?

For the husband, a divorce is a life-changing disaster. Let us say he married at twenty five and now he is thirty five. By the time the divorce is completed and he is able to get back into thoughts of remarrying, years may go by. To start a new marriage at the age of forty or about that is a daunting proposition. The new wife would be a person around this age, possibly with children from a previous marriage. And if the husband remarries such a woman and has a house with her children, and hopefully, new children from him and his new wife, these children will have to get along with the husband's older children from his previous wife. Thus, three types of children will have to share one house. That may not be a problem. But if it is a problem, it is a problem. If the new wife stands up for her children, and the husband stands up for his children, you are looking at a very messy marriage.

Another problem is that the husband loses a large part of his income to support his children, now dominated by the wife. The children may visit here and there, but the wife, now divorced, has the major say and the major time with the children. The husband thus, in order to honor his wife's demand for a GET, must lose a large sum of money to support his children that he doesn't see very often, and he sees his children only here and there. And because the wife sees the children much more than the husband, and she often doesn't like the husband, the children may sense this and begin to dislike the father. Thus, the father can have the ultimate pain of his children turning against him. There are fathers who suffer terribly when their children refuse to answer their letters, or have anything to do with them. A child makes a simcha and there is an issue if the father should attend.

And today there is a legion of supporters of women who come to ladies divorcing or who want divorce, and teach them how to torture the husband. Step one is for a wife to make up lies about her husband that he beats he or molests the children. Next the wife is taught to get an order of protection based on her lies. Once that is done, if a father comes to his child's public event, he can be arrested and put in jail. A prominent therapist told me of the father who insisted on coming to all of his child's events, and was thus jailed for 56 times until the judge finally realized that the wife was making trouble where it didn't belong.

There was a case not long ago where a wife called the police and said that her daughter was bleeding and blamed the husband. The police experts in this field rushed over and discovered that the whole thing was a complete lie. Despite this, the child remained with the mother, and the secular court, the rabbis and the heads of the community continued to make war with the husband to destroy his name. All of these things are real and happen all of the time. And a husband knows it. He knows that his only protection is not giving a GET. Once the wife has the GET, she can completely destroy the husband's relationships with the children, and constantly harass the husband with claims of criminal activity. The husband must spend a fortune to defend himself, and his life becomes a hideous horror.

We now turn now to the halacha, which clearly says that in the vast majority of cases a wife cannot force a GET from her husband, and that it is forbidden to pressure him to do it. We can do so only after we realize just what is happening when we force a husband to divorce. A divorce can mean that his life is destroyed. As he ages, and loses strength, and seeks another mate, he is a cripple, financially, emotionally, and family wise.

All of those who encourage divorce and the destruction of a husband because a wife won't go to therapy to improve the marriage will have to answer for this in another world.

A couple once came to the Chofetz Chaim and he advised them to divorce. Somebody asked him, would it not be better to reconcile? The Chofetz Chaim answered, "According to you, why does the Torah permit divorce if we must always reconcile?" Yes, there are cases where the Torah permits divorce. But the mass divorcing in America today is surely not in the spirit of the Torah. The destruction of children, of husbands, of wives, of families, is so hideous that we cannot understand why so many people encourage it.

I had a case where a woman called the police on her husband and got  him put in jail. I asked her if she wanted a divorce, and she said that she did not want a divorce. I asked her, if so, why did she put her husband in jail? She said that the ladies told her to do it. Now, that sounds stupid. But I told it to a senior therapist and he agreed that in his experience this is not a rare occurence.

This is Torah? HaShem Yerachem.

Yes, sometimes there must be a divorce. But if today, you think you are next, contact me, because there may be another side to this story.

Shalom Bayis - Stop Broken Marriages

Shalom Bayis is one of the pillars of life, for the husband and wife, for the children, for the family, and for the community. When I was younger I never heard of anyone divorcing. In high school I heard of an English teacher who was not religious and whose husband was caught in a bad scandal and they divorced. But today we have people from the finest Torah families with many children who fight with hate and fury in and out of Beth Din and secular court, and hate takes over.

Things are so bad today that some children from the finest Torah families simply refuse to consider shidduchim. I have heard from reliable people that in Torah communities there are groups of people who celebrate when somebody decides to have a divorce. Some people seek divorce, and some people simply ignore their broken marriage and take up with foreign women.

A rabbi was asked what to do by a husband who was not with his wife for over a decade but did not want to divorce so as not to harm the prospects of his children in shidduchim. The rabbi had nothing to say, and the man continued, "My friend took up with a prostitute and she blackmailed him. So I have figured out that if I can't live like this, I will have to find a Torah woman who is married who will not blackmail me. Rabbi, please help me."

And things will be worse if we don't find the key to Shalom Bayis. There are so many singles out there that one shul in Brookllyn is mostly older men who never married. What will be in the next generation?

I spoke to somebody who is a senior therapist and for decades has worked with very hard cases in broken marriages. He told me he can help everyone and has done so for over thirty years. He ridiculed the idea that so many people have today that just because there is a problem in the marriage divorce is the solution. I heard also from other people who work in general therapy that most broken marriages could be saved. I once saved a marriage at their divorce. I don't know if the Beth Din was happy to lose its fee, but I am sure they were pleased that Shalom was made in their Beth Din.

 If things keep up like this, we will just see things sinking lower and lower. There is now is a war among rabbis. Some say that a woman who wants a divorce in a broken marriage must be given one even if we have to coerce the husband. And other rabbis, the senior ones who quote the Shulchan Aruch and Poskim say that in most cases, to force a husband to give a GET makes an invalid GET and the children born from the GET are mamzerim. In the coming generation, the Orthodox community will be divided by the mamzer issue. Those who follow the lenient rabbis will have children that the disciples of the senior rabbis will consider as possible mamzerim. In fact, we are close coming to a general suspicion that a GET given by a Beth Din that is not known to be from the few that are completely in line with the poskim, will not be recognized. HaShem Yerachem.

I suggested making today a Shalom Bayis Beth Din, so that people, prior to marriage, enter an educational program on how to behave in marriage. Upon marriage, the Beth Din handles any problems. And if the couple wants to, they can sign up for Beth Din to fine anyone who is disturbing the marriage. This would promote Shalom Bayis and if someone was obnoxious the Beth Din could fine them until they gave up and divorced. But the Beth Din will never mention the word divorce. It is there only to promote and protect the marriage, not to end it. Gedolei HaDor have told me that this is an excellent idea. Even though today there is no widely accepted prenuptial, this is accepted by everyone, because nobody forces a GET. The fineis only  to sustain the marriage.

What is wrong? Why do people from the best Torah families and the best Yeshivas and Bais Yaacovs tear their children and their families apart with the hate of a broken marriage? What is so horrible that the only solution is a mighty war?

Gedolim from this and the past generation have pointed the blame at the Yeshiva system. We have to look into this some more and see what can be done to improve the Yeshiva experiences, and we do want to talk about that on this blog. But here we mention it quickly as it deserves its own post.

Let us get to the point somewhat by saying that marriage exists in two phases that the experts call "in the bedroom and outside of the bedroom." A senior therapist told me that everything that happens in the bedroom happens or doesn't happen because of what happens or doesn't happen "outside of the bedroom." He told me that every family needs a "date" between husband and wife once a week. The husband can take his wife out somewhere to have some time together, or they can play some kind of game together. Somebody I told this to tried and and he said that  it works.

Rambam tells us that a husband must honor his wife more than he honors himself, meaning he spends more on her than he spends on himself. Rambam says that the wife must respect the husband as if he was a great officer who deserves obedience. Obviously, we are not talking about a partnership. We are talking about two people who sacrifce all for the other one. Partnerships don't work, and if they do, they often eventually break down. If a wife helps in the marriage because she expects the husband to do his share, that is the end of the marriage. If she gives all and the husband gives all, this is self-abnegation. I wrote a book about this sold on Amazon called "Secret of the Scale". The ancient scales were two plates help by strings. When something was put in one plate it went down and the other plate rose. But both plates never rose or declined simultaneously. Marriage is one person giving, or going down, and the other person being raised. The raised person then  reciprocates by going down and raising the other person.

The Torah commands the husband "and he shall make his wife rejoice." Rashi and Zohar teach, "He makes her happy, not himself." That is, the husband comes to the wife to make her happy and when she is aroused, of course, he will be happy. But if he comes to use her out to please himself, she may just hate him.

A Jew once did something so terrible that nobody could figure out how a Jew could do something so awful. A senior rabbi was asked and he replied "I don't know how a Jew could so such an evil thing. But one thing I do know. He did it leshaim shomayim." That is, he sinned because he felt he was doing a good deed.

A person who knows that stealing is forbidden may, in desperate times, do some stealing. But he knows it is wrong and he knows that he has to minimize his sin. But when somebody convinces himself that it is a mitsvah to steal, where does it end?

If a husband makes  his wife and children suffer because he wants to learn, and this ends up in a divorce, what kind of Torah is that? It is Torah built by evil. There were and there are families that are happy to suffer because they love Torah so much that the suffering is ignored. This is how the Jews in old Jerusalem lived. And this is how people lived when I learned in Lakewood under Reb Aharon zt'l. But toda when there are husbands who want to get paid up front so they can learn with comfort and everyone has to suffer for it, what kind of Torah is that?

Today, we have people going around encouraging men and women to divorce. They think they are doing a good deed. But the children and the family and broken spouses know that this is a terrible crime and sin.

It is time for people to go around and encourage marriage. We have little time left.

A Forced GET is Usually Invalid

A Forced GET is Usually Invalid

by Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

A GET must be given by the husband willingly. If he is forced to give the GET, in nearly all conventional divorce cases, the GET is invalid. Exceptions are rare such as when a husband marries a woman he is forbidden to marry. In such a case Beth Din can force him to give a GET, even with a beating.

A husband who is not able to perform in marriage must give a GET according to the Talmud. But the Shulchan Aruch says that we don't beat him, nor can we do any serious kind of coercion. He may be told that he is wicked for not obeying the Talmud, but  physical and fiscal pressure are forbidden.

Maharshal says that a husband who does great sins and is removed from Judaism cannot be forced to give a GET. However, the wife may leave his house and live with her family or alone.

If a husband is not one of the rare cases when a GET may be coerced from him, but he was forced, the GET is invalid. If the wife remarries with such an invalid GET, and has children, she is a sinner for living with a man while she is still married to her first husband, and her children are mamzerim. Nobody should ever call a child a mamzer or even say he is a mamzer until the matter has been checked out by a Torah authority who knows the laws of Gittin and has thoroughly investigated the case.

The Chasam Sofer says that when rabbis disagree if a husband should be coerced and the rabbis who permit coercion go ahead with it, the GET is invalid by Torah standards, meaning the children born from the woman in her new marriage are mamzerim diorayso. (Chasam Sofer Teshuvose I:28; and teshuva 116)

The gedolim in Israel have issued a pesak that no coercion should be done without their approval. Any Beth Din that coerces in ways contrary to the Shulchan Aruch EH 77:2 and 3 lose Chezkas Beis Din and we don't recognize their Gittin. Any woman divorced in such a Beth Din must have a new GET from an accepted Beth Din. The children born from such a Beth Din's GET must be investigated by an accepted Beth Din to see  if their is some way to save them from mamzeruth.

QUESTIONS - BETH DIN OR SECULAR COURT FORCES GET

A GET COECED BY A BETH DIN OR SECULAR COURT

1) Is a ‘Get’ considered valid if it was given under the coercion/influence/pressure of a secular family court Judge?

Answer - No. However, without knowing all of the particulars, we cannot issue a ruling about any particular situation. In general, however, a coerced GET is invalid unless in extremely rare circumstances. The common battles between husband and wife that cause somebody to pressure the husband to give a GET are almost universally wrong and may make mamzerim if the wife receives such a GET and remarries and has children. See EH  77 paragraphs 2 and 3.

2) Can a Bais Din (Rabbinical Court)  force a ‘Get’ (Jewish Divorce)?

Answer - Only rarely. The Chazon Ish says that any Beth Din that orders a husband to give his wife a GET when the Torah does not require a GET to be forced on the husband, which is true in nearly all instances of marital dispute, that such a GET is invalid and worthless. Children born from it are mamzerim. See Chazon Ish EH Gittin 99.

3) If a Beth Din bends halacha such as by forcing a GET when a GET should not be forced, is it still recognized as a Beth Din?
Answer: If the complaining Beth Din is known to force Gittin and do other illegal things, it is not recognized as a Beth Din. If it makes a GET we don't recognize it and the wife needs another GET from a kosher Beth Din. But the defendant still must cooperate with the claimant to organize a kosher Beth Din. Heard from Posek HaDor Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashev zt"l and taught by present day Gedolei HaDor in Israel in Sefer Mishpotei Yisroel.

5) What can a person who is being pressured to give a GET do?
Answer - contact me at dddeid@verizon.net.