Behind the Bima (Thoughts on the Agunah Situation)

um our community is one that has always taken very very seriously the aguna situation again a naguna is a woman who has been determined the timing is correct it's irreconcilable differences it's a marriage which can't be salvaged and it's been determined you could say by who and by what process by whom and by what process but it's been determined let's say by a base then that the get should be given the jewish divorce should be given and the husband refuses to do so he's a recalcitrant husband the origin of get when it comes to the talmud when it comes to the gemara was men would go off to war and if they didn't return home and you were unsure whether they were still alive the woman was chained she was unable to go on with her life and remarry because a woman cannot be married to multiple men and therefore she was not able to continue with her life and in the time those times it wasn't ever imagined that someone would electively that somebody would choose to torture a woman by putting her in that situation but tragically in our time that's exactly what's happened i remember during 9 11 and there's a whole book by the base of america about this we have still lived through circumstances of questions of in fact i just saw a safer promoted and advertised during corona that there are people who died and they weren't they weren't identified because they didn't get a proper burial preparation early times of corona and maybe their wives should be laguna whatever the case may be so there are recalcitrant husbands today which is another way of saying real low-life people who refuse to give their wife a get and to set them free now just because a woman wants to be divorced doesn't make her naguna from the moment that she says to her husband we have reconcilable differences very very important to state and to clarify that a husband is not always the villain the husband is not always the devil that a husband is not always evil and that just because a woman wants to be divorced that doesn't mean at that moment she is entitled to be declared or be advocated for as an aguna it is it is reasonable for a husband to say i'll give the get when the civil divorce let the two divorces happen simultaneously it's not obligated it's more righteous more noble no reason the husband should give the get right away and take it off the table but if he wanted to time it with the giving of the civil it is reasonable it is legitimate and a woman is not naguna just because she or others declare her to be it's a body like a base then who examines and hears the situation and makes that determination and that's when the community should and needs to respond and our community has never hesitated we have had several rallies and we have fought tirelessly and advocated on behalf of several women in that position and unfortunately one we held dozens of rallies and only when he passed away last year shame only when he passed away last year uh dr abbas rohr was his wife free despite countless meetings negotiations rallies kipper robbie goldberg pipper you and i spent hours in his office that was the most powerful experience i've ever had but he chose to never meet a grandson rather than free a woman who he was married to for a short time and with him he had no children but he's no longer here it took actually his death which is one of the two ways that the rabbi said that a woman goes free but in all the other cases we've rallied and it's not only our rallies we recently last year rallied we rented school buses and brought the children of school to the rally and our rally definitely um brought it to a head but there was an individual in the community who also met privately with the recalcitrant husband and he primarily but a combination deserves the credit that afternoon he gave the get that afternoon one rally brodie and i were there involvement featured on uh hbo i believe right big ones some documentary yeah i was featured on some documentary and i went out i want to give the credit not to the rally i want to give the credit to that individual who stepped up with leadership and got it done i share that only to say that our community doesn't brush it onto the carpet we don't ignore it we don't neglect it and if a woman indeed is in aguna and has been designated as such from an appropriate and proper source we do not hesitate to step up and to get involved and to do absolutely everything in our power and i'll give you one such example right now that we should all get involved naftali ayala sharabani who he and his wife have been separated since 2010 so 10 years he's been refusing to give her a get for 10 years so how do we know she's in laguna maybe there's another side to the story who says he's such a villain the answer is the bayesian zedek of colo evan ezra in lakewood new jersey issued a say roof they issued a document saying that he is her calcium husband she is a naguna and everyone should apply whatever social pressure they can and there's been a groundswell all over social media and elsewhere putting tremendous pressure appropriately enough tali sharbani sharabhani who for 10 years 10 years torture imagine a woman wants to remarry she wants to date she wants companions right she's entitled to and this woman is unable to and to the degree that anybody can if anybody knows him ayal sharavani put that pressure share that post get that word out and it's tragic it's sad we don't want to air our dirty laundry and there are people who push back and say why are you airing dirty laundry why would you want to publicize or promote that there are such men but the answer is we're not airing dirty laundry we're actually promoting how the jewish community is a family and we step up for one another and as terrible as this is we won't rest until the people who deserve their get receive their get so why this come up tonight it came up tonight because in the case of mr natalia sharabani again if you know him if you can apply pressure social pressure if you can encourage whatever you can do to help his wife who for 10 years has been trying to move on on with her life but it also came up because there is a case in our own backyard and there's a local case of a woman who has a civil divorce despite what her ex-husband is in some cases saying has a complete and finalized civil divorce and who her best faith effort has tried through several means several abundant several but they din with marriage counseling with an attempt at mediation and all of it has fallen flat and the basin of america one of the most reputable batedin outside of israel based on america i think issues the most gittin outside of israel issued a seruf against him and said that she is in aguna and or the organization for the resolution of agunos which is a partner of ours and we support and is really a leader in this area and we long for the day that they can shut their doors and close down because they're not needed but they have also put them on the wall of recalcitrant husbands i will tell you if there's any levity in this that the website apparently that lists is called recalcitrant parties and when someone sent me the link and i saw that's what it was called my first reaction was how how wicked how incredulous are these people they throw parties these are calcium husbands have parties together and i was like these are calcium parties what is the matter with these people like is the stone vamora they have recalcitrant parties anyway foolish me they are they are the recalcitrant parties um so this individual is among them so some people became aware of this case and they started to promote him as well and then others have reached out and said hey rabbis where are you rabbis don't you care about a woman in your community so i want to just share and i know i've been speaking for a little bit i appreciate it and and i'll turn it over to you for your thoughts clarifications or questions or insights but i want to share something that's really really important for our listeners to understand the goal every single time the goal in the case of the laguna and again sometimes the men are in the right and the women are wrong in issues of getting in custody and divorce very important to also state not always is the woman the victim and the man the perpetrator not always is he the recalcitrant party and the woman is the angel there are both directions and it's really important to understand the nuance and to trust the people who are who are competent involved very important to say that so we have to remember what the goal is the goal is when there's a woman in laguna who wants to get and wants to move on the goal is to get her her get that's the goal the goal is not to be right the goal is not to be popular the goal is not to look like a hero the goal is not to satisfy some social justice need within ourselves the goal is to get her to get and i will add the goal is not only for her to receive her get the goal is for her to do it without any unintended casualties and consequences like her children these online campaigns about men that have a permanent imprint and footprint in the digital world are not are painful for children who one day will google their father and if a person can achieve that result without taking that root it is much much much more desired if there can be conversations negotiations efforts it is much much more desired even after she's in laguna so woman is in laguna and orders taking it up and they're on the wall of shame but before there is unleashed a very public campaign locally in the community and far beyond every effort should be expended because we want to protect the children you want to protect a woman who doesn't want to be spoken about at shabbos tables everywhere that's the nuclear option it's a last resort and when i say it's the last resort it's also the last resort to put pressure on that recalcitrant husband and when you unload all of your options and you have no point of leverage or incentivizing left then you have nothing left in order to do it so for the sake of the woman that's what has to happen there's somebody who i admire tremendously a member of our community with a big big heart an enormous moral compass who is so disturbed by the notion of an aguna and wonders an excellent question that maybe some of our listeners have as well rabbis have come up with the sale of hummus and the heteriska and the shabbos elevator and lots of legal loopholes why haven't we found a way out and a solution for this he's so terribly bothered so when he saw that there's such a woman here he sent me an email and he resigned his membership in the show he said i can't belong to a shul that is rabbis who do nothing so of course when i explained we speak to this wife in this particular case several times a day i have testified in court we have gone it's not me the rabbis of our community our colleagues in boca raton the other rabbis here at gibberish the rabbis had been involved as much far more than i every day several times a day of course when he understood he obviously walked it back but the goal is not to unleash the campaign and i'll end by saying this when the time is right because we're still working several avenues when the time is right and when the wife the aguna in this case says yes it's time unfortunately tragically sadly there are no alternatives it's trying to go public and put it in the shoe of bolton's and hang it all over town and put it in the social media and hang it all over where he's from in new jersey and where his parents and siblings live and put it everywhere when that time comes i'll tell you right now i promise you as we have before we will put everything we have into that campaign the entire world will know that recalcitrant husband's name they will know his name they will know his face and sadly unfortunately they will know his family's faces and names because they are if they don't encourage and uh help him to give that get sadly then they're part of the problem not the solution so that's a promise and a pledge but it has to be the right timing the goal here is not to feel right the goalie is not to shout the loudest the goalie is not to be the hero the goal is to get her a get and if we can do it without ever doing that then that's the goal and she doesn't want it you have to follow that the woman who's consulting several experts several bottom several other um avenues and when the time is right we're going to do it all right thank you for giving me that time i i have a lot to comment in return but i do want to share a text that i received and i want to let you respond to that text because i think it's a very important point um and perhaps other people in our community are thinking about it as well so text me and said you know just to be clear i haven't spoken them in ages and i might get slapped for saying this dot dot dot there are always two sides to the coin right how would you respond to that rabbi people who know him people might have heard a narrative and i'm sure this happens in so many aguna cases where friends were in the middle of it they hear two sides of the story they know that it's probably more gray than black and white how do you as a rabbi convince people that this is unequivocally something that is an abuse something that needs to end and that even if there might be a little bit of gray there then you have to err on the side of justice when rabbis and experts are telling you to i'm so happy that you raised that because it's really important there's not two sides to the story there's three or four sides to every story we do marriage counseling and we do mediation and business and we do and and you know there's his side there's her side and then there's the truth there's definitely multiple sides but what i think it's important to understand here is that there can be multiple sides to a story in some of the elements of the story but when there's a fundamental part of the story where there's only one side we need to focus on that so am i going to tell you any i'm not talking about this particular situation in any situation that one side is entirely innocent and did everything right the entire way and bears no guilt absolutely not but i will say is that if you divide and conquer if you look and recognize and say just on the aguna issue let's say this woman did other things that are wrong let's say her parents did things that are wrong or hurtful let's say there were mistakes made but right now given where we are right now without the ability to turn back the clock right you say to someone so therefore what she should live without her get the rest of her life she should be in laguna forever and suffer what justification is there sometimes maybe there are justifications but what justification is there ever to use a get as leverage to extort or exploit using the get and and so you have to narrow in and focus in this particular case i can tell you that he has told his friends outright and blatant lies now i promise you that if we get to the point that we need to publicize this she will be on behind the bema i've already spoken her if we get to that point she will tell her story i'm behind the bema the whole world will know his name we will do everything we can so just like tonight we are trying to freehava and we don't hesitate to mention the name natalia sharbani and to call on anyone who knows him to publicize into pressure socially pressure we'll do the same in this case we're just we're not there yet so yes are there multiple sides to a story there are multiple sides to components of the story like i don't know a murders b so would you say well there's two sides to the story because it turns out that b really made fun of a's mother and really stole money from him and really made him feel bad and insulted him yeah there's multiple sides to the story there's a lot of background to the story but if we just focus in on the act of the murder that was so unjustified that's indefensible there's only one side to that part of the story and the same is true true with this get again i can't disclose too much but in this case you know he's sharing absolute lies and the evidence is piled up and and and the way i know that is not only because i know that firsthand but a bayes then examines that a bayesian doesn't issue a serif a baseman doesn't come to this conclusion without examining and without looking through it so again the woman's not always right and the man's not always the perpetrator there are one of my friends is texting me right now there's such a thing as a male laguna there's a woman who won't accept to get and yes there are men have an out of a hetero abundant other things that can be done there are men who are tortured by women who do not cooperate or who in custody and in court torture them the man's not always the the perpetrator the woman is not always the victim there are cases that can go both ways but when a bayesian has made that when a reputable based in that's also important when a reputable competent basin has made that determination that element there's only one side to the story on that element