Gary,

As one who has worked for decades successfully and otherwise with Agunoth, I want to respond to your article about JOFA and feminists. (I don’t know if  you remember me, Dovid Eidensohn, from TA, but I remember you.)

 

This year I was involved with three Agunoth. One was married to a real tough Chosid and he relented and gave a GET. Another two were modern Orthodox.I spoke to the husbands and got them to agree to do a divorce as long as the monetary and custody issues could be resolved before the GET, and they indicated that they knew they would have to settle properly on these issues, and not prolong the GET. I insisted on this because Reb Moshe Feinstein, quoting Ramo and hundreds of years of unanimous rabbinical opinion, insisted upon it and says it is unheard of to give a GET without settling the issues first. The husbands also insisted on it.

 

In both cases, I talked with the women and got them to agree with no problem to that condition, that the monetary and custodial issues be settled and then quickly a GET. In both cases, within days of this positive development, I was rudely surprised to find out that “advisers” from the modern Orthodox world had entered the picture, and told the woman to break off contact with me. In both cases when I attempted to reason with the woman that this was the way to get a GET, and it was very possible to get one immediately, she began to insult me and let me know that I should bug off. One hung up on me and the other indicated a similar wish. These women will probably never get a GET.

 

Why did the “advisers” do this? Because, as one very senior Agunah feminist told me, “We don’t want to work with rabbis, we want to break them, and force changes in halacha.” If a woman is a helpless Agunah, this pressures the rabbis and forces, by this mode of thinking, the rabbis to change. Thus, we have people cynically ruining the lives of women, who will never get a normal and recognized GET, precisely because of the Agunah movement!

 

I would very much like to talk to you about the whole picture, because I know about idealism and I know about letting women have a life. Sometimes these are mutually exclusive.

 

Another point. As feminism increases its reach and creates radical “solutions” to traditional Gittin, the children from these Gittin will be in a world drifting to the right. Many of these children will want for themselves or their children to marry into the Haredi world, and will be rebuffed. Will the same people who believe in sacrificing women for the ideals of Agunoth and feminism then have something to answer these children, or will it not bother them?

 

Shalom,

 

Dovid Eidensohn

845-352-7267