Ira Glass: It’s This American Life. I’m Ira Glass. Each week on the program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today’s program, “Stuck in the Middle.” Stories of people who cannot get out of some situation, some limbo they are caught in, and so they use ingenuity and guile or, anyway, unconventional means to get themselves unstuck. We have arrived at Act Two of our show. Act Two, Sunrise, Sun-Get.
This past October, there was a kind of wacky news story that was news for a day or so in New York City. It was on the cover of the tabloids. It was on all the local news channels in the tri-state area. And at its heart were people stuck in a kind of limbo. Mark Oppenheimer has more.
Mark Oppenheimer: The news was pretty startling. A group of men, including a Brooklyn rabbi named Mendel Epstein, had been arrested for conspiring to kidnap a husband and torture him until he gave his wife a get. The get is simply a piece of paper a husband hands his wife saying, essentially, it’s over. We’re divorced. Jews can get civil divorces like anyone else. But if you’re an Orthodox Jew, strictly following Jewish law, the get is the only real way to end a marriage.
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Author: This American Life
Keywords: Mendel Epstein, Marriage, adultery, remarriage adultery, Divorce, Divorced, divorcee, Remarriage, Remarried, Bill of divorcement, Get, ghet, Certificate of divorce, Bill of divorce, Letter of divorce, Grounds for divorce, Reasons to divorce, Infidelity, Marital unfaithfulness, Marital infidelity, marry again, marrying again, Divorce remarry, divorce remarriage, Divorcement, Marriage contract, Remarry, Remarrying, Second marriage, agunah, chained woman, agunot, Putting away one's wife, sending away, sending away a wife
Bible reference(s): Deuteronomy 24:1-4, Isaiah 50:1, Jeremiah 3:8, Malachi 2:16, Matthew 5:31-32, Matthew 19:3-9, Mark 10:2-4, Mark 10:11-12, Luke 16:18, 1 Corinthians 7:27-28
Source: This American Life, “Stuck In The Middle: Sunrise, Sun-Get,” Chicago Public Media, January 17, 2014.
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