A home on the 1200 block of La Peer in Pico-Robertson on the Sabbath was sheltering a woman (38yo, was married to a 45yo businessman for about 20 years, five kids, sephardic, he’s ready to trade her in for a younger model) going through a traumatic divorce. After midnight, in the early hours of Saturday morning, there was a loud knock on the door. The man of the home gets out of bed and goes to the door and ten rabbis (led by Rabbi Dovid Revah of Adas Torah) are outside. The ten rabbis represented the Rabbinical Council of California (RCC). They knew he was sheltering this woman going through a tough divorce.
So why were the rabbis there? They wanted to make sure that the woman accepts the divorce settlement presided over by the RCC and that she does not go to the Los Angeles Superior Court.
The woman believes she might get a fairer divorce settlement in secular court.
I spoke to the man of the home who was awoken by the knocking rabbis but he wouldn’t comment to me.
The ten rabbis are timid souls, so if they’d known they would end up on my blog for doing this, I don’t think they would’ve acted this way.
The Israel Fathers Rights Advocacy Counsel emails me:
We have no verification of your story re RCC Rabbis knocking on someone’s door.
The activity you describe, however, would represent explicit criminal interference in California divorce proceedings.
We are aware of other incidents involving RCC Rabbis that crossed this line. There seems to be a reluctance to bring charges in LA against Rabbis interfering in civil divorce proceedings that simply does not exist here in Israel, where Rabbis crossing the legal line are hauled into court and fined regularly.
It is also important to underscore to your readership that the RCC does not possess the high moral ground relative to the civil courts in these matters. The conflicts of interest of RCC Rabbis in divorces can be significant at times, particularly when involving Rabbis who double as divorce litigation attorneys. The public still wants to perceive Rabbis as neutral parties acting in the name of religion, but that is not the case in Big Business Religion with millions at stake in divorce settlements. Above all, the RCC and all Rabbinic authorities in the USA are strictly voluntary forums engaged as justices of the peace to provide religious verification of civil marriage and divorce. They are not authorized to act in any further matter, and are explicitly precluded by law from acting in any further manner absent mutual consent. Which is madness. Let them write ketubot and Gittin after civil authorization of the marriages and divorces, and stop illegally interfering in civil cases because a Rabbinic colleague also serves as divorce counsel for one party or the other.
Once again, the community’s silence is the true shame. Just so long as it doesn’t happen to my family, we keep quiet….
Shameful.
