Posted on 11/25/21
| News Source: MATZAV
Condemnation of the secret decision of a beis din in Tel Aviv to nullify a marriage on the basis of mekach ta’us (acquiring something under mistaken assumptions) continued, with Rav Chaim Kanievsky and Rav Gershon Edelstein saying the heter is worthless.
“We hereby join the protest of the rabbonim and geonim against the desecration of kevod shomayim through the breach of halacha by three dayonim of the Tel Aviv Beis Din allowing a married woman to remarry against the halacha,” the gedolim wrote. “We warn everyone involved in appointing dayonim to be extremely careful not to appoint dayonim or a panel of dayonim prone to breach the halacha and issue incorrect rulings.”
Rabbonim informed Rav Gershon that although two of the dayonim involved issued a letter saying they erred, the beis din’s original psak was still officially binding and nothing can stop the woman from remarrying.
Rav Aharon Halevi Dunner, raavad of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations in Britain, where the woman’s husband resides, issued a letter of protest, saying that the case was already brought to his beis din 10 years ago and he saw no reason to annul the kiddushin since “the husband appeared before us and we saw that according to halacha it was absolutely impossible to annul the marriage.”
“Yet now dayonim who never saw or heard the husband and never knew him, have come and annulled the marriage from afar and after many years, in line with the adage, ‘He who wants to lie, gives testimony of something far away,’” Rav Dunner wrote.
Bnei Brak rabbonim headed by Rav Sariel Rosenberg also issued a letter against the psak, noting that marriage annulments were always condemned by gedolei haposkim.