FROM OUR ARCHIVES
50 YEARS AGO
January 11, 1968
The Supreme Court appealed to the rabbinical authorities to find a halachic solution to the suffering of women whose marriage bonds could not be dissolved because their husbands had disappeared or refused to give them a divorce. The appeal was included in a judgment dismissing the appeal of attorney-general Moshe Ben-Ze’ev against a decision of the Tel Aviv District Court rejecting his request for the release of a man who had been held in prison for over five years for refusing to divorce his wife. In a series of appeals, the state prosecutor sought to have the man, Avraham Yihye, released on the grounds that he was a psychopath, would never relent and would probably remain in prison until he died. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision and in reviewing the evidence, the court considered the testimony of a psychiatrist who found that Yihye was an abnormal, borderline personality, though not psychotic. Yihye was quoted as saying: “I am now in Shatta Prison. No divorce. Rabbis have come to me. I told them no divorce. I have been in many prisons. I don’t care at all. The main thing is that I am in Eretz Yisrael – and I don’t care in what part.” Turning to a possible solution of the problem through Halacha, Justice Moshe Silberg wrote: “A way should be found, by halachic means, to free a woman from the bonds of igun [the state of a woman who is legally barred from marriage] in such circumstances that separation from her husband is mandatory.”
25 YEARS AGO
January 11, 1993
The newspaper affiliated with Rabbi Eliezer Schach lashed out at the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, calling it a “messianic sect” with vain and stupid beliefs.” Under the headline “Widespread public opposition to attempts by members of the messianic sect to penetrate the haredi community,” Yated Ne’eman, in an unsigned article, wrote: “There is shock and dismay in the haredi community from attempts by members of the messianic sect to bare their fangs in Bnei Brak, the city of Torah and Hassidism. In the last few months, members of the sect have tried to spread their vain and stupid beliefs in the secular community, in the process cheapening one of the foundations of Judaism and damaging simple faith.” Schach had called Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson a false messiah in the past, but this attack was the first since a large faction within Chabad began claiming unequivocally one month earlier that Schneerson was the messiah.
The direct target of the newspaper’s wrath was Rabbi Shlomo Wolpa, author of a book titled Receiving the King Messiah, which set out to prove – based on the writings of Maimonides – that Schneerson was the messiah. Chabad rented out a hall in Bnei Brak for a lecture on the subject by Wolpa, and circulated leaflets announcing the lecture, something the paper termed “cheeky.”
A source close to Schach pointed out that the attack on Wolpa was also a veiled attack on another of Schach’s foes, Shas mentor Ovadia Yosef, who was one of the rabbis who wrote letters of approbation that were printed in the book.