Dear Telz Angel
I am three years into my separation from my husband, and still no get. His ruv told him that he should not give me a get until we resolve the legal matters in our civil divorce. The court system is clogged and we can’t even get a court date. ?So I fully expect to be a chained woman for another year. I asked my Rabbi if he could help, but he explained to me that some beis dins suggest doing the civil divorce first so that the get is the last part of the process. ?This ensures that the man has full power over this horrible process.
BTW, ?my soon to be ex is on Frumster, and I know that he’s dating single frum women in the community.?My ruv does not allow me to date, even casually since there is nothing worse than eyshes–ish, and I should not do anything that might look like it could lead to mixed dancing. My son would be kicked out of his yeshiva day school if anyone saw me on a date.
Chassi.
Dear Chassi
So your ?soon to be ex- (“2bx”) husband figured out how to get permission to make you an agunah. All he has to do is nothing, and allow the sluggish court system to delay your proceedings and he does not have to give you a get. You can’t date, but he can. He has no reason to opt for mediation, since time is on his side — until he decides if he wants to get married. Isn’t being a frum woman great?
Why does your husband, a married frum man, think it’s ok to date single women in the frum community? BTW, he’s violating the terms of service at Frumster.
Telz
Dear Telz
I was upset to learn that my soon 2bx husband is dating frum singles. So I asked my ruv is that was OK. It’s?embarrassing?for me. He said there’s nothing I can do about it. He can date, I can’t.
Cassy.
Dear Cassy
I see from your name that you are changing your identity already. ?No more Chassi? Anyway it’s OK for your 2bx husband to?embarrass?you. Rabbis now a days have decided that halacha says nothing about being mentchlich. We are only focused on technicalities and kashrut?certifications. Except of course for the kiruv guys, who only care about preventing profanity on websites.
But I wonder why your community ruv thinks it is OK for the other single women in your community to date you married husband. Whereas your feelings are clearly?irrelevant, what about the feelings of other women in the community? Should they be going to frumster to meet married men?
Telz
Dear Telz
The rabbis don’t care about the other women’s feelings in our community. They don’t mind if the singles in the community date married/separated men. And they don’t mind if I don’t get a get for another year or two.
Chrissy
Dear Chrissy/Cassy/Chassi
I’m sorry to learn that the rabbis in your community don’t understand how to use their power to help the victims.
Telz
Dear Telz
Thanks for listening. Knowing that some people in the frum community care about these issues and are?appalled?at the mistreatment I’m getting is giving some hope to hang on and see this though.
Chassi.
Find married frum men who will gladly date your single daughters without telling them they are still married on 4Torah.com
Photo credit:?http://www.flickr.com/photos/modashell/3573945598/
Well, he’s not violating the one-sided Jewish adultery law.
Nevertheless, do you know what his frumster name is? I’m on the site and could alert them.
well, I don’t believe it’s halachically permissible. The rabbi could tell the woman that she can’t do anything about it just like any married woman can’t do anything about a cheating husband. But by no means it’s halachically OK. He is misleading these single woman and his behavior can lead to many other serious transgressions.
IMHO she should be happy that he is already dating, the sooner he will find some eligible lady the sooner she will get a get. The most important is that they don’t live together already and she doesn’t have to see him constantly.
Oh, he could go for the heter meah rabbanim and remarry without ever giving his first wife a get. Sad but true, it happens.
Theoretically yes, but in the reality it’s not that easy unless he has a lot of money. In any case after he obtains heter she has get waiting for her by the Beis Din so then she is not an agunah
On a satire site, you think this is true? Nah, this is probably fiction. Stuff like this could never happen.
In what respect it is true? I don’t care if it’s a real story or just a fiction. If you ask me if it’s possible I will tell you that I know at least one frum guy from chassidishe home that could do it. If you ask me whether any rov would give him permission – for sure they wouldn’t, but if the wife would come to complain, I’m pretty sure she could get the answer that nobody can do anything about it, because what exactly they can do? Whip him? In public?
BTW on Frumster there are plenty of guys that are full of it. This site is not reliable and doesn’t have a good background check. Everybody knows that. 🙂
The big question you asked: what can the rabbis do about it? Beis din has power, as they use it to manipulate the social order today. They just do it in without proper balance. The woman can’t really say she’s an agunah, ‘cuz the man’s actions are sanctioned by his ruv and the beis din. They are creating this situation in the first place.
What can they do? according to the gemara in Gittin, a lot. They could even go so far as to say that beis din annuls the marriage if the husband behaves in a way that they don’t like. Imagine that as a way to deal with cheating, abusive, or recalcitrant husbands. They can do lots of other things too. They chose to let this slide. Shame on us for allowing our beis dins to operate this way.
As for the backstory, it’s the reverse actually. A single female friend of mine picked up a guy on Frumster only to learn that he was still married. She wondered how this could be, and what the soon 2bx wife must think about this. The story wrote itself out, but I chose to take the wife’s perspective instead of the girl’s perspective. I could have written the same fiction from the perspective of the girl who goes to frumster to pick up married men, since they are always good for “benefits” and don’t stick around too long afterwards.
Telz: give me a break. You learned in yeshiva; you know beis din can’t do that.
And you should know that advocating for non-solutions takes away from an emphasis on advocating for solutions.
Dan,
> They could even go so far as to say that beis din
> annuls the marriage if the husband behaves in a
> way that they don’t like.
This is a halachic fact. And there were two batei dinim that did this in the recent past. Though not without significant issues too. True, this is an extreme, but that’s why I worded it this way. There are other forms of social pressure too. My point is, the beis din will claim impotence, but they are not.
No they can’t. And you know that. And the two batei din who did that were clowns.
Dude: you usually say good, but this is just plain ignorance. And coming from someone who is not ignorant, it is just bizarre.
Well, people seem to have developed the idea that a convert can be retroactively assumed to have been dishonest due to future behavior… If a community can be considered frum and accept that notion, how is that different from saying a year later that the man was being dishonest when he signed the ketubah and so it is invalid and so the marriage can be annulled? Not that I know very much.
Gittin 32a -33b. We don’t exercise the power, but halacha provides for it. And yes at least one of the batei dinim who did this were discounted as clowns (thanks to Tendler). I know one of the rabbinical advisers to the other bet din, who is not a clown, but more of a renegade wild-man and talmid chochom.
I appreciate that you think some of the things I write are good. My objective is to provoke thought and conversation. Not always to be right or accurate.
Good luck with that.
But I think your frumster is different from the one mentioned here that resides in made-up-for-satire-land.
Seems to me the obvious solution is for her to date women. This way, there is not issur of eishes ish, and it would certainly not be worse than her husband dating. His actions could potentially lead him to an issue of ervah, such as boel niddah, but no such issur would apply to her. This solution would serve a number of function as it would allow her to relieve sexual frustration, it would make her less jealous of her husband since she too could be getting some, and it would probably piss him off since she could probably score a hotter chick than he could.
BTW, the page you link to was taken down.
oops. Posted before I was ready. Oh well.
Frumster would remove a married man from the site. So would syas.
Jdate has a selection for separated but not yet divorced. And it has been alleged that people lie just a bit on these sites.
I assume that the separated but not yet divorced section on JDate is used by plenty of women as well as men. Outside of Ortho-world almost no women are going to let the get issue cramp their style.
Sounds like a good reason for a woman to sh*t can Orthodox Judaism.
What I don’t get is that I see woman saying things like “i dont care about halacha but my kids will get kicked out of school if I date”. And then I see perry reich from Lakewood go on National T.V. WITH HER BOYFREIND and her kids all go too regular Lakewood frum schools. They were not kicked out.
The frum system may have many problems but making up problems that don’t exsist is probably just as harmful as denying those that do
In the case I mused about above, the women (the soon 2bx wife and the girls on frumster) do care about halacha. That’s the problem. The moment they abandon halacha, they are free and life is good.
So I wonder, why would the beis din create a situation such that the best path for a frum jew is to reject halacha? Seems not very well thought out.
The Batei Din do not create the problem, Halacha does. The Halacha mandates that only the man can write a Get and according to many poskim a get lhalacha should not be given if there are still outstanding issues that need to be settled as the Get is supposed to be the final breaking of the marriage.
Botei Din can’t change the Halacha they just cannot. However a woman is free to stop following Halacha if she does not like it.
I hope Frumster does something about this. It’s digusting and such a chillul Hashem. These poor, unsuspecting single women probably don’t even know he’s married.
What makes you think that this web site cares about preventing chillul Hashem? So far as I can tell, the purpose of this web site is to CAUSE chillul Hashem!
website = ads for you to click on. blog content gets eyeballs, social media attention grabbing, viral sharing. websites don’t cause chilulei hashem, they only expose them, deny them, or satirize them.
Social Medileh said:
“websites don’t cause chilulei hashem, they only expose them…”
THOU IGNORANT FOOL!!!
Exposing a Chillul Hashem *** IS *** a Chillul Hashem!!!
Considering how inferior your understanding of Torah is, you must have been expelled from many yeshivahs, like the creator of this web site.
Frumster DOES host men that are legally married but halachically divorced, by the way. How would you like to date for…I dunno, years?
A friend of mine got remarried while he was still civilly married. He had already given a get, and everything was settled (the first marriage was short), but the civil divorce was taking a while. So he got remarried.
None of my roshei yeshiva would do the wedding, since they are American clergymen, so he got a rav from Israel to do it.
Bigamy is a crime in the United States.
Well this was in NY.
A person is guilty of bigamy when he contracts or purports to contract a marriage with another person at a time when he has a living spouse, or the other person has a living spouse.Bigamy is a class E felony.
-N.Y. Penal Law § 255.15 (McKinney)
So the question is what it means to purport to contract a marriage. I think it is most likely that it means to purport to create a legally binding marriage. My friend knew he was creating a non-legally binding marriage, so I think he is clear. But if I’m bored, I’ll read some caselaw.
Reminds me of the book/movie “Enemies, a Love Story” by Isaac Bashevis Singer, where the main character find himself married to three women, sort of by accident.
So as it turns out, Hayes v. People, 25 N.Y. 390 (1862) held that it was bigamy if you agree to be married and hold yourselves out as such, even if it is not solemnized by a minister or magistrate. But that’s an 1862 case.
And here, People v. Portman, 159 A.D. 702, 702, 145 N.Y.S. 189, 190 (1913), the case was that it was a chupah,
“40 or 50 people were assembled, including the defendant and Rachel Siegel and Rabbi Levinson; that the defendant and Rachel Siegel ‘said what they had to say’; that the witness supposed that ‘they were satisfied to get married’; that Jewish weddings always take place under a canopy; that there was a canopy in the house for that evening only. And there is the testimony of the wife of the said witness that she also saw the defendant and Rachel *703 and the rabbi; that she heard the defendant and Rachel say that they were willing to marry one another. ‘Q. What else did he say, and what else did she say? A. What else? They married.’ And she testifies that defendant placed a ring on Rachel’s finger. This witness corroborated her husband as to the canopy and also testified that it was used exclusively at Jewish weddings.”
The court there held it was bigamy, but they used the chupah only as evidence to the fact that they had already gotten married in Brooklyn as was alleged–but the court seems to hold that it would not be a marriage by itself.
Remember, there is a clear and simple path for women to avoid this problem entirely.
As long as they marry non-Jewish men, their children will be Jewish according to every Jewish sect except the Kairites, but they will never need to worry about having a Get held over their heads.
I’ll do you one better- just shack up with a jewish guy without marrying him. No need for a get there either, and even karaites will accept the kids as jewaks.
The kids would then be considered mamzers, unable to marry anyone but a mamzer or a convert.
False.
Mamzer is only a product of a married woman and another man. It is not the same as the Christian term bastard.
I think Dave and com was suggesting that if we avoided all kiddushin, we’d have no issue with gittin.
You see, this is why gay marriage is assur… When a gay marriage is over, you know it’s over. He takes his Twilight posters and his Lady Gaga albums and moves out – Done! ‘True halachic marriage’ is meant to be an endlessly frustrating legal entanglement in which you have limited control over the outcome (and the damage to your reputation)… If you’re a woman, that is.
I guess you’re not married to another man, yet. We’d have to divide our assets, pensions, the house, property and break my mother’s heart. I guess I am glad his initial interest in converting waned and he’s staying an Episcopalian. When I want to give him brain seizures, I just give him quotes from the English Kitzur Shulchan Aruch.
I’ve asked it before – women in this position see the irredeemable evil/stupidity of the system they live in. Why keep their faith? This nonsense only has power because of a desire to keep paying absurd yeshiva tuition.
Bingo! and now you see what real emunah is. If a woman can be raked over the coals of a typical frum community and yet, she honestly still believes in our religion, then you have found someone who is not just going through the motions for social reasons, but someone who is being moser-nefesh to be frum, despite the frum community’s absurdity.
Of course there are the cases where the wife refused to go to Beis Din, a civil divorce was finalized and she still will not go to Beis Din (and yet calls herself an agunah) and thus the husband has to decide on one of three options:
1) Do not date
2) Utilize the much maligned “Heter Meah Rabbonim”
3) Hold to the opinion that the ban on polygamy is over (technically it only was established for 1000 years) and start dating.
I know the post was satire, but remember there are 3 sides to a story: His side, her side and the truth….
Despite what people may think, guys have feelings too. It is not just about the hook up, a lot of guys want to find someone this can be with for their entire lives and this is something that can only be done if the girl they are dating is not already married. So before a guy starts anything serious with a girl, they first must determine whether the girl they are interested in is married or not. So as a whole picture, it is not only man who is looking for a mistress but also a woman. To know more on how to know if someone is married before committing yourself visit http://www.findoutifsomeoneismarried.org/
When you think about all the changes a secular woman makes and the challenges she faces along the road toward a frum lifestyle, especially compared to men, it is amazing that there still are so many women who do it. I think it testifies to the explanation of “She lo asani eisha” that “women are more spiritual” (so they don’t need as many mitzvos). If women are not spiritual, I don’t think we’d be seeing this phenomenon, because it is so hard. I’d like to focus on the following two experiences.
I am an OTDer who is trying to come back on her own terms, then I am reminded of this shit. And the entry about the Kollel ashole who divorced his wife because he was greedy and the comment thread. Screw all this. I pay my taxes, I’m trying to get a get myself, I’m leaving.
This is the first time I’ve read such problem. I am not Jewish but I understand how you feel. I can’t give you advice right now cause I am not familiar with the rules you been following. But I am wishing for your happiness.
What utter bigoted nonsense!
1) Whereas only the male spouse can “give” a get, our rabbis have forbidden a man from giving a get unless the women agrees to it. Similarly, our rabbis have forbidden a man from having multiple wives. Thus, both parties have the ability to prevent the other party from marrying.
2) There is no halachic basis for a married man to “date”, so don’t give me nonsense about “he can date and I can’t
3) The reason the civil divorce should (not must) be completed before the get is issues is that the beis din has no legal power to enforce the ketubah. The civil divorce settlement is assumed to satisfy the ketubah. Absent a civil divorce, the beis din would have to specify the settlement before the gett was issued, and their settlement would be unenforceable.
Rather than attack and slander that which you don’t understand, you should seek to understand it. Torah law is equitable not oppressive.
Thanks like your Dánta Phádhraic | Ceilt / concealment
This is a great guide as always friend