Shmuel Herenstein

Agunacide aspires to galvanize redemption; of chained wives who are being held captive by husbands who refuse to give a Get, and of a chained legal system which is being held captive by a fear-inspired deification of status quo. The violent solution to this problem, proposed and practiced by former generations (they don’t call it “going medieval” for naught), is no longer an acceptable form of conflict resolution, and we are told there is nothing else that can be done. Monetary sanctions and incarceration are lame replacements for the psychological deterrent of anticipated physical pain, and besides, the halachic prenup does nothing for the women who were married before its inception, and besides, the halachic prenup attempts to remedy a symptom of our gangrened legal system but the decaying root remains untreated. Agunacide is not only descriptive, however, but prescriptive as well, offering a solution, and showing that Halacha is not as impotent as some of our shepherds might want us to believe. Jewish betrothal is a quasi-acquisition which is accompanied by the following declaration: הרי את מקודשת לי בטבעת זו כדת משה וישראל. “You are hereby betrothed to me, in accordance with the rules of the religion of Moses and Israel.” The explicit reason we say these words is to equip each marriage with an implicit condition, providing an eject button, to be pressed in times of emergency. This mechanism is called Afkinhu, which allows for the marriage to be retroactively annulled.Back in the 12th century, however, Maimonides’ paskined (ruled) that recalcitrant husbands were to be beaten into get-giving submission, a quintessentially Medieval solution which essentially rendered Afkinhu extraneous, resulting in the eventual reification of a de-facto mesora that Afkinhu is now off limits. Nowadays, anyone who dares mention Afkinhu as a practical solution for the Aguna crisis is frum-shamed, derided and accused of being an Apikores (heretic) who has come to sully some sacrosanct tradition of leg-crossed passivity. They will also say that I am being reckless with regards to the slippery-slope that Afkinhu will beget. Maybe the sanctity of marriage will be marred because a theoretical wife who gets impregnated while cheating on her husband will now be able to gather a court and craftily use Afkinhu to retroactively prevent her son from becoming a mamzer (bastard). Ya, maybe that will happen [eyeroll emoji]. But yo they can do that anyways, even if Orthodoxy continues worshipping a doctrine of shev v’al ta’aseh adif (literally: sitting and not acting is better). And yo why should countless actual women be forced to languish in limitless agony, in solitary confinement, forced to perform any other number of her husbands capricious druthers to elicit a favor from a man who has a vested interest in seeing her suffer and maybe still loves her and also can extort her for soooo much money by holding the get hostage—how much is your freedom worth to you?—due to some vague future fright? Agunacide is a shoutout to my yiddin around the globe: Hock up your Rabbis about Afkinhu and get the dialogue started. We can all play a vital role in the imminent revolution, which, by the way, are rarely initiated by those who are already established and entrenched and comfortable. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and a handful of others are notable exceptions and I have taken note and been inspired. Agunacide is calling out the Rabbis, with a call to action: start paskining Afkinhu and show us that you care about the pain you are putting these women through. Failure to do so will continue the perpetration of the greatest “Chillul Hashem” of our generation. Because it sure seems like y’all don’t care enough, and, as I mention in my song, the legal definition of “a desecration of G-d’s name” is a din in (function of) public opinion. Agunacide is a Shofar blast; to wake up a slumbering bureaucracy and to herald the coming redemptions. The Aibishter should give us syata dishmya. גלוי וידוע לפניך שלא לכבודי עשיתי ולא לכבוד בית אבא אלא לכבודך עשיתי שלא ירבו מחלוקת בישראל

Posted by Shmuel Herenstein on Sunday, August 12, 2018