Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

תמוז תשע“ב

PUBLIC NOTICE

REGARDING GITTIN, COERCION and MAMZERUTH

The Posek HaDor Reb Yosef Shalom Elyashev shlit”a encouraged me to speak out about the invalid Gittin being made in the United States because of coerced Gittin.

He was concerned about  Rabbis who pressure the husbands to force a GET and make a GET MEUSO, an invalid forced GET. He told me that any Bais Din that makes changes in accepted Gittin halacha to help Agunoth, that he removes from it the Chezkas Bais Din. There are now hundreds of woman who have suspicious divorces. If they remarry they may be doing one of the worst aveiros and  their children may be mamzerim.

To become familiar with this issue, we must first learn the following. There are three basic categories regarding coercion in a GET with the first two categories being rare.

1. When the Talmud says that someone must divorce, and if the husband refuses than we should coerce him. In this instance we may coerce even with sticks. see EH 154:21

2. If the Talmud says the husband must divorce, but does not specify coercion, the husband may not be physically forced Remo EH 154:21. However  the Remo adds that such a person may be coerced with passive ostracizing as not doing business with him etc. if he can go to another city and escape it. Shach (end of Gevuras Anoshim) and Chazon Ish (EH 108:12)  forbid this ostracizing.

3. This third category of coercion is the common one. A woman declared that her husband is repulsive to her and she cannot be with him in marriage. No coercion at all is permitted to force him to divorce. EH 77:3 Shulchan Aruch, Remo, Bais Yosef  and Gra’h. Also see Rashba VII:414.

Humiliating the husband especially  in public is forbidden both in the second and third categories and is only permitted in the first category.  See Rashba VII:414, Radvaz IV:118, Bais Yosef EH 154, Chazon Ish EH 108:12.

The “modern” Orthodox have a terrible problem

with broken marriages and “Agunoth.”                                                                                                                            

They invented “solutions” by twisting the Torah. Rabbi Herschel Schachter from Yeshiva University is the rabbi of ORA. ORA is an organization that frees wives from their husbands. Rabbi Schachter has declared publicly many times that any woman who leaves her husband is an Agunah and  if the husband refuses to divorce her he should be forced, including with a baseball bat. He declares, “Coerce him until he dies.” This is a clear violation of conventional halacha. Such a GET is invalid and children born from it are mamzerim. (There are many videos and audio tapes of his talks.)

ORA sponsors public demonstrations against the husband and his family, deprives him of his livelihood, and other coercions. A child born from a mother freed from marriage by Rabbi Schachter and ORA may well be a mamzer.

ORA claims to have forced 170 men to divorce their wives. “ORA Is A Gilui Arayos Factory; A Mamzer Factory.”

Some “progressives” go further and permit a divorce without a GET, claiming that the marriage was invalid for some ridiculous reason.

There are now many children from women who remarried without a kosher GET. We must be very careful when marrying the child of a divorced woman to check with senior Gittin experts if the GET was indeed kosher.

What kind of Torah Jew would join with ORA, the mamzer factory, to force a GET? And yet in the Torah world of today, there are some leading Roshei Yeshivos and Rabbonim who are working together with  ORA and doing questionable things to pressure a husband to give a GET.

If we do not take action immediately, the next generation will be divided between those we may marry and mamzerim.

To comment, to get involved or for questions please call me at 845-578-1917.

Dovid E. Eidensohn

Talmid HaGedolim Reb Aharon Kotler Zt”l, Reb Moshe Feinstein Zt”l,

Reb Yaacov Kaminetsky Zt”l and the Cabala Jerusalem Genius Reb Shmuel Toledano Zt”l