(ðúï ìäùéâ îàîø æä
áòáøéú. ðà ìäú÷ùø ìëúåáú ãå"àì
ìîèä)
In order
to solve the problem of aginut we must first understand why this halakhic
problem exists. Is it HaShem’s will that women who are abandoned by
recalcitrant husbands or whose husbands have disappeared are to pine away in
loneliness, despair, barrenness and often poverty as well? Why this singularly cruel edict,
particularly for one whom, apparently, has committed no sin?
The
central motif of Torah is the ongoing and continuous of liberation of Humankind
from slavery and misery to freedom and joy. It is God’s will that eventually we
will have so internalized holiness that we will be ultimately free, because the
Torah will be our very being and our very being will be the Torah. We will have
no need for punitive measures whatsoever as we will perform, indeed we will be,
the Torah and this state will be one of indescribable joy. However, we are still in a very
immature state of moral/spiritual development. It is human nature in general,
and that of women most particularly, to become enslaved in all manners of
ways.
Women are
not intended to be subjugated to men, although the simplest meaning of the Text
seems to read as though they are. Contrary to what may appear to be written in
Torah, the subjugation of women to men is intended to catapult women to
freedom. It is intended to be an
uncomfortable state. If merely being uncomfortable does not spur women on to
become everything they can be the discomfort grows until it can no longer be
endured.
We Human
beings do not move on to the next stage of our spiritual/moral evolution until
our present state becomes absolutely unbearable. Until that point is reached we find excuses, and
explanations, for our diminished, restricted and limiting states of existence.
We tell ourselves that things are really not so bad. We let ourselves be guided by our fear of change more than
by our love of freedom. We are caught in inertia. Tremendous force will be
required to change our course.
The state
of aginut is the state in which being a subjugated female becomes absolutely
unbearable. Aginut is not meant to
be tolerated. Aginut is not meant
to be perpetuated. Aginut is not meant to exist at all really. It is meant to
be a temporary measure that catapults Jewish women to greater freedom. To speak
quite bluntly, it is meant to catapult the agunah, who, it transpires is
sinning after all insofar as she is not being true to her own Soul, to freedom.
Unfortunately, the state of aginut is very cruel because women are very, very
cruel to themselves and one another in that we accept our own enslavement and
perpetuate it, even going so far as sacrificing our own daughters to the gods
of fear, inertia and resignation. When Jewish women will resolve to be free the
ordeal of aginut will end.
The problem of the
agunot is no more than a psychological one in our times. In my honest opinion,
Jewish women who are married to Jewish men who won't give them a divorce should
go ahead and have more children if they find a suitable partner. If the
suitable partner is not a Jew, there is no issue of mamzerut. If the suitable
partner is a Jew the children will be mamzerim, but so what?
Mamzerim can marry mamzerot or gerot. Mamzerot can marry mamzerim and
gerim. There are so many couples in the non-religious world who divorced
without getting a get and then the women got remarried to Jewish men and whose
children are, therefore, mamzerim, and there are so many gerim in today's
generation, that the issue of mamzerut is a dead issue.
Are you absolutely sure of your lineage back to the time of Avraham?
Me either. No one is! In fact, there was a story a couple of years
ago in the ultra-Orthodox press about a Chassidic Rabbi from Jerusalem who
traveled to Poland to find his maternal grand-mother's grave. When he got
there the records showed that she is interred in a Catholic cemetery. He
thought there must be a mistake. There was no mistake. He, his
mother and all of his sisters and brothers were not Jews. His paternal
grandfather had taken up with a Catholic Polish woman, lived with her and
everyone assumed she was Jewish. She never converted and after her death
the Catholic church interred her in a Catholic cemetery. The shocked Rabbi
had to be converted and all of the ketubot and gitim he signed as a witness to
were null and void. If he signed a couple's get and the woman got married
to a Jew and had children, she was committing polyandry and her
children were mamzerim - and everyone thought they were 100%
ultra-Orthodox glatt. There you have it - we can all be pretty sure we are
either not Jewish somewhere along the line (and since so few of us act in
accordance with compassion, modesty and benevolence this may very well be the
case), or that we are mamzerim.
I
realize that what I wrote above may come as a severe jar to your
sensibilities. Forgive me. I also believe that women’s refusing to buckle
under the cruelty of aginut is the only way to fight it. The only way to
fight aginut is to carry love and life as usual.
With blessings for a
Chag Kasher V'Same'ach,
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
B"H
I received this in response from a man who works with agunot:
Thanks for taking interest in the agunah issue- I think that this is truly
the solution to the problem, a shared sense of sympathy and responsibility
for agunot.
Respectfully, I must disagree with your conclusions for a number of
reasons:
1. One odd incident of a rabbi in Jerusalem does not prove that no one is
really Jewish nowadays. I don't think that there is any good reason to
assume that we're not Jewish. G-d promised the Jewish people that they
would last forever, and I would hope that His promise is worth something.
Also, the statistical, sociological and cultural likelihood of us not
being Jewish is virtually non existent. From a halachik perspective,
there is precedence to assume a chazaka that the masses are Jewish.
(Also, are you familiar with the "kohen gene" that has been found in
the
Jewish descendents of Aaron?)
2. With regard to the possibility that we are all mamzerim - this is also
not likely. In the world of halacka regarding this issue, we assume
"innocent until proven guilty," and there is little compelling
evidence to
assume that we are all mamzerim.
3. According to Jewish law it is prohibited for a Jewish person to marry
a non Jewish person. The fact that there is no issue of mamzerut in such
a situation is for a different reason.
4. According to Jewish law, it is prohibited for a Jewish married woman
to remarry! Even if you think that it would not be so bad for her children
to be mamzerim, this does not justify her violation of the biblically
mandated prohibition of remarriage when she has not yet obtained a get.
Please feel free to write back and let me know what you think about what I
have written above.
All the best,
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ladies!
The
concern of gentlemen like this has not helped you in the past, and will not
help you in the future. It is you, and you alone, who must take charge of your destiny
and your life.
You cannot
get out of the trap of agunot if you abide by these rules.
The choice
is yours - either walk out of the cage into the light of love and life, or do
that which is expected of Jewish women and languish in dark despair and
barrenness - deluding yourselves that you are doing mitzvoth by suffering.
I
GUARANTEE YOU THAT IF THE WOMEN LEFT AGUNOT ARE FULLY PREPARED TO TAKE THE
STEPS I OUTLINED ABOVE THE ORTHODOX ESTABLISHMENT WILL FIND WAYS OF RELEASING
AGUNOT WITHOUT LEAVING THE AGUNOT NO RECOURSE BUT TO TAKE SUCH RADICAL
MEASURES.
Proof
positive that this is true already exists in the form of the precedent of the
abolishing of the ordeal of the Sotah.
On the
following link we read: http://tinyurl.com/2op95
“When
the number of murderers grew large, they stopped performing the eglah
arufah ritual; . . . when the number of adulterers grew large, the bitter
waters stopped, and it was R. Yohanan b. Zaccai who stopped them, as it says,
"I will not punish their daughters for fornicating, nor their
daughters-in-law for committing adultery, for they [themselves turn aside with
whores... [Hosea 4:14]. (M Sotah 9:9)
According
to a midrash appearing in both Talmuds (BT Sotah 47b, PT Sotah 9:9; 24a), this mishnah
is saying that once sexually immoral behavior becomes standard, the waters will
no longer be able to test wives: The husbands of many of these women will be
guilty of the same act themselves and therefore ineligible to invoke the test.
The midrash derives the need for guiltless men from the concluding verse of the
Sotah section (Numbers 5:31), which says that "the man shall be
clear of guilt," implying that only men who are themselves clear of guilt
may test their wives. In other words, this ritual was discontinued because of
its inherent unfairness: It punished women but not men who committed the very
same crime, and who were, themselves, the ones who initiated the test for the
women. But the Tosefta (14:2) interprets the mishnah differently. It
says that when adultery became common and hence public knowledge, they (the
authorities) could no longer administer the bitter waters because the test
works only in a case in which there is a doubt and in so many of these cases
the transgression was certain.
These
different approaches suggest that there are two interpretive stages: The older
approach, represented by the Mishnah and the Tosefta, treats the abolition
matter-of-factly. According to the mishnah, because there was a
backlog of cases, a long line of angry husbands waiting to test their wives,
the time-consuming ritual had to be abolished, just like the eglah arufah
ritual. The mishnah's verse from Hosea, supporting the notion that
adultery had become rampant, singles out women as adulterers and says that,
despite their sin, God would not punish them--an apt proof text. Note that the
verse describes men's sin as seeking out prostitutes, not adultery. The
Tosefta's tradition, attributed to R. Yohanan b. Zaccai, a Tanna who lived at
the end of the Temple period, gives a rationale that is an alternative to the mishnah's
backlog of cases, but still offers no moral critique of the ordeal. However,
the later rabbis and also the redactors of the Bavli and Yerushalmi felt the
need to explain the Mishnah's abolition in a different way altogether, as a
response to the hypocrisy of a ritual that permitted guilty but unpunished
husbands to punish a guilty wife. As time passed, moral instincts seem to have
prodded rabbis into explaining the abolition as a moral necessity. “
It is
clear, then, that the abolition of the enslavement of the agunah will similarly
be accomplished by the agunot having sexual relationships and children by men
who are not their abandoning husbands or with men other than their husbands
whose whereabouts are unknown because they have been put in the position of
having to override the Biblical directive against adultery in order to perform
the Biblical directive of be fruitful and multiply, which is HaShem’s first
directive to all that lives and thus higher.
Is the
behavior of agunot who are involved in loving relationships and bear children
to the men they love adultery proper?
Certainly not! Even in the
case of true adultery it is clear that women do not ordinarily engage in
relationships merely to satisfy their lusts, as do men, and Torah acknowledges
this in the passages cited above, but rather do so because of their profound
need to be loved and to bear the progeny only of men that they love. It is well
nigh certain that her husband is not physically and/or emotionally satisfying a
woman who is having an affair outside of her marriage. Is pining away for the
rest of her life for love a mitzvah?! Can it possibly be that men, who have
affairs driven by lust even when their wives fulfill them, will be the moral
judges of the behavior of women?
As is
written: Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the fetters of
wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free,
and that ye break every yoke? (Yeshayahu 58:6).
There are
many who will say: “Those who
commit adultery will go to Gehinnom (Hell)!”
To this I
answer: It is not adultery for a
woman to rebuild her life after her husband has stopped functioning as a
husband in every way, but living as a stranger from her delights in tormenting
not only her, but his own children in every way. Moreover I ask: What is the meaning of the threat that she
will go to Gehinnom? Where, exactly, is the agunah now?
Let us
search deeply and honestly into what the Torah says. We shall see that the groundwork for releasing the agunah
and her children from their torment has already been laid. We require no chidushim (new halakhic
decisions or interpretations); we need merely to consider that which is already
decided and explicitly written in the Torah with a loving heart and a new
perspective.
What is
the true state of the agunah and her children? When we examine the estate of the agunah and her children
honestly we will see how incredible it is that a man would inflict such
suffering not only on a woman he was once intimate with, but on his own
children. That these men do so for a protracted amount of time, some
indefinitely, is all the more shocking. What shall we say about the Rabbis and
Dayanim (Rabbinical Judges) who aid and abet such criminals? We will see that
the men who are responsible for keeping their former wives and their children
prisoners in this manner are truly monsters according to Torah and that it is
they, not the “adultress” who await the most extreme punishment that the Torah
metes out. This is all the more true for the Rabbis and the Dayanim who give
succor to such men and we will see that the Torah promises the worst possible
end for them as well.
While the
widow and the orphan find themselves in the humbled and vulnerable state they
are in as a result of an act of God, the agunah and her children suffer as they
do at the hands of a man, and the Rabbis and Dayanim who allow him to continue.
Aginut and the state of the children of agunot, then, are the result of human
beings playing God in order to enjoy feelings of revenge and power. Taking
revenge is absolutely forbidden according to Torah Sh’bikhtav (the Written
Torah, see Vayikra 19:18). Is there any greater sin than this?
There is a
case in Torah in which HaShem refers directly to His not giving a get (a writ,
particularly a writ of emancipation as a bill of divorce or a writ setting a
slave free). Let us look at those
passages in order to understand the utter distortion and perversion of the men
who refuse to give their ex-wives gittin (the plural of get in Aramaic, bills
of divorce) and who inflict prolonged suffering on their children. We read the
following in the Book of the Prophet Yeshayahu, who was sent by HaShem to tell
the Jewish People:
“And I will feed them that oppress thee
with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with
sweet wine; and all flesh shall know that I HaShem am thy Saviour, and thy
Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. Thus saith HaShem: Where is the bill of your
mother's divorcement, wherewith I have put her away? Or which of My creditors
is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities were ye sold, and
for your transgressions was your mother put away.” (Yeshayahu 49:26 - 50:1,
Translation - THE JEWISH BIBLE, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia 1917).
The
Mother referred to in the passage above is the Sh’khinah (the Divine Presence,
understood as the “feminine aspect” of HaShem). Obviously it is not HaShem’s
desire to “send her away”, the passage means that the Divine Presence was
removed from the midst of Israel because of our sins. We see from the passage
preceding the mention of the bill of divorcement that although the People of
Israel have sinned HaShem still regards them as his very own children and will
fight their fight against any oppressor. From this we can see how inhuman it is
for a man to cause suffering to his own children, particularly innocent children
who have not so much as done wrong.
The
estates of the agunah and her children are far worse than that of widows and
orphans. The first consideration
of the condition of the agunah and her children will be the economic one. The economic hardships of the agunot
and their children are often worse than that of the widow and her
children. The widow and her
children may have inherited some money and property, the agunah and her
children have not. Worse still, if the man who deserted his former wife and his
children was in debt and/or if he continues to incur debts she is legally
beholden to be responsible for the debts as well. We see eminently clearly that
the economic state of the agunah and her children can be far worse than that of
the widow and the orphans. [It is very interesting that there is no Hebrew word
for the children of agunot and grushot (divorcees)]. Therefore, everything that
Torah says about the widow and the orphan will be considered all the more true
for the agunah and her children, kal vachomer (argumentum a minori ad
majus" or "a majori ad minus"; corresponding to the scholastic
proof a fortiori, one of the most common Talmudic hermeneutical principles).
The agunah
and her children are subjected to the deepest level of public embarrassment.
Presently we will review what the Torah says about embarrassing a person
publicly.
A widow
may remarry and orphans may hope that one day they will be restored to living
in a happy home, loved by both their mother and an adopting father, protected
by two loving parents as every child should rightfully be and having their
needs provided for. The agunah and her children see no end to their
misery. They are at the mercy of a
person so deranged as to play God with the destinies of his former mate and his
own children. (Was he deranged at the time they married unbeknownst to
her? Was the marriage halakhically
binding?) The agunah and her children are at the mercy of Rabbis and Dayanim
who see in every case of aginut the opportunity to make, and enjoy, an
exorbitant sum of money, this on the suffering of another Jew. They justify
their crass and unfeeling behavior by telling themselves that certainly the
woman who is now an agunah must have been a truly insufferable wife. To this I respond: Upon what do they
base this assumption? Upon the
slander of the woman’s ex-husband? Even if the woman did torment her husband
when they lived together he has the right to divorce her. She may forfeit the
money of her get in some circumstances if she behaves in certain manner
proscribed by Torah, but she must be given the get (writ of Jewish divorce)
nonetheless (Shulchan Arukh, Even Ha’Ezer 77:2). The men who leave their former
wives agunot and their children in a nameless state of misery have robbed them
of everything, even of hope.
Having
described the state of the agunah and the children of agunot, and seeing that
it is a worse state than that of widows and orphans in every way, let us review
what the Torah has to say about widows, orphans, shaming a person publicly and
about the punishments for various infractions in Torah.
“You shall
not steal”, (Shmot 20:12). Now, we learn that this is a prohibition primarily
against kidnapping. We are forbidden, in the main, to steal a nefesh (the
conscious part of the Soul, the consciousness). How much the worse is stealing a neshamah (the highest
element of the Soul. It is one with God), i.e., preventing a neshamah from
being born?
The
penalty of robbing the poor is death by Divine means. How much worse, then, is
intentionally povertizing one’s former mate and one’s own children and stealing
their right to be restored to a normal life with the opportunities and
potentialities inherent therein?
“You shall
not afflict any widow or orphan.
If you afflict them at all, and they cry to Me…then your wives shall be
widows, and your children orphans.” (ibid., 22:21). We are taught that one of
the interpretations of this is that judges, who do not help the oppressed
though it is within their ability to do so, bring death upon themselves by
Divine judgment.
“You shall
not aggrieve one another”, (Vayikra 25:17). In Tractate Bava Metzia 58b our Sages explain that this
means that Ona’at Devarim (verbally tormenting, mental and emotional abuse,
saying things that cause one suffering) is forbidden absolutely and
categorically. As we have seen above, the Prophet Yeshayahu was sent by HaShem
to teach: “And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and
they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine; and all flesh
shall know that I HaShem am thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of
Jacob. (Yeshayahu 49:26). We learn
from all this that Ona’at Devarim is a sin so serious that death at Divine
hands is the punishment meted out. This is true because to be tormented
mentally and emotionally is an attack on one’s very being. How much more
serious is the distress caused by a man who refuses to give his wife a get, who
drags her from one hearing to the next in Rabbinical courts, speaks evil of her
at every opportunity, makes her believe that each hearing will be the last and
that she will receive her get, and then fails to give it to her? In Tractate
Bava Metzia (59a) we learn that a person who commits adultery with a married
woman is subject to death by strangulation by the earthly court, however he
retains his share in the World to Come; whereas, a person who embarrasses
another person in public loses his share in the World to Come. Fools are likely to think that embarrassing
a person publicly and mental and emotional torture are less severe infractions
than adultery because there is no punishment for it that an earthly court can
mete. In fact, they are sins so severe that no earthy court is able to mete out
the full punishment for it. Let
those who cause the agunah and her children ongoing shame be apprised of this
Law!
We learn
in Tractate Bava Batra (88b) that: “The punishment for sins committed with
faulty measures is more severe than the punishment for sins of sexual
perversion.” From this we can infer that a man who forces his ex-wife and his
own children into the economic hardship that being an agunah and her children
often brings, steals their peace of mind, steals their social standing, steals
their very hope for a better future, will incur a punishment far greater than
that of the agunah who may find a man to love and to bear children with. Again, please bear in mind that the
punishment for adultery is strangulation, whereas the punishment meted out for
afflicting a widow or an orphan, whose state we have successfully demonstrated
is socially and economically superior to that of the agunah and her children,
is death by Divine intervention.
We learn
that the Flood occurred not because of the fact that every sexual perversion
had taken place, which it had, but only after perversion of justice had become
legion, as is written: “For the earth is filled with chamas (gross injustice)
through them, and behold, I will destroy the earth” (Bereshit 6:13). Indeed,
Torah Sh’bikhtav does not even mention sexual perversion explicitly as a reason
for bringing about the destruction of all flesh; we have to infer from the
language of Torah that sexual perversion of every kind was widespread over the
earth. (See Rabbi Yohchanan’s comments in Tractate Sanhedrin 108a). Perversion
of justice, certainly stealing peoples’ peace of mind, worst of all stealing
the right of neshamot to be born and live and to arrive at a higher level of
Godliness by doing mitzvoth are all crimes far more grave than adultery. Torah
views perversion of justice in a more negative light than sexual
improprieties. Those who imagine
that the sins of the man who keeps his ex-wife an agunah and torments his
children are less grave than that of the adulteress is sadly mistaken and in contravention of Torah.
Understand this.
The
teaching of Rabbi Levi in Tractate Bava Batra (88b) stating that the punishment
for using faulty measures in business is more severe than for sexual perversion
is cited by the Ramba”m (Laws of Theft) and by the Tur (Choshen Mishpat 231).
Now consider that the Torah also teaches that Ona’at Devarim is a more serious
infraction than using faulty measures. Shim’on bar Yochai, Rabbi Yochanan and
Rabbi Elazar teach: “Verbal wronging is a greater sin than monetary wronging
because the first affects the person’s very self, whereas the second only
affects his money.” The reader is referred to Bava Metzia 58b-59a for a
detailed discussion of the relationship among the laws concerning using faulty
measures, embarrassing one publicly, honoring one’s wife and adultery. Anyone with a heart can understand,
then, that a man who torments not only his former wife but his very own
children psychologically, as well as economically, has forfeited his place in
the World to Come. He is the
living dead having brought death by Divine punishment upon himself. His former wife, therefore, may be
considered to have undergone a tikkun (correction, in this case a spiritual
correction) that brings about a higher level of rectification than that which a
widow undergoes, and she is permitted as a wife to all but the High
Priest. The children of the agunot
may be considered to have undergone a higher level of tikkun than that of
orphans. Have the agunah and her children not been murdered by the woman’s
former husband? Is it not
written: Four are accounted as
dead: A poor man, a leper, a blind person, and one who is childless. A poor
man, as it is written, for all the men are dead [which sought thy life]. A
leper, as it is written, [And Aaron looked upon Miriam, and behold, she was
leprous. And Aaron said unto Moses …] let her not he as one dead.
The blind, as it is written, He hath set me in dark places, as they that be
dead of old. And he who is childless, as it is written, Give me children,
or else I am dead (Nedarim 64b).
From these passages we can see clearly that having been put to death by
being povertized the agunah and her children have undergone the ultimate
cleansing of all sin and the ex-husband is not only a murderer, but in
effectively killing his children with poverty has killed himself by making
himself childless. The ex-husband
according to the Torah has brought non-being upon himself. His wife, therefore, is entirely free.
We have
successfully demonstrated above that the state of the agunah and her children
is worse than that of the widow and the orphan. Therefore, kal vachomer, the
punishments that will be meted out to those who have distressed the agunah and
her children will be worse than those meted out to those who distress the widow
and the orphan. Moreover, the man
who refuses to give his wife a get and the Rabbis and Dayanim who do not compel
him to do so by every means permissible, have committed the unspeakable, indeed
unknowable, crime of preventing neshamot from being born.
Indeed, we
learn that the Jewish People are all characterized by their compassion, modesty
and benevolence (Yevamot 79a). Similarly Avot 5:19 comes to teach us that all
of the disciples of Avraham are characterized by a good eye, a humble spirit
and a meek soul. The very heritage of a man who can leave his wife an agunah
and his very own children bereft may be questioned. Was she ever married to a Jew at all? If not, she is not an agunah and she is
free. As to who is destined to go to Heaven and who to Hell, this section of
Pirkei Avot makes that issue quite clear as well.
The above
discussion amply proves that a plethora of perfectly and immediately applicable
takdimim (precedents, legal precedents) exists in Torah that may be used as
bases to free the agunah. We need only wish to do so.
Doreen
Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, 5764
Contact: [email protected] -or- [email protected]