Can Halacha recognize divorce through video calling?
• It turns out that even before the invention of the Internet, they dealt with the fascinating issue and a discussion that is also relevant today
divorce
Photography:
Dudi Vaknin
After even the Ministry of the Interior already recognizes civil marriages of couples who married online "abroad" without leaving the country because of the corona, and some of us have already moved to study and work through the screens, the question arises whether halakhah may recognize divorces made through the zoom. Already more than 25 years ago.
"For some time now we have been working on a new book that will be a key to two thousand topics from the halakhic articles written in the 40 volumes of the 'Tachumin' book series," says Rabbi Menachem Perl, head of the Tzomet Institute, how the article on the divorce by zoom was discovered. We discovered the key to an article by Rabbi Chaim Jekter, a Dayan from the United States who studied in yeshivas in Israel, which deals with the question of "arranging a divorce using telephone video."
"Video-phone", if you have asked yourself what it is, is a kind of "phone attached to a video camera and a screen that projects the image of the parties to the phone call", as the author points out.
In an article written before the Internet age and appearing in the 14th volume of the Tzomet Institute's 'Tachumin' series, Rabbi Jacket hypothesized that "technological development is likely to take huge strides, and such devices will sooner or later become the property of many.
"We should already examine whether and how such an instrument might solve serious halakhic problems of arranging a divorce according to the religion of Moses and Israel."
Thus, although the law states that in order to grant a divorce, the husband must appoint himself and his voice the writer to write the divorce and the divorce witnesses, in case of possible fear of anchoring the wife, also facilitated the appointment of the writer and witnesses in writing and by courier -
"It is worth noting that even before the invention of the telephone, the question of whether the appointment of the writer, witnesses and emissary by the husband could be made when they are out of sight," explains Rabbi Pearl, "and the discussions on these issues were not theoretical. However, it is not possible to travel long distances to name the author and the witnesses before the court that orders the divorce. True, the word 'zoom' is not mentioned in the article, but the law is relevant to modern life, culture and technology, and is so named because it 'applies' "As far as I know, no comments were written at that time, probably because readers thought it was something futuristic and irrelevant, but here, 25 years later, this issue has become a reality."
In fact, is it permissible to grant a divorce by zoom?
"The conclusion of the article is that in the case of anchoring, there is room for relief, but I am personally careful not to rule on the issue, because although I have studied jurisprudence, one must know the field of Gittin in depth in order to experience it in practice."