October 15, 2103--Getting a Get

A friend keeps a close eye on fanatics. Particularly of the Islamic sort, especially in regard to their barbaric treatment of girls and women. Like burying them in the ground and stoning them to death.

Though depressing, this is worth doing. We all have to speak out in outrage about practices of this kind. Those sanctioned by religious leaders and governments more than any others.

She and I were talking about this recently and I said that, though I share her outrage, I have chosen to concentrate on keeping my eye on and decrying fanatics among my own coreligionists. That's where I can claim credibility--not seeming in a one-sided way to castigate the sins of others while ignoring what those culturally closer to me may be doing that is also outrageous.

"But your people aren't killing people, not doing these kinds of hideous things to girls, so why are you focused on their relatively benign behavior?"

"In some cases they are not that benign--though admittedly, stoning women to death is in a category of its own. But in the past there are too many cases of Jews killing innocents. If we want to go back to the Old Testament, recall the Israelites treatment of the people of Canaan. The God of the Jews, it is written, instructed the Israelites to commit genocide on the Canaanites--to kill every one of them, including all woemn and children."

"But that was thousands of years ago," my friend protested.

"True, but this suggests to me that we still have to keep a wary eye on all people under the sway of fundamentalist religious dogma, especially if their faith's history might predispose them to violence. I particularly try to maintain a critical perspective on zealots in Israel and on the ultra-orthodox in America."

"I hear you, but I still see things a little differently."

Of course, in many ways she is right, yet I keep alert to the unacceptable things "my" people do and attempt to bring them to public attention.

The other day, for example, the New York Times reported about something occurring in Brooklyn that on the surface felt bizarre and Medieval.

Something about ultra-orthodox Jewish women seeking rabbinical permission to divorce abusive husbands. According to Jewish practice, in order to divorce a husband it is not enough to hire an attorney and file a petition in a civil court. Women must go before a committee of orthodox rabbis and attempt to convince them that there is appropriate cause for the rabbis to endorse their desire to seek a divorce. If they are convinced, they issue a get, a liturgical document that then allows women to proceed.

Since as in the other biblical religions women are considered less than second-class citizens, getting a get is complicated, difficult, frequently humiliating, and often costly.

To be clear--orthodox women seeking divorces usually need to pay the rabbinical court many thousands of dollars for them even to consider their cases. Especially in those circumstances where the husbands refuse to give permission for their wives to proceed since according to orthodox doctrine husbands have this power.

But according to the recent report in the Times, not only is the process very expensive, but what some rabbis have been arranging is bizarre, and likely illegal.

For fees that can total $60,000, the rabbis hire people to kidnap the reluctant husbands and have them physically tortured in order to force them to sign the required papers.

At least two rabbis who allegedly arranged for the kidnappings and torture were scooped up in a sting operation that included law-enforcement officials taping telephone conversations in which the rabbis casually talked about how they go about their violent business. Ironically, with a feminist twist since the beneficiaries of their "services" are women.

According to a rabbi caught on tape by federal prosecutor, after the husbands were abducted, "They beat them up and tied them up, shocked them with Tasers and stun gun until they got what they wanted."

One of the perpetrators, Rabbi Mendel Epstein talked openly and casually about how his hit men went about the techniques they used to fool the police if the victims stepped forward to report the kidnappings and torture:

If they beat them up carefully, leaving no visible bruises, "basically the reaction of the police is, if the guy does not have a mark on him then, uh, [they think there] is there some Jewish crazy affair here, they don't want to get involved."

And not only that--the rabbis guaranteed that after their "tough guys" finished with the husbands, the women will get their gets. And for the most part they did.