Fact Check Please…
The latest bit of “information” going round the Agunah argument blogs is that supposedly Tamar Epstein(or her family or her friends) tried to have her hopefully soon to be ex-husband abducted just outside her mother’s home. Here’s my response: Evidence please? As the story has grown, much like the fish that got away, now supposedly even the FBI is involved in the investigation.
Here’s the first problem I run into, there is no police report. Police reports are public documents. Even if the identities of the victim and suspect are being withheld, you should be able to find a censored report saying that there was an attempted abduction in Lower Merion PA. Checked the local papers for crime section, nothing. Searched the available online databases, nothing. So while some anonymous supporter of Aharon Friedman’s is spreading this story, to this point they have offered no actual evidence of it.
Moving in that same direction, the FBI cannot simply get involved in local investigations. For the FBI to get involved it would have to fall within their purview of crimes that they investigate. According to the FBI itself, attempted abductions of adults does not fall within those categories. I understand that to many of the backward types that want to keep women agunot until they die, the FBI is this spooky organization that looks into everything and anything. However, that is just not the case. And again, one can check to a certain degree open FBI case files, and doing so pops up not attempted abductions in Lower Merion.
I appreciate that certain folks feel that they have an obligation to help Aharon Friedman. I also get that some of those folks have a loose hold on either the truth or reality or both. However, if they are going to write fan fiction I would just wish that they would check some of the facts to make it plausible, and thus enable proper suspension of reality.
For the blog owners posting said story, I wish they would actually check their facts at least a little bit before libelously claiming that Tamar and her family tried to orchestrate an abduction.
Boy you are really more choshuv than I thought. You can even retroactively change history and change the fact that someone was assaulted because it suits your agenda. Carry on with your invention of facts.
Nonsense, Tamar’s family are totally honest people. All lies have initiated from the other side, from the beginning and all through this sad story.
You are replying to someone who has created an identity theft blog simply to run me, and my halakhic defense of Tamar and other actual agunot down.
Realizing that it’s likely not true, why wouldn’t a beis din do so? What happened to koffin oto ad sheyomar rotze ani?
Most poskim do not hold by Kofin oto. I could give you a long Teshuva on the Rabbinic developments regarding Kefia, and when it does and doesn’t result in a Get HaMeusa, however, from the information that is publicly available the Epstein-Friedman divorce does not fall into the narrowly defined categories in which Kefia is permitted by the Shulhan Arukh.
Second to that there is this recent desire to be more frum than the Shulhan Arukh… To which I have no answer.
If you have it written up, I would be interested.