Interesting Psak: she is divorced but he isnt

The Times of Israel is reporting on a really strange and unusual situation in The Rabbanut beis din in Jerusalem.

According to the report, a man and a woman were married in 2006. Since then they had five children together. In 2017 she decided she wanted a divorce. He refused to give her the gett and free her. Eventually, after two years, the beis din declared her an agunah saying her request is legitimate and if he does not comply, social sanctions would be applied against him. Social sanctions were ineffective and failed, as people generally ignored the sanctions and conducted their regular business with him (rented an apartment and whatnot), and the beis din recently threatened to imprison him for his refusal, as the law allows.

The threat of jail seems to have done the job and Mr eventually agreed to grant the divorce with the gett.

While he agreed to give the divorce, it was just an attempt to avoid the punishment, not to actually give the divorce. At the divorce ceremony it seems this fellow tried to invalidate the gett in various ways, saying words incorrectly and whatnot. Beis Din ignored his fooling around and made him repeatedly say the text until eventually they were satisfied that it had been done properly and they declared the divorce kosher.

The dayanim warned Mr that if he goes around talking about the case and casting aspersions about the validity of the gett claiming it was invalid he would be held in contempt of court. He actually violated that and after the fact publicly claimed the gett had been invalid as he had said words incorrectly and all that. he was jailed for seven days because of this.

The strange part is the final decision. The beis din decided that the divorce was valid and final. the woman is divorced and free to  court other men and get married, should she so desire. However, the man is claiming he is still married to her because, he says, the gett was invalid - because he is declaring himself still married, so he is not allowed to marry another woman. if he wants to he will have to grant his ex-wife a second gett. 

The beis din divided up their statuses using the concept for him of a person considering somethign forbidden actually makes it forbidden to himself, even if in reality it is not forbidden. In this case he continuously declared himself still married, so we will not allow him to remarry even though technically he is wrong.

It should be noted that the ex-wife has said if he grants her a second gett she will accept it to free him.

This si a strange case. H finally agreed to divorce her and she ends up divorced but he does not. The question might remain if a beis din will grant him a hetter mea rabbonim to allow him to remarry without granting the second gett....

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