A Look at the Relationship Between Inducement and Extortion in Compelling a Get (Column 369)

In an essay on the sixth root, we examined the distinction made by the American Jewish philosopher Robert Nozick between inducement and extortion. A few days ago I was sent a report by Kalman Liebskind regarding foot-dragging in compelling a get, which sparked a few additional thoughts on this matter that I wished to share with you. I am taking the opportunity to describe again, for anyone who still needs it at all, how the Chief Rabbinate and its courts operate. You will see a crushing and rare combination of fools, fossils, and wicked people, from so many aspects that it is very hard to enumerate them.

Robert Nozick on Inducement and Extortion

Nozick explains his distinction as follows:

• In inducement, a person is offered two options: if you do X—you will receive amount A; and if you do not—you will not receive it. This is a legitimate offer (one can refuse it).
• By contrast, in extortion a person is offered the following two options: if you do not do X—we will take amount A from you; and if you do—we will not take it. This is an illegitimate offer (one cannot refuse it).

Nozick asked: what is the difference between these two situations? In both, I present a person with two options; and in both, doing X is preferable by the amount A over not doing it. So why is inducement permitted while extortion is prohibited (legally and/or morally)?

The Explanation

Seemingly, the difference lies in whether the incentive to do X is an offer to give me money, or a waiver of taking money from me. When the gap is between A and 0, it is legitimate; but when the gap is between 0 and −A, it is not. As explained in our aforementioned essay, the reason is that taking money that belongs to me is not a legitimate step, whereas giving me money that does not belong to me, or leaving me with the money I have, are both legitimate steps. You can now see that in inducement both sides of the deal are legitimate (either leave me with my money, or give me additional money), whereas in extortion one of the steps is illegitimate (taking my money if I do not do X). It is true that in extortion I can choose to do X and then they will not take my money, i.e., a legitimate state will result; but since that is only one of the two options, extortion can be seen as an illegitimate compulsion to choose specifically that option. In other words, when one of the two alternatives is illegitimate, then even if I choose the other, the offer is illegitimate because it illegitimately deprives me of the right to choose (I cannot refuse it). Therefore, even if I chose to do X, the possibility that I will not do so and they will take my money (which, as noted, is illegitimate) remains in the background of my decision.

Dependent on Circumstances: Legalizing Prostitution and Organ Trade

It is worth adding that this difference may depend on circumstances. Thus, for example, proponents of legalizing prostitution (for women who choose it of their own free will) argue that it is the woman’s free choice to engage in the profession as she wishes (in their view, banning prostitution contradicts freedom of occupation). Opponents of prostitution argue, in response, that she does not have a real choice (because the economic-social-psychological circumstances in which she operates do not allow her to refuse). Proponents raise the claim that anyone who chooses any profession does so because of economic difficulties. After all, we all need to make a living. So why should prostitution be treated differently as a profession?! If economic constraints define such an offer as extortion rather than inducement, then every job offer should be disqualified for the same reason. The same applies to organ trade (for transplantation). There, too, similar arguments are raised on both sides (restriction on freedom of occupation and trade, and a person’s right over his body). See this briefly in Column 203.

In any case, in both of these examples there are debates as to whether the offer is one that can be refused (inducement) or cannot be refused (extortion). That is, the distinction between inducement and extortion is not necessarily rooted in whether money is being given or taken, but in whether one can refuse the offer. Either way, I think we can agree that the line between extortion and inducement is far from sharp.

Compelling a Get

As noted, my aim here is to discuss applying this distinction to compelling a get. As is known, a get must be given of the divorcing husband’s free will. If the husband does not give it willingly and is forced to give it, this is a “coerced get” (i.e., others force the husband to give it, and he does not perform it of his own will), and in such a state the get is void and the divorce is invalid. There are situations in which there is an absolute halachic obligation to divorce the woman, and then the court compels the recalcitrant husband to give a get. In such cases, even if he gives the get under compulsion, the get is valid (see Column 199).

Needless to say, compulsion parallels a state of extortion. The court tells the husband that if he does not give a get he will be punished and/or suffer (be imprisoned, be barred from leaving the country, have his accounts frozen, etc.), and if he does give the get, none of this will be done to him. This is clearly a case of extortion. The question arises: what is the law if one takes the path of inducement—i.e., is a get given under inducement (for example, if he is paid money to give a get) valid, or is it a coerced get?

Compulsion by Way of Inducement

Let me sharpen what I mean. In a situation where there is an absolute obligation to divorce the woman, the court can take any step it sees fit, with no limit to the level of force and severity of measures. They “beat him until he says, ‘I want’,” and perhaps even until he dies. But in halacha there are quite a few intermediate cases in which, although halacha recognizes that it is appropriate to divorce the woman, there is no absolute halachic obligation to do so. In such cases, although according to halacha the husband ought to divorce his wife, since the obligation is not absolute there is no justification for absolute coercive measures. In such a case, an expression of will that comes from the husband himself is still required, and therefore the judges take care with the coercive measures they employ (so that the get not be deemed coerced).

The question is whether in such cases one may induce him to give a get (for example, offer him a sum of money). If inducement is treated like extortion, then even if the court employs measures of inducement, the get would be coerced (since he did not give it of his own free will but in order to profit). But if we distinguish between inducement and extortion, then even if the husband gives a get due to inducement (to receive money), the get is valid. In our parts this is an everyday practice: the court offers the husband a sum of money to agree to divorce his wife. Usually, the wife herself pays the husband a “compliance fee” for giving the get (a bribe), or waives part of her rights in property (or regarding the children) to persuade him to agree. But today the Rabbinate itself also has funds earmarked for this. I have read more than once how proud they are of the “Agunot Fund” they established for this purpose. Just think of the absurd situation in which a state institution sets up a fund whose purpose is to bribe a citizen to do what he is obligated to do by law and halacha (I remind you that even in these intermediate cases he is obligated to divorce—both halachically and legally). This happens only at the Rabbinate.[1]

The Import of My Criticism

I stress that even regarding giving a get, the difference between inducement and extortion seems self-evident. After all, the same claims we saw above can be raised here: inducement is merely a form of offering consideration. A regular person who gives a get of his own free will usually does so for some reason (it will bring him relief, joy, a simple desire to benefit his wife and free her, or his own release), and all this of course does not render his get coerced. If so, giving a get out of expectation of financial consideration or other benefits likewise should not invalidate the get. It is just another reason, or motivation, like any other motivation, for giving the get.[2]

My criticism of the courts’ policy does not stem from the claim that a get given due to inducement is invalid. It is valid, since plainly inducement is not extortion. My problem is that it is inconceivable for a state institution to bribe/induce a citizen to perform his duty. The court must determine whether there is a halachic obligation to release the woman; assuming there is, it must compel the husband by all means to do so. In my judgment, the accepted halachic distinction between different means according to the strength of the obligation to give a get and release the woman is also circumstance-dependent. In the past, distinctions were made between cases of “ma’is alai” (she says “he is repugnant to me”), or a woman who simply wishes to leave because she fell in love with someone else, fertility problems, and the like. But in our time, a woman’s status differs from what it was, and her desires differ as well. Therefore, in our day, when it is clear there is no possibility of shalom bayit and the woman clearly wishes to leave the relationship, there is a full obligation upon the husband to release her. In such a case, any coercion is justified, and there is no need to fear a coerced get. The Rabbinate behaves, on the one hand, as if it is a central authority of the State of Israel (indeed of the entire Jewish people), and at the same time makes decisions as if it were the rabbi of some village in Poland, subject to every precedent and fearful of making decisions because of factors it deems superior (various rabbis and rebbes). If in their view they are a central authority, let them show respect and set definitions for when there is an obligation to release the woman, without relying on precedents set in completely different eras that are no longer relevant in our time. Once it is determined that the husband must release his wife, he must be compelled to do so (and, of course, after Rabbeinu Gershom’s ban, the wife must likewise be compelled).

On the margins of my remarks I note that what I have said applies to a husband who observes Torah and commandments. Coercion is not an option if the husband is secular, since even if under blows he says that he wishes to divorce, there is no expression of his genuine will (see at the end of Column 199; so too have several halachic authorities written[3]). Therefore, in my opinion, beyond the matter of coercion, it is proper and important to precede every marriage with a stipulation that will release the woman in such situations without the need for coercion (such a stipulation would of course also resolve the problem of coercion for a husband who observes Torah and commandments).

The Case in Liebskind’s Article

In the aforementioned article, Kalman Liebskind describes the case of a sixty-year-old woman whose husband has abused her for about forty years (!!) and has refused to give her a get for some thirty years (!!). The rabbinical court ruled several times that the husband must divorce her, and even imposed various obligations on the husband—who in turn repeatedly violates them, again and again, even after committing to uphold them (have you ever heard of a state institution that begs a citizen to fulfill his undertakings, regardless of his agreement or lack thereof?!). Time after time the court sends the couple to yet another party to try to achieve shalom bayit, when the woman is not interested, and the husband is merely running everyone in circles. The husband applies each time to all sorts of panels and figures (such as the Badatz, or his rebbe and various rabbis), and refuses to comply with the rulings of the rabbinical court and even the recommendations of those very figures he himself asked to approach.

The court itself, as well as all the other parties before whom the matter has reached—including the rabbis whom the husband himself demanded be approached—determine decisively and clearly that the woman is God-fearing and especially modest, and that the husband is a problematic type “who adopts malicious stratagems,” and that everything he said about her never happened. In other words, everyone agrees that the blame is entirely his; therefore there is no point and no chance of shalom bayit with him. All these parties agree that one must proceed to divorce, and if necessary by compulsion. But the Rabbinical Courts, in their various panels, drag their feet throughout all this time and refuse to apply to the husband the various coercive measures available to them by law and halacha (such as excommunication, denial of burial for relatives, prison, revocation of credit cards and freezing of accounts, exit ban, and more). Instead, they send the woman again and again to different rabbis at the husband’s demand, and each time receive the same opinions as described above. Note: this has been going on for some thirty years!!!

Meanwhile, the woman, who has raised their six children alone for some thirty years and even married them off by her own strength without any participation, financial or otherwise, from the husband (whose only contribution was the harassment and trouble he caused her and them), at some stage turned to the civil court and received a ruling obligating the husband to pay her maintenance for all that time and compensation for the ongoing abuse and her aginut. The amount awarded was almost half a million shekels, and these days, with indexation, it has reached about a million shekels. Incidentally, in my estimation this is a ridiculous sum when one thinks of the number of years and the expenses involved. Needless to say, to this day the husband has not paid a penny of it.

After her approach to the civil court, the rabbinical court wrote:

Since the woman admitted in the tort claim that she collected more than one million shekels in the lawsuit, therefore the court is unable to deliberate and rule to obligate the get until the woman returns all that she collected.

Here the cat is out of the bag. The rabbinical court is angry at her turning to the civil court and refuses to deal with the divorce that it itself had ruled.

In the latest stage, namely about half a year ago, the woman filed a fourth divorce suit. The husband was unwilling to hear of it and demanded shalom bayit, after thirty years during which all parties declare that he is merely abusing her and has no intention of doing anything. Here is a first ray of light: the judges rejected his vexatious request out of hand and wrote: “It is clear that there will no longer be shalom bayit here… what you are saying is nonsense.” At this stage the court turns to the husband with a new initiative: she filed a tort claim against you, won, and also got the money. If you oppose the get on that basis, we will listen to you. “If you speak to the point—that you want money—I can listen, and there are arguments here, but if you talk about shalom bayit, you will go back and you will tell that to whomever you want.” That is, the court recognizes the husband’s opposition to complying with their own ruling because of the civil liability imposed on him. The husband did not quite understand, so the judge continued and said to him: “Be realistic, ask for money that can be extracted from her… how much money are you willing to take in order to divorce?” I rub my eyes and refuse to believe.

By the way, you will surely not believe this, but the woman was not present at this stage of the hearing. Neither she nor her attorneys. The judges saw no problem in conducting this discussion ex parte. When she arrives, in the midst of the hearing, and is updated on its details, she cannot believe her ears. This is a proposal of the very court that had previously ruled that the husband is abusing her, that there is no chance of shalom bayit, and that he is obligated to give her this get. The judges press the woman to waive the sum due to her from her husband so that he will consent to release her. If she does not pay, the court tells her, they will not handle her request for a get. In other words, not only does the husband fail to fulfill his duty and repeatedly violate the court’s ruling, and not only does the court fail to impose the appropriate sanctions on him, and all parties inside and outside the court agree that he is the main problem in the process, but now the sinner profits: she is told that she will continue to suffer and the judges will not enforce the ruling they already issued in her favor if she does not waive the basic rights due to her by law. Simply inconceivable.

What Is the Court Afraid Of?

I will not delve further here into the scandalous conduct exposed in this article. I will not discuss bribing a person to fulfill his duty, or the cowardly failure to impose coercive measures, or the reliance on the rulings of his rebbe or various rabbis outside the system as if this were not a court operating by virtue of state authority. Nor will I address the poor handling of the race for jurisdiction vis-à-vis the civil court, with disloyalty toward a parallel state judicial institution (the civil court, where the woman’s approach is seen by them as harming the rabbinical court)[4] and with harm to the woman’s rights, and more. Even if some of the things in the article are not precise (Liebskind usually strikes me as serious), I have other cases known to me personally in which the Rabbinate and its judges behave with a similar policy (though this case is truly extreme, even compared to their lack of standards). Here I wish to focus on the inducement versus extortion aspect that emerges from the facts, which will cast their conduct in an even more absurd light—if that is possible.

From the quotations I brought above it appears clearly that her turning to the civil court is what stands to her detriment in the rabbinical court’s view (by the way, what about all the time before that?!). But the race for jurisdiction cannot serve as a halachic or legal basis for the court’s determinations and policy. The court cannot say to the woman: we will not give you what you deserve because you dared to turn to the civil court (let me remind you, a parallel state institution). So how do they explain their conduct on the substantive halachic plane? It is really not clear to me.

Someone explained to me that the court intends to argue to the woman that if she insists on collecting the sum awarded to her, there is a concern for a coerced get, since in such a case the husband will give her the get for economic reasons. For my part, I did not understand this argument at all, for the civil court obligated the husband to pay that sum irrespective of whether he divorces her. She is entitled to compensation for the abuse and maintenance (as noted, the sum itself is laughably low in these respects). So how can one claim that the divorce stems from economic pressure?! If they had told him that if he does not divorce he will pay, and if he divorces he will be exempt, then there would be room to discuss a coerced get. But liability to pay by virtue of a civil court ruling that is not conditioned on giving a get cannot be considered a cause of a coerced get.

Inducement or Extortion?

I then thought that the situation is actually even more absurd. It is precisely the waiver of this debt that the court proposed to the husband that brings us closer to a coerced get. For now, when the court ties the monetary debt to the divorce, there arises a concern that the husband will divorce solely because he gains about one million shekels (which otherwise he would have to pay).

Following on from this, there is room to discuss whether this is a case of inducement or extortion. We saw that inducement does not render a get coerced, whereas extortion does. Again, let me emphasize that I am not saying that if it is inducement the court acted properly. Clearly not. But if it is extortion, then not only did the court act improperly, but there also arises a concern about the get’s validity.

At first glance, the judges propose to extort the husband by ordering him to pay if he continues to refuse to give the get; therefore this is extortion and the get is coerced. But given that this sum is due to the woman (both as compensation and as maintenance) and the husband merely refuses to pay it, then in fact this is inducement and not extortion. Essentially, the judges are offering the husband money that does not belong to him so that he will divorce her (they of course extort the woman and induce the husband, but the get’s validity depends only on the husband)[5]. If so, the woman’s approach to the civil court has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of a coerced get, and it is precisely the court’s proposal that brings us closer to a coerced get (at least at the level of inducement, if not of extortion). I note that if the judges themselves think that this sum does not belong to the woman (since she turned to the secular courts, heaven forfend), then precisely for that reason the conclusion is that what they are doing now is truly a matter of extortion and not merely inducement. They use that ruling and threaten to extract from him money that, in their view, is due to him, in order to pressure him to divorce. This already truly threatens to invalidate the get. But as noted, this is a foolish pilpul, for it is clear that this sum belongs to her by law.

Moreover, in my view in such a case there is justification even for absolute coercion (for it is clear that the woman is in the right and there is no chance of shalom bayit), and in such a case even extortion does not invalidate the get. My remarks here are only according to the judges’ own line of thought, who fear a coerced get, and my claim is that according to their own reasoning they acted in a way that is precisely what could lead to invalidating the get.

Conclusion: Ended but Not Finished

To leave a “good taste” in our mouths, here is how the article ends:

A few weeks ago, Rabbi Mordechai Ralbag, a judge of the Jerusalem Regional Rabbinical Court,[6] signed the ruling. Sarah’s divorce suit was dismissed until she pays Shimon what she collected from him, pursuant to that ruling of the Family Court. Wait, it does not end there. Who will determine the exact sum involved? To decide this matter, the court referred the husband to the Rebbe of Sanz. “A date will be set on which the defendant will travel to the Rebbe of Sanz, may he live long, who will answer the husband’s two questions, as follows: whether the husband must insist on returning to a life of shalom bayit with his wife; if the answer is that he should not insist—how much money the woman must pay the man for him to give her her get”…

And what is the woman to do, you are surely wondering. Judge Rabbi Ralbag quoted the court, which determined in 2014 that she must return to her husband more than one million shekels—the same sum she won in civil court—and ruled: “There is no room to deliberate the divorce claim that the woman filed with the Rabbinical Court.” This ruling, if not overturned on appeal filed in recent days by the attorneys from “Arbus, Kedem, Tzur,” Sarah’s counsel, condemns her to eternal aginut.

We pay the judges handsome salaries to render judgment. Not only does this gang fail to render judgment as it should have (to compel him to divorce her without fearing a coerced get), and not only do they fail even to do what they could have done (coercion by measures at their disposal that are not deemed coercion of the get), but they do not render judgment at all. They use this unfortunate woman to fight, on her back, with the civil courts over the race for jurisdiction, and abuse her with their abuse that has already lasted some thirty years. They cooperate with a husband whom no one disputes is a halachic and legal offender acting against their own ruling, and in the end, in their great genius and responsibility, lay the responsibility and grant the authority to decide to the Rebbe of Sanz. Why does he receive a salary from the Ministry of Religious Services/Justice? He is supposed to do the job he is paid to do, isn’t he?!…

To call all this “shocking” is a ridiculous understatement.

[1] This is somewhat reminiscent of payment arrangements made by the tax authorities with major evaders. But there it is usually due to evidentiary difficulties or financial difficulties (the assessment is that the full sum cannot be collected from him).

[2] This line of reasoning is usually raised with respect to taliuhu v’Zavin (“they coerced him and he sold”). The claim is that a sale is always the transfer of an object in exchange for some consideration, and avoidance of a threat is yet another kind of consideration. Note that there this line of reasoning is applied also to extortion and not only to inducement, i.e., at least in those contexts there is an assumption that there is no fundamental difference between them. For discussion of various examples, see for instance here.

[3] See, for example, Responsa Maharik Ha-Hadashim, end of §46, and others.

[4] Consider a state institution that responds harshly to your turning to the courts to realize your rights, and harms your rights because of that approach. Utterly inconceivable—but it seems we have already gotten used to the fact that the Rabbinate and its courts are state institutions on behalf of the shtiebel. They operate as if the other institutions of government are the “Prutz” (feudal lord) whom it is forbidden to approach, ignoring the fact that their own power and authority derive from that very “Prutz,” and that they serve by his appointment.

[5] For the woman, this is a situation similar to taliuhu v’zavna (“they coerced her and she sold”).

[6] Well, you can take comfort that with respect to Rabbi Ralbag, the option is always open to complain about him to the Chief Rabbi David Lau (his brother-in-law). And if he annoys you as well, you can complain to Rabbi Y. M. Lau (his father).