In the January 16, 2026 edition of The Jewish Press, Dr .Yael Respler addressed a letter written by a distraught mother whose daughter “dreads going to school because there is a bully in her class.”
Other girls are victims of this bully, “but unfortunately, the bully’s parents are affluent and significant contributors to the yeshiva, and it seems the administration is reluctant to address the issue directly.”
I couldn’t help but see the irony of the weekly seruv list sharing the page on the right side. A seruv is issued by the beit din – rabbinical court, to men withholding a get, the Jewish divorce document, from their wives, chaining them to a non-marriage. Some of these women have been in marital limbo for many years, unable to move on with their lives and remarry and possibly have children or more children. They are agunot.
Dr. Respler points out that the girl bullying her classmates likely has low self-esteem and needs to hurt others to feel better.
This I feel is true of the so-called frum men who ignore the rulings of the beit din rabbis. They are bullies, who have such inferiority complexes that they need to feel, “My wife is a bigger loser than me, and I am a powerful person who can control her future.”
Some of these men are outwardly successful, or have yichus, or are prominent in their communities, or are wealthy contributors, so like their school administrator counterparts, the rabbis don’t want to “rock the boat.”
Many years ago, a friend of mine, a young mother, related that her oldest was starting pre-school. Her voice, full of pride, quickly took on a tone of annoyance as she described the “welcome package” she had received as a new parent. Amid the rules and regulations concerning drop off and pick up was a dress code for mothers/female caregivers.
What raised her ire, she told me, was what she felt was the misplaced sense of priority. A close childhood friend of hers was an agunah of several years, and her only child was a student in the school. “Instead of focusing on our shoes – no open toes allowed, she fumed, “why don’t the keepers of the school’s sanctity – so concerned with the continuity of unsullied Yiddishkeit – use their collective, halachic expertise to persuade my friend’s husband to give her a get. Her son wants a sibling, just like his classmates have. As for my friend, she deserves to have a life.”
Why not indeed!
Some of these women have been agunot for years. They are trapped in a bizarre world where they are not single but not married.
I truly believe that gedolai hador should declare a husband who, after a designated number of years, and stubbornly refuses to give his “spouse” a get and the freedom to get on with her life, a rodef. A rodef is someone who is viewed as a future murderer out to kill you and hence you are allowed to take the initiative and kill him first.
While secular law would clearly forbid such a person from being physically put to death (it would be viewed as murder), just the fear that he could halachically be viewed as a target could instill enough fear in him to get him to reconsider. Of course, the community could “kill” him socially – not allowing him to enter a shul, kollel, or places of public gatherings, like a simcha, and those members of his family or close friends seen talking to him or opening their door to him would be ostracized as well. Their communal isolation would be the price they pay for associating with a rodef.
We are a people who believe that a single life saved is the equivalent of saving a whole world. It goes without saying that every life created can be viewed as a new world. Decades ago, those couples who after years of frustrating and heartbreaking infertility were fortunate to have had a child or two – and who now enjoy grandchildren and even great grandchildren – understand all too well the concept of creating worlds.
When an agunah in her childbearing years is prevented from halachically remarrying and having more children, then one can view the man who prevents new life as destroying entire worlds. If a destroyer of worlds does not qualify as a rodef who would? (I feel the only time a man should withhold a get is if his wife weaponizes the children against him, and consistently and illegally withholds and sabotages court ordered access. It might be a bargaining chip to right a huge wrong.)
We all know divorced women who married a second time and had more children. Had these women been agunot, these children would not be born.
Seems to me that a husband who does not give his wife a religious divorce is doing Hitler’s and Hamas’s work – decimating the Jewish people. Our enemies would like to see us disappear and become extinct: sadly, many young Jews assimilate and eventually their descendants are swallowed into the general population with no awareness of their heritage. It is frum women with feet planted firmly on the derech who are being prevented from building new batei ne’eman b’yisrael – and launching new links on the holy chain that was created at the base of Har Sinai. They are hostages, and it’s time for them to be freed.