The facts below are almost undisputed: a woman has separated from her husband and lived with another man for two years. Four months after the couple officially divorced, a baby girl was born to the new couple. The previous husband does not deny this, the current spouse says she is his and even similar to him, and the wife clarifies that there is no chance that the baby was born from her previous husband because the two were married for years - and were probably infertile. This is an almost completely clear case of bastards, in which the baby, today a young woman, is forbidden to marry. For this reason it is no less astonishing that the Great Rabbinical Court recently approved her to marry and did not define her as a bastard - through the abolition of her mother's sanctification - many years earlier.
A young woman appeared before the rabbinical court, who repented and asked to be married. Just two months before the wedding, apparently when she asked to register for marriage, she found out she was getting married, due to fear of bastards, and so she went to court. Initially, her case was tried in the Be'er Sheva Regional Court, before Rabbi Yehuda Deri, but eventually the issue came up for discussion in the Great Rabbinical Court - before the president of the court, Chief Rabbi David Lau, Rabbi Eliezer Igra and Rabbi Zion Luz-Iluz - in order to give Mishnah validity.
The story began in the early 1980s, when two spouses, residents of Eilat, began a relationship.
The two lived together for seven years without marriage and then eight more years as husband and wife.
During all this time they had no children.
In 1993, the two separated without a divorce, but then a rare thing happened - while the two together did not have children together, after the separation they both had children from other spouses.
The PUA Institute explained to the Rabbinical Court that there is rarely a high probability that there was only mutual barrenness between the two.
Rabbi David Lau, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Given the undisputed fact that the woman was married at the time of her new partner's pregnancy, on the face of it the baby is a bastard for all intents and purposes, so at the time of the divorce it was clarified that the girl born was a waste of marriage. But the Grand Court in this case took exceptional steps to get the young woman out of the miserable situation she found herself in through no fault of her own - by canceling the marriage of her mother and first husband, through rather surprising reasons. In a huge verdict, which includes more than 28,000 words, the judges were able to explain why the kiddushin should be abolished and the situation of bastards should be prevented.
It turns out that one of the witnesses was a lonely and lonely man, who never married, and after he died in his house, his body was discovered after six months due to a bad smell that came from the apartment. A search of his home turned up albums where there were pictures of him hugging a bride at her wedding and a picture of him dancing in a hug with a foreign woman. In addition, razors were found in his house, which raised the question of whether he shaved with a knife, which is forbidden according to Halacha. In an unusual move, Rabbi Igra recommended abolishing the couple's kiddushim, sometime in the 1980s, because he ruined his beard with a razor and suspected incest, as this apparently proves, even though the man had long since died, that he was not religious and could not witness the wedding.
Another suggestion, by Rabbi Zion Luz-Iluz, was to consider the possibility that the daughter was born as a result of having sex with a non-Jewish person, because in the city of Eilat, where they live, "there are many foreign workers", and thus determine that bastards are not Torah but sages. A less significant thing that can be made easier.
Although the mother vehemently denied this, the dayan wrote that it could not be denied "because it is a city of Eilat where there are people and foreign workers from many countries.
He noted that the woman had betrayed her first husband in order to bring back her who had betrayed her and gone with another, and therefore "this doubt must be attached that Maguy was conceived, to provide erroneous sanctifications."
"In the city of Eilat there are many foreign workers",
The most significant decision was made, among others, by Chief Rabbi David Lau, in which it was argued that the fact that both parties - the husband and the wife - were mutually barren, and therefore the consecration was invalid.
If they had known in advance what their situation was, they would not have married, the judges argued.
"And it is true that in spite of all the above we would not have abolished the kiddushin to allow the market without a divorce only for the above reasons, and we would not even think of it," admitted one of the judges. And the abolition of sanctification for the purpose of permitting bastards. "
"This case from time to time came to me from a sleep deprivation from my eyes, I saw the tears of the oppressed and I pray to the Creator of the world who guides me in the true way," Rabbi David Lau concluded the discussion, and the judges allowed the young woman to marry without fear of bastards.
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