Sponsored by Sharona & Josh Halickman in Honor of
Binyamin Kunstler’s Bar Mitzvah
In Parshat Shoftim , Devarim 16:18-20 we read: “Judges and
officers shall you appoint in all of your gates, which HaShem your God shall
give you, throughout your tribes; and they shall judge the people with just
judgment…Justice, justice shall you follow that you may inherit the Land which
HaShem your God gives you.”
According to Sefer HaChinuch: “This is one of the mitzvot
imposed on the entire community in any and every location. If the members of a
community are suitable to establish a beit din (court of law) among themselves
and they have not established it for themselves, they have disobeyed this
positive mitzvah and the punishment is severe indeed since this mitzvah is a
mighty pillar in the maintenance of the religious system of law.”
Today in
there are regional religious courts which primarily deal with cases of marriage
and divorce set up in the major cities in
as well as the Rabbinical Court of Appeals in
dayanim (judges) to go around. So although technically there are courts in all
of the major cities, they are not all able to function on a daily basis which
means that many cases are being held up.
Some of the dayanim (from the group of nine that are needed
in
are ill or ready to retire so temporary replacements have been found to cover
for them in the mean time. The only problem is that the temporary dayanim who
are covering in
being taken away from their jobs in other cities in order to cover in
appointments are actually causing more harm than good as they can only be in
so that they can continue working in their regular communities the other three
days.
The Chief Rabbis who have a lot of different
responsibilities outside the Rabbinical courts each only work in the Rabbinical
courts one day a week. This is hardly enough time to get enough dayanim
together to attend to the 45,000 cases that have been put on hold.
Each divorce hearing that is postponed or canceled due to
lack of dayanim is like the destruction of an entire world. People want to move
on with their lives and it can be years for their case to even be heard. This
needs to be corrected immediately with the appointment of new dayanim.
When new dayanim are finally appointed, will they represent
the population? Will they be from the Dati-Leumi (National-Religious) world or
will they be from the Charedi world? As of now, with the way that the
government is set up it is unfortunately looking like Aryeh Deri (Charedi) will
end up choosing the dayanim since as of now Naftali Benett and his party,
HaBayit HaYehudi (who should be representing the National-Religious population)
are concerned with other issues and are letting this fall through the cracks.
Why is it a problem if the majority of dayanim are Charedim?
The Charedi dayanim are often overly strict, especially in
areas such as custody. There are cases where women had custody of their
children taken away from them, even though they are good mothers because they
are not “Charedi enough”. If the father wants the children to grow up in a
Charedi home, even if he has been proven to be abusive the Rabbinical courts
will often give the father custody to ensure that the children live a Charedi
lifestyle. This needs to change.
In addition, many Charedim don’t even use the Rabbinical
courts of the State of Israel and instead prefer to use their own private
Rabbinical courts. The dayanim of the state run religious courts really should
reflect the population that they are dealing with.
By having Rabbinic courts that are barely running (unlike
the secular courts where nobody would stand for this kind of behavior) the
mitzvah of “Judges and officers shall you appoint in all of your gates” is not
being fulfilled. If the court is not in session, it can’t really be considered
a functioning court.
We must do what we can to ensure that “Justice, justice
shall you follow that you may inherit the Land which HaShem your God gives
you.”
