The following is an embarrassing example of what is purported to be investigative reporting - when it is simply an example of the prostitution of the news media to get readership rather than provide cogent analysis as to what is happening. The reporter has not the slightest clue as to what the halachic issues are and clearly has simply relied on the claims of the women for determining what the facts are. While he did solicit a counter response from Yoel Weiss - he didn't bother trying to understand what Yoel was saying.
Inadvertently though he has succeeded in showing that despite huge international campaigns - none of these women have gotten a get one second sooner if at all - and the compromises they needed to make were no different than what they were being asked - before the campaign.
So if the campaigns are useless regarding the goal of obtaining a Get - then why do these women parade the most intimate details of their marriage in public? Why do they insist on creating an incredible chillul hashem - if it never succeeds in ending their marriage?
The answer is simple - and was expressed by Shira Dicker the publicist behind these campaigns. It is an attack on Torah laws and halacha in the name of feminism, individual freedom, and progress. It is a rejection of the traditional Jewish concept of marriage.
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Tablet Magazine The coordinated use of publicists, Facebook,
Twitter, donation sites, and rallies is becoming common for women like
Rivky Stein who seek religious divorces from their husbands. Many Jews
give little thought to the get, but in traditional Judaism only
men can grant a divorce. Without one, a woman cannot date or remarry
without carrying and passing onto her children what is widely considered
in the Orthodox world to be a tremendous stigma. So, with few options
in Jewish law, more agunot—Hebrew for “chained wives”—are embracing contemporary and high-tech tools to publicly shame men.
“People say, ‘This is a disgrace, you’re washing our dirty linen in public,’ ” said Susan Aranoff, an economics professor who has been an agunah activist for 30 years. “But I understand the women who are doing it, because what else are they to do?”
In late 2010, hundreds of protesters
flocked to the Silver Spring, Md., home of Aharon Friedman, a tax
counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee, who denied his wife,
Tamar Epstein, a get. The rally was carefully planned, with
activists distributing flyers and fact sheets while a Facebook event was
shared with over 1,600 people.
Three years later Gital Dodelson, who was struggling to receive a get from her ex-husband, Avrohom Meir Weiss, worked with a publicist to set up the website setgitalfree.com. She eventually landed a front page tell-all in the New York Post and a segment on the public-radio show This American Life.
Just a few months ago protesters holding signs reading “Stop the
Abuse!” and “Bigamist” gathered at the wedding of Meir Kin, who was remarrying despite his refusal to give his ex-wife, Lonna Kin, a religious divorce. He claimed that he had secured a heter meah rabbonim, the antiquated and seldom-used document, based on a technicality in Jewish law, that permits a man to remarry without a get if he can get permission from 100 rabbis.[...]
So, in her fight for a get, Stein
needed help. In recent months, she has assembled up an impressive team.
She hired Shira Dicker, the publicist who worked for Gital Dodelson.
They set up the website redeemrivky.com as well as a Facebook page that has nearly 9,000 likes. A 7-minute YouTube video called “Rivky Speaks,” in the style of a close-up sit-down interview, has garnered about 125,000 views. Her donation page aims to raise $36,000, although she expects all of it to go to lawyer and PR fees. Media like the Daily News were invited to the beit din,
which is used to resolve disputes including contested divorces. (Dicker
told Tablet that “half” the work she did for Stein was pro bono and
“the compensation was extremely modest.”)
[...]
And the track record for Stein’s social
media-savvy successors isn’t completely encouraging. Publicity
ultimately worked for Dodelson, who received a get three months after her story ran in the New York Post
(and after she paid her ex-husband a six-figure sum, according to one
knowledgeable source). While it was widely reported that Tamar Epstein
was “free” three years after the protest against her husband, it seems
that she never received her get, instead having her marriage annulled by a sympathetic rabbi or beit din. And after seven years of being civilly divorced, Kin has no get and is still vilified by blogs. [...]
