How can any Beth Din who has Judges like the Beth Din of America handing out bogus seruvim be acceptable? Why would anyone go to this Beth Din unless they have accepted your bribe and you already know what the outcome of their decision will be? Rabbi Pinkas, Brooklyn NY I was considering coming to the Beth Din of America to handle my divorce, but after reading your information I have decided to move to another Beth Din. If this much crap has been publicized about their judges, I can only imagine what has NOT been publicized. D. Birnbaum, Flatbush NY Halacha dictates that no Beth Din discussion should take place in the absence of the parties, following the ruling of the Shach in Choshen Mishpat Siman 13:8. Such as GET (extracted after an unlawful discussion) is therefore an unlawfully coerced GET, even if there were halachically valid reasons for the coercion. Should the husband be coerced and gave a coerced GET, any children from the mother are mamzarim. This is Beth Din 101; for something the Beth Din of America does not understand. The Beth Din of America is creating a population of mamzarim. I must also comment about some Rabbis and Beth Dins who try and find a problem with the Kiddushin, perhaps it was a ‘mistaken kiddushin’. Allowing a woman to remarry on this basis is again just creating more mamzarim. Rabbi Dovid Greenfield, Lakewood NJ Rabbi Arye “Larry” Dudovitz, a Chabad/Lubavitch Rabbi who sexually abused a 15 year old boy back in 2006 pleaded guilty. Rabbi Dudovitz said that he met one-on-one with Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, the head of the Beth Din of America. Dudovitz also stated that he met with other high ranking rabbis on the Chicago Rabbinical Council. As a rabbi, Schwartz would be considered a mandated reporter for reporting child abuse. Why didn’t Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz report this child abuser? Obviously trying to protect one of his own. This makes Schwartz bias toward Rabbis and unable to serve as a judge. Who knows what other rules and laws he will want to disregard when dealing with your case? Yochanan Frankel, Telshe Yeshiva, Chicago, IL So sickening to see the GET lunatics on the Internet. To all of them. There is a True and Just G-d who runs the world and will stop these crazy so-called rabbis who break and desecrate Jewish law and Jewish marriage. Feces like Mendel Epstein have been shown to the world to be inhumane and that even their motives are money and (false) power and not religion. In terms of religion: 1) These so-called rabbis break Jewish law in the worst of ways. The Targum Yerushalmi on the verse "lo sachbol reichayim vorochev" states that a person who mixes in someone’s marriage or causes animosity between a husband and wife has no portion in the World to Come. 2) Jewish law states that except in extremely rare cases such a "divorce" is invalid and the children of a future marriage are mamzerim - thank Mendel Epstein, Shlomo Weissmann and Michael Broyde for that. 3) The above mentioned lunatics generally take women who are suffering from post-partum anxiety and convince them to fight for divorce against all medical advice and against real rabbis who do follow Torah. They are inhumane and fight against humane rabbis who fight hard to save marriages. May they all be stopped soon by Hashem, just as Mendel Epstein, shem reshoim yirkav (may the names of evil people be blotted out) forever. Yakov Pollock, Fairlawn, NJ. Nobody should use the prenuptial of the Beth Din of America. It is against halacha and gives the woman the power to claim money, children, property, alimony, and then use the same civil court to force their husband to give a GET. Only a fool would sign such a document. Where are the Rabbis when an orthodox woman takes her husband to civil court and claim the kids, money and all the possession? Until women start treating men fairly in divorce, no man should sign a prenup. Rabbi Friedlander, Seattle WA. Why not just start dividing all the property, money and future children before you are married too? A prenup is a document which a spouse can always look at during their marriage and decide if they even want to stay in the marriage. Making it easy to get out of a marriage, will certainly increase the orthodox divorce rate, something we don’t need. The Ketuboth and Gemora Gittin explain quite clearly how to handle divorce for Jews. Bringing in the civil courts is a Chillel Hashem and only a goy would even suggest such a thing. There are numerous reasons why you SHOULD NOT sign a prenup. 1) Most all pre-nuptials are coercive. A woman can force the man into the agreement or call off the marriage. Likewise, it will create a situation where the woman can compel a husband to divorce his wife unjustifiably. 2) There is no quid pro quo - You pay money for a car with a contract. You get something for your money, being a car. Where is the consideration for a man to sign this prenup? It is one sided. 3) Many prenups are initiated by a third party, usually a parent, rabbi or friend. They think they are helping protect the woman, but they are only helping break up the marriage. What hard feelings will be going through the mans head when wife continually waves the prenup in his face during the marriage. 4) Any prenup about a GET should also include issues about child custody, child support and no alimony. 5) Going into any marriage while holding a document about its failure cannot make a healthy marriage. 6) There is nothing in Jewish law, Talmud or such that requires a man to have a prenup. We have Gemara Ketubot, Gittin and Kiddushin for deciding marriage issues besides the marriage Ketubah. 7) A pre-nuptial will force the couple to involve the goyish courts, and this is Mesirah (informing on a fellow Jew to the non-Jews). 8) A pre-nuptial can force a huband to give a GET against his will which will invalidate the GET, causing the future children to be mamzerim. 9) Not to try and spoil a long running fairytale, but a wife who leaves her husband (or vice versa) does not automatically make her an agunah. Avi Teitelberg, Miami, Florida We wish to thank HaRav Moshe Sternbuch Shlita the Vice President of the Beth Din (Jewish Court) for ruling that pre-nuptial agreements are NOT Kosher. He is the Rabbi of the local GR”A synagogue named after the Vilna Gaon of whom he is a direct descendant. He has come out strongly against the pre-nuptial agreement, but more specifically the RCA pre-nuptial agreement. Numerous organizations, mainly pro-female, back such agreements, as do many rabbinical organizations around the world. In some cases, a rabbi will not marry a couple that does not have a pre-nuptial agreement. Rabbi Sternbuch specifically references the pre-nuptial agreement version written and accepted by the (RCA) Rabbinical Council of America along with the Beth Din of America.
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