Strong Leadership From Rep. Garrett

The recent op-ed by Congressman Scott Garrett entitled, “We Must Keep Nuclear Weapons Out of Iran,” (September 10, 2015) succinctly and effectively makes the case against the Iran nuclear deal, pointing out the significant dangers which it poses. Most important is the last line where Garrett states he will continue doing everything in his power “to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of this tyrannical regime.”  Thank you, Congressman Garrett, for your strong leadership!

Larry Domnitch

Bergenfield

They Suddenly Became Fools?

In the note appended to Rabbi Hershel Schachter’s letter opposing the International Beit Din (IBD), Rabbi Nota Greenblatt writes that the rulings of the IBD are those of “fools stating nonsense.”

The two other members of the International Beit Din led by Rabbi Simcha Krauss, until this past summer, were Rabbi Yosef Blau and Rabbi Dr. Aryeh Yehuda Warburg. These two rabbis were, over the last two decades, often called upon to serve on dinei Torah for the highly esteemed Beth Din of America (BDA), affiliated with the Rabbinical Council of America. To the best of my knowledge, they served on dozens, if not hundreds, of cases.

Thus the reader is left wondering: Is this not an attack not only on these rabbis but on the integrity of the BDA? Or to put it differently, if they were not “fools” when they worked on cases for the BDA and the RCA, did they suddenly become fools?

With Torah blessings,

Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot

Teaneck

On the Agunot Controversy

How ironic that in the same issue (Sept. 10) replete with reports of the attacks against the International Beth Din and its efforts to free agunot we have an article by Rabbi Haim Jachter about the cancellation of loans in the seventh year, which Rabbi Jachter notes “has been sidestepped using the tool of the pruzbul document” since the time of Hillel. Despite the unambiguous biblical verse legislating that loans be annulled and forgiven in the seventh year, the rabbis managed to “sidestep” this prohibition such that we now make and collect such loans with hardly a second thought. (“Sidestep is a polite description; most legal scholars would use the terms “circumvent” and “legal fiction.”) By contrast, the problems with freeing agunot run up against not an outright biblical law but interpretations of Talmudic passages and medieval precedents—yet produce condemnations from Rabbi Hershel Schachter and others. Is it too skeptical to suggest that the tremendous inconvenience we would all—men and women alike—experience by a septennial annulment of debts allows us to accept “sidestepping” that prohibition, while the suffering of a few hundred agunot is not enough for some rabbis to find a comparable solution, and even to condemn those who do? Would that we had a sage like Hillel alive today to formulate a type of pruzbul document for agunot!

Dr. Jeffrey Rubenstein

Tenafly