Last week we mentioned an interesting case brought to beis din by tzimmer or guest house/hostel owners who felt duped by Satmar by renting at their regular price for the recent Satmar shabbos event in Meron rather than increasing the price as they would have had they known in advance that Satmar was planning to descend on their locale...

Behadrei is reporting on a strange argument up north. As you surely heard, the Satmar Rebbe recently came on a trip to Israel with an entourage of thousands of adherents. Whatever it is they are doing, they are planning to go to Meron for Shabbos and spend the Shabbos as one big group together.

I have had to spend some time recently in the building of the Rabbanut Beis Din in Jerusalem.

Just under a month ago, Rav Avraham Zarbiv, a dayan on the beis din of Tel Aviv, set up a new institution in Gaza - the beis din of Gaza. Rabbi Zarbiv is on hiatus and is currently a combat soldier fighting in Gaza.

I could not find an article in Hebrew about this, which is unusual, so I have to rely on VIN for this story...

In case you thought you had heard everything strange about what might hold up a divcorce, you probably haven't...

According to INN, Minister of Religious Affairs Matan Kahane has proposed a law to step up the fight against get refusal. 

Crazy story.

Kikar is reporting on an interesting psak issued by the regional beis din of the Jerusalem area, presided by the honorable rabbis Rav Meir Kahn, Rav Yaakov Steinhaus, and Rav Yitzchak Ushinski. 

Kipa brings an interesting psak of the Higher Conversion Court regarding conversion fraud.

We never get to hear the end of these stories!

Back in the day, specifically the initial lockdown a year ago, the streets were so empty of human traffic, foot or vehicular, that all sorts of wildlife were seen entering cities and wandering around, maybe looking for food or entertainment... in some places this continued much longer, to different degrees, even though people were out and about, it was still much quieter than normal and more welcoming for the animals.

I haven't written about any of the piskei halacha from various rabbonim regarding taking the COVID-19 vaccine because the overwhelming number of rabbonim have said to take it and there isn't really anything interesting to write about that (unless you want to get into a discussion about the need for rabbis to determine medical issues, which I don't)..

A number of news websites last night posted about something that happened with a well known Israeli personality. All the sites have since removed their articles on this matter (one explained they had been asked to and even though he report was allowed legally and halachically they decided to agree to remove it), so in this post I am not going to name the person (if someone posts it in the comments I will not remove it), because the post is not about him.

Nearly a decade after a woman converted to Judaism, the beis din is considering revoking her conversion.

This woman was originally married to a non-Jew. Eventually they got divorced, and now she wants to marry a Jewish man. When applying for marriage the beis din discovered that during her original conversion period she was continuing her relationship with her non-Jewish boyfriend and she hid it from the beis din. She deceived the beis din and they will now look into the possibility of revoking her conversion.

The beis din stated that normally the rule of not looking into another beis din's conversions would not allow them to consider revoking the conversion, but in this case she herself told them that she deceived the original beis din regarding her relationship with the non-Jew. They must therefore redirect her back to the original beis din and look into what happened and investigate the conversion process in her case. In the meantime, she is being added to the list of people who cannot marry.
source: Israel Hayom

Obviously, some are upset about the fact that a beis din can possibly revoke a conversion nearly ten years after it happened. Converts should not have to walk around unsure if one day a beis din will say you are not Jewish.

And I agree with that. Once converted, converted. There are no backsies. A convert is as Jewish as any other Jew, and no matter what happens after the conversion, it cannot be taken back. The Shulchan Aruch even says if certain things were done improperly during the original conversion, the conversion remains valid. And, as well, the recent trend of rejecting some rabbis who do conversions as not doing them properly, despite being Orthodox rabbis, or not being knowledgeable enough or important enough to do conversions, is a crock. That does not fly in halacha and only works in Israel because the Rabbanut has been given centralized power to do such things.

This case seems to be different than that. In this case she seems to possibly have deceived the beis din doing the original conversion. If she deceived them it was not just regarding the intent of the conversion, which might still be ok after the fact, but in her actions. I dont know if the deception of hiding a non-Jewish boyfriend is strong enough to determine the original conversion invalid, but I can understand looking into it.

Converts should not need to walk around for years, for the rest of their lives, wondering if a rabbi will come over and question his or her Judaism. But converts should not be deceiving the beis din doing the conversion and sometimes that deception might need to be investigated.

----- UPDATE TO POST ------

It has been clarified to me that she did not deceive anyone in this case. The story is that she met a man in the conversion class with her and they decided to marry. He decided not to go through with the conversion. She did continue keeping kashrut.

As well, someone sent to me the tshuva of Rav Shaul Yisraeli, published by Eretz Chemda, that says even in a case of full deception and the convert never had any intention on keeping mitzvos, once the person has been converted, the conversion remains valid because they wanted to be part of the Jewish nation. Rav Yisraeli qualifies that by saying this is bdieved, and lechatchila we do not convert people who do not accept upon themselves to try to keep mitzvos as fully as possible. After the fact, the conversion remains valid and there is no such thing as revoking a conversion.

So, in light of this, in this case as well, her marriage should not be prevented and investigating her conversion is "honaas ha'ger"

A beis din appointed by a group of prominent batei din, making this the ultimate beis din of beis dins, a joint task force of sorts, is going to be investigating into the affairs and crimes of Eliezer Berland, leader of a cult within Breslav.

This beis din of beis dins published a letter informing the public of their intentions to investigate, with the agreement of Berland himself, and that in the meantime both sides should immediately stop any hatred and accusations against the other side and not publish anything negative about the other. Anybody with a claim or complaint should come to the beis din and lay it all out before them for consideration. The letter is signed by representatives of the various appointing batei din and by prominent rabbis who are members of this beis din of beis dins.

I am not sure what they feel they need to investigate. The investigation was already done by the police. What is this beis din going to add to that? Much of what was discovered about Berland is online and available for the public to view on Youtube. He has publicly confessed to at least some of his crimes. What more does this beis din want or expect to be able to determine? What are they capable of determining? Does the beis din have the necessary skills to investigate such heinous crimes? Do they have access to the victims to call them in to testify against him, and to persuade them to come and testify again if they dont want to, thinking they had already put this behind them?

And what can their decision possibly be in light of an investigation? Even if they say he is guilty, then what?

Why would Berland agree to this investigation, and to putting himself and his future in their hands? He would agree to it because he knows the risk is negligible. The worst case scenario is that they confirm what the police and courts already determined - that he is guilty. Then what? What can they do to him?  Whatever they say is unenforceable, and he can continue living his life as he wants to no matter what they say.

But that tiny bit of risk is infinitesimal. Berland is in a no-lose situation, and he stands to gain a lot. Just by holding the investigation, they are already showing him honor. he was given honorifics in the letter. He is an important person. And he knows that since there is nothing new for them to discover or add to what is already known by the public, this is going to be a whitewash. Either they will clear him of all wrongdoing and say he was framed, or they will give him a slap on the wrist and say he has since done tshuva and already suffered enough anyway, or they will say his confessions were forced or were confessed when he was sick and not in a clear state of mind.

Berland has everything to gain by this investigation and nothing to lose. This is pure reputation laundering.

Behadrei is reporting on an historic decision taken yesterday regarding the appointment of a woman to a legal, rather than administrative, position in the rabbinical court system.

the decision was to appoint a woman, Shira Ben Eli, a lawyer by trade, to the position of a legal assistant to the judges of the beis din.

This position will involve Ben Eli in the issues of Ivri law (law based on Hebrew tradition) and on court decisions affecting family and females, giving her unprecedented influence in forming legal decisions in beis din on these matters.

I am not familiar with the different positions and what level of responsibility and involvement they bear, but this is a clear win for the groups that petitioned the court to do away with the discrimination against women. The question is where it will go from here. Will they next fight for female judges? What's the next step and at what point does it become problematic? Technically, I think women should be able (from a halachic and therefore public perspective)  to do anything that the halacha allows them to do, even if it is something that was never done until now, so if the halacha only does noo allow them to be judges, they should be able to do everything else. If there are other positions the halacha does not permit to be filled by women, then those too, but they should not be limited just because someone is worried what might happen next or that it gives them influence they never before had.

You rarely hear about wedding annulments in Judaism. They are very rare and happen only in exceptional cases. Interestingly, there was an annulment just less than two weeks ago, and now the news is now reporting the second wedding annulment this month that was just finalized a short while ago.

The case is of Oded Gez who has left his wife an aguna 5 years ago by refusing to give her a gett. The situation got so bad that the batei din imposed the harshest social sanctions on him that were available in their toolbelt. As a result of those sanctions he was fired form his job as professor at Bar Ilan University, in addition to other sanctions as well. He was also publicly "shamed", though for years it did not help.

At some point Gez escaped from Israel using a forged passport, hiding out in Cyprus, Uman, England and Belgium as he ran away from legal authorities and from the beis din aguna division who stayed no his trail. He was captured in Belgium and is in the process of being extradited to Israel.

sources: Behadrei, Kipa, Ynet