Previously in a different case, the same haredi rabbinical court judge ruled that a man who beat his wife and who was considered to be a current danger to her by welfare authorities should have custody of the couple's children, primarily because the haredi rabbinical court judge didn’t like that the woman had taken refuge in a women’s shelter with her kids.
Haredi Top Jerusalem Rabbinical Court Judge Gives Custody To Absentee Deadbeat Haredi Father Because Children’s Mother Is No Longer Haredi
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
For seven years Rinat raised her three children all alone. One of them has never even seen his father and doesn’t know him, another was so young when he last saw his father that he does not remember his father now. Welfare workers and other professionals repeatedly found that the children should live their mother, not their absentee father, who besides failing to visit his children or take any interest in them for years, also allegedly failed to pay his ex-wife court-ordered alimony.
But Ynet's Hebrew language news website reported Sefardi haredi Rabbi Eliyahu Abergel, who heads the state’s official Rabbinical Court for the Jerusalem region, ruled that the best interests of the children or their mental state is a completely secondary issue.What matters, what is truly and supremely important, Abergel said in the Rabbinical Court last week, is that children’s father is still haredi. Their mother is not.
After a mentally exhausting process that lasted a year and a half, last Thursday Abergel ruled. Rinat’s children, Abergel said, must be immediately transferred to the custody of their Orthodox father. State child welfare workers would not be involved, no attempt to mentally prepare the children for the custody transfer would be made, there would be no brief period of time, ten days or two weeks, for Rinat’s attorney to file and appeal of Abergel’s decision. Instead, the children were immediately taken into custody by rabbinical court officers. And to make sure Rinat could not circumvent his decree, Abergel issued a gag order forbidding the parties in the case from leaking the story to the media.
"During the hearings Abergel refused to hear my side or let me speak," Rinat told Ynet. “‘Evidence,’ as it were, was introduced without allowing me see it. Significant portions of what went on in the hearings were omitted from the transcripts. What stood on trial were not my parenting skills, but my religiosity: What am I doing on Shabbat, even [on Shabbats] when the children were with their father? What I'm doing with my former partner? Where do I spend my spare time? [Abergel] humiliated me, degraded me, and asked me intimate questions.”
Rinat's attorneys rushed to file an appeal of Abergel’s ruling with Israel’s official state Beit Din HaGadol, the Supreme Rabbinical Court. Friday, the day after Abergel’s ruling was issued, the Beit Din HaGadol issued a stay of execution of Abergel’s ruling to give Rinat time to appeal it as the law gives her the right to do.
Almost immediately, Abergel responded by issuing another ruling arguing there is no halakhic reason to delay implementation of his first ruling and argued the children should be immediately given into the sole custody of their father. But this second additional ruling by Abergel had no legal validity, and the stay remained in place.
"I will fight to the end,” Rinat told Ynet yesterday. "It cannot be that under the law of the State of Israel the best interests of the children take precedence, but according to [the law of Abergel's court] it is the religious beliefs [or their lack] of each parent [that take precedence.…I will not let [Abergel’s ruling] be enforced. I will not let anyone hurt my children.”
It was only after Rinat’s ex-husband remarried that he suddenly decided he wanted full custody of his children. So he went to the religious court Abergel heads time after time with different reasons why he deserved custody. He claimed his ex-wife was organizing orgies, that she has a Bedouin husband, that she is in a cult, that she worked only menial jobs, that she abused the children, and that she frequented disreputable places. None of these claims was ever proved true. But Abergel never confronted him about his false claims.
Instead, Abergel allowed the man to continue to make them. And then last Thursday, he ruled that this serial liar, a man who had abandoned his children for years, should have complete and immediate custody of them in perpetuity for one reason and one reason only: the children’s father is haredi while the children’s mother is not.
Previously in a different case, the same haredi rabbinical court judge ruled that a man who beat his wife and who was considered to be a current danger to her by welfare authorities should have custody of the couple's children, primarily because the haredi rabbinical court judge didn’t like that the woman had taken refuge in a women’s shelter with her kids.
Also, two top Jerusalem Rabbinical Court officials, one Abergel’s close aid, have recently been arrested in case-fixing and bribery scandal. At this time, Abergel is not thought to have played any knowing role in the alleged fraud.
[Hat Tip: Jonny.]