The Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Aharon Teitelbaum, has ordered a man from a more extreme Hasidic sect, who married a second wife without first granting a divorce to his first wife, to grant her a divorce within 24 hours. That ultimatum is set to expire on Thursday.
The man - an ultra-Orthodox Jew, who is not a Satmar Hasid himself, but lives in a Hasidic center, married for the first time in his youth and started a house. But more than a decade ago, the couple's relationship ran aground and they decided to separate. Despite this, the man has not given his first wife a divorce.
In a case where a husband refuses to grant his wife a get, or Jewish ritual divorce, the woman cannot remarry, making her an agunah, or chained wife. The husband also cannot remarry according to Jewish law, unless he receives an exceptional permit signed by 100 rabbis. Several years ago the man received such a permit and since then he married a second time, while his first wife remained chained.
Teitelbaum, the head of the Hasidic sect based in Kiryat Joel in New York, has taken on the case if the chained woman.
In recent weeks, the Rebbe heard that the man had begun to pray regularly in the kollel headed by the Rebbe's son-in-law, Shimon Zeev Meisels. Teitelbaum called his son-in-law in recent days and ordered him to remove the husband from the study hall. The son-in-law tried to soften the Rebbe, who allowed him to try to convince the husband to grant a divorce through persuasion and dialogue.
After several conversations between the head of the kollel and the recalcitrant husband, he agreed to grant a divorce, but ultimately retracted due to stubborn reluctance. This led Teitelbaum to stand in the central Beit Midrash in Kiryat Joel and for the first time publicly addressing the painful affair.
"Here in Kiryat Joel lives a man who married his second wife before he divorced his first wife, and his claim is that he has the permission of a hundred rabbis. I have learned that ome of the rabbis have already retracted their signature after learning that the entire permit is based on false lies, some have retracted In writing and some orally even before he married his second wife," Teitelbaum said.
He publicly demanded within 24 hours to receive valid documentation of the 100 signatories of the rabbis, or a religious divorce from one of the wives.
The incident took on an international flavor after Rabbi Avraham Katz, who had supported the controversial second marriage, attempted to sneak out of Israel despite a court-ordered travel ban. He was arrested at the airport and is now under house arrest.
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The arrest warrant was issued against Katz in Israel due to the rabbi's role in officiating at the second marriage of the man who refuses to grant a divorce to his wife. Due to his participation in the wedding, the Rabbinical Court issued an order to delay his departure from the country. Security guards who noticed his suspicious behavior in Israel called the police who arrested him. In consultation with the Rabbinical Court, it was decided to allow him to be placed under house arrest, which sparked a protest in the Mea Shearim neighborhood in Jerusalem.