{"id":186777,"date":"2013-10-11T19:01:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-12T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/10\/11\/schwer-zu-sein-a-yid-3\/"},"modified":"2013-10-11T19:01:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T00:01:00","slug":"schwer-zu-sein-a-yid-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/10\/11\/schwer-zu-sein-a-yid-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Schwer zu Sein a Yid*"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that some folks from my wife&#8217;s old home town have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/10\/11\/nyregion\/rabbis-accused-in-kidnapping-plot-to-force-men-to-grant-divorces.html\">been up to no good<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">In Brooklyn\u2019s ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, Mendel Epstein made a name for himself as the rabbi to see for women struggling to divorce their husbands. Among the Orthodox, a divorce requires the husband\u2019s permission, known as a \u201cget,\u201d and tales abound of women whose husbands refuse to consent.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">While it\u2019s common for rabbis to take action against defiant husbands, such as barring them from synagogue life, Rabbi Epstein, 68, took matters much further, according to the authorities.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">For hefty fees, he orchestrated the kidnapping and torture of reluctant husbands, charging their wives as much as $10,000 for a rabbinical decree permitting violence and $50,000 to hire others to carry out the deed, according to federal charges unsealed on Thursday morning.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Rabbi Epstein, along with another rabbi, Martin Wolmark, who is the head of a yeshiva, as well as several men in what the authorities called the \u201ckidnap team,\u201d appeared in Federal District Court in Trenton after a sting operation in which an undercover federal agent posed as an Orthodox Jewish woman soliciting Rabbi Epstein\u2019s services. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">When two undercover F.B.I. agents \u2014 one posing as a woman seeking a divorce, the other as her brother \u2014 asked a rabbi for help, the rabbi explained how Rabbi Epstein might be able to assist them.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cYou need special rabbis who are going to take this thing and see it through to the end,\u201d Rabbi Martin Wolmark, a respected figure who presides over a yeshiva in <b>Monsey, N.Y.<\/b>, said in a recorded telephone call on Aug. 7. He described Rabbi Epstein as \u201ca hired hand\u201d who could help, according to the criminal complaint in the case.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">When the undercover agents met with Rabbi Epstein a week later, he said that he was confident he could secure a get once his \u201ctough guys\u201d had made their threats. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(emphasis mine)<\/p>\n<p>Women who are trapped by this are called Agunot, (literally &#8220;Chained Women&#8221;) and their plight is heart-breaking, but these guys are not trying to help, they are drying to make bank of these women&#8217;s pain.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the alleged kidnappers come from My wife&#8217;s old neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>She spent much of her time growing up in Rockland county, just over the line from Monsey.<\/p>\n<p>Who knew that she was in an area that was mobbed up?<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">It&#8217;s hard to be a Jew.&nbsp; This is <b>so<\/b> embarrassing.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that some folks from my wife&#8217;s old home town have been up to no good: In Brooklyn\u2019s ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, Mendel Epstein made a name for himself as the rabbi to see for women struggling to divorce their husbands. Among the Orthodox, a divorce requires the husband\u2019s permission, known as a \u201cget,\u201d and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1052,1021,1015],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crimes","category-religion","category-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186777"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}