A few days ago there was a report about a beis din helping an aguna get freed.

A couple came to the beis din in Tel Avvi for divorce proceedings. The woman wanted to get a divorce but for over a year the husband was refusing to grant it.

The judges of the beis din convinced the husband to grant the divorce, but at the last minute the husband threw a wrench into the works. He suddenly was demanding 2000NIS for the divorce.

2000NIS does not sound like a lot of money. We are used to hearing stories of agunahs being held hostage to the tune of tens or hundreds fo thousands of shekels and dollars. 2000nis really is not a lot of money, but it was threatening to hold up this divorce. From what I understand this couple was completely destitute and there was no way she would be able to come up with this money. For her 2000 was like 200,000.

According to the report, the judges, Rabbis Yitzchak Elmaliach and Yitzchak Marveh, each pulled 500nis out of their pockets and offered to pay it for her. The woman's lawyer pulled 1000nis out of her pocket, and the deal was sealed.

She got her gett.

This was a tremendous act of chessed performed by the dayanim, and the lawyer. Say what you want about all the problems with the system, there are times where they show their humanity and concern. Maybe in the more average situation we don't see these things because the demands are much greater - what are the dayyanim going to personally do when the demand is for half a million shekels or whatnot? Here they were able to do so something, and they showed their compassion by immediately acting on it.

That being said, the first thing this reminded me of was the Maharam of Rottenburg who refused to allow his community to ransom him after having been taken prisoner, as doing so, he believed, would encourage more kidnappings in order to draw the Jewish community into paying high ransom fees.

In general the phenomenon of recalcitrant husbands demanding high payments in exchange for a divorce (and vice versa) is repugnant and has to be stopped. Paying off a small one is humane and compassionate for this specific case, but it does not help in the quashing of the trend of making such demands.

That being said, I go back to my first point... setting a trend or not, greater good or not... for this woman and her situation, what these dayyanim did was amazing and showed a level of compassion rarely seen in these situations.