Aharon Friedman, a successful young man who works for Representative Dave Camp of Michigan as a tax counsel, will soon see his influence grow as his boss takes over as chairman of the tax-writing committee. However, despite his blossoming career, he faces the same sadness and frustration that millions of other men across the Western world have come to know intimately: his wife has run off with his child and relegated him to weekend dad. In Mr. Friedman’s case it is even more frustrating than usual, because his wife Tamar Epstein, an Orthodox Jew like him, removed Mr. Friedman’s daughter from his home state and obtained a parenting plan that requires him to drive long distances to see his daughter on his weekends.
Unfortunately, the parenting plan also requires that Mr. Friedman drive between Friday and Saturday evening, which is forbidden for observant Orthodox Jews. Although it isn’t clear whether this was a deliberate ploy on the part of Ms. Epstein and her counsel, it would be far from unusual if this were the case. Furthermore, Friedman was the victim of an abductor wife, who unilaterally moved their child to her parents’ house in Philadelphia and then obtained the rubber-stamp approval from the court that many of us are familiar with.
According to Yisroel Belsky, a prominent and respected Brooklyn rabbi, the court obstinately disregarded Mr. Friedman’s religious convictions, dismissing his objections in the usual, high-handed manner it adopts when dealing with fathers.
Like most men, Mr. Friedman, is virtually powerless when it comes to family law, but there is one difference: under Jewish law a woman can only obtain a religious divorce, known as a “get,” if her husband consents. Until a Jewish woman receives a get, she is considered “agunah,” which means she cannot remarry. Apparently, this is the last card Mr. Friedman holds in his custody dispute, so he is presumably withholding the get until Epstein comes to more reasonable custody terms.
To pressure Mr. Friedman, his wife has enlisted the help of the New York-based Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA), apparently a radical offshoot of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), an organization that has been pushing for female rabbis and other departures from Orthodoxy. The issue of Jewish divorce is very important to JOFA as well, as increasing the ease and advantages of divorce for women (but not men) has always been one of feminism’s primary goals.
ORA, in conjunction with a couple bullhorn-wielding rabbis as accomplices, assembled a mob outside Mr. Friedman’s Silver Springs Maryland apartment in an attempt to shame and intimidate him into caving to his wife’s demands. Despite the religious trappings worn by some of ORA’s henchmen, such a collection of rabble could have come from anywhere, and it is never polite to bother people at their home over private matters, so this display can only be regarded as pure thuggery in the name of white knighting for a woman who ripped a child from its father’s arms.
However, prominent ORA supporter Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld has attempted to frame the debate by calling Mr. Friedman a terrorist and exhorting followers to harass him at his workplace. Well, Rabbi Herzfeld, if loving one’s child and fighting to be with her makes a man a terrorist, then there are tens of millions of terrorists right here in the United States.
Although Mr. Friedman’s travails parallel my own in many ways, as a Christian it isn’t my place to directly involve myself in what is a fundamentally Jewish dispute. However, as a father my feelings are entirely clear on this matter: if I found a Christian group along with a preacher or priest using the same vicious tactics ORA does, I’d be out there with a bullhorn myself, standing down the mob. In fact, I might even reconsider my position of neutrality if such a protest happened in Seattle — some principles, such as fatherhood, transcend religious differences.
