Sadly, the Chains Remain

R' Simcha Krauss and R' Hershel Schachter (The Jewish Week)U

Updated - see the addendum below.

I cannot imagine the pain of a woman permanently chained to a man that physically or mentally abused her. And yet that seems to be what these women are forced into if their husbands refuse to give them a Jewish divorce known as a Get.  In many cases these are women that went the extra mile – giving the marriage a chance even though their husbands continued to abuse them. Aside from the stigma of divorce and the difficulty in getting remarried, there was also the children. 

R' Gedalia Dov Schwartz

The abuse does not end there. In far too many cases these husbands do not let go. The more the wife keeps insisting on it, the less likely they are to grant them a Get so that these women can put their lives back together, get remarried and lead a normal life. We call these husbands recalcitrant.

R' Emanuel Rackman

A couple of decades ago, the well intentioned Rabbi Emanuel Rackman tried to set up a court for this purpose and began ‘freeing’ a lot of ‘chained women’.  His basis for doing so was a Halachic loophole found in the Gemarah that annuls a marriage thus obviating the need for a Get. That Gemarah teaches that when a physical defect is hidden from a woman, discovers it after the marriage and tells the court that she would have never agreed to marry this man had she known about his defect, the rabbis can annul the marriage as though it never happened. Considering it a Kedushei Taus – a marriage made in error. Rabbi Rackman said that the lack of a knowledge that a husband was an abuser amounts to the same thing. A defect that – had she known about it – she would have never consented to marry him.

R' J.B. Soloveitchik

Some of those women he freed got married. And their children are Mamzerim. (While there might be loopholes about their actual status in Halacha – that is beyond the scope of this post.) The point is that a woman is not really freed when the vast majority of Poskim disagree with the legitimacy of the method being used to free her.

R' Z.. N.. Goldberg

They have found other loopholes to use for these women. (Which I have discussed elsewhere and are also beyond the scope of this post.) Rabbi Kruass claimed tacit approval by Rav Zalman Nechmeia Goldberg, a highly respected Posek in Israel.

After nine hours of testimony and a six-page document explaining their decision, the three-member IBD ruled to annul her marriage on the Talmudic principle that the woman never would have married her husband if she had known he would act in an abusive fashion during the marriage. 

Rabbi Hershel Schachter… last month penned a public letter of protest dismissing the court’s collective rulings and pronouncing Rabbi Krauss unfit to make complex decisions regarding agunot. “From start to finish, this is a mistake,” Rabbi Schachter wrote in a three-paragraph letter... The letter, written in Hebrew, says that only “great scholars of the generation” should be dealing with these sensitive matters. Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, head of the Beit Din of America,  (the largest rabbinical court), and three other prominent rabbis also signed the letter. 

“The court is not doing a favor for these women if it issues a solution that won’t be acceptable to a large population of Orthodox rabbis…” “This isn’t a democracy, it’s a halachic process,” said Rabbi Goldin. “The power to make decisions has always been in the hands of the few who spend their lives steeped in its wells.”