No Secular Court

from Rav Gustman, Artscroll Biography by David Page

A MARRIED STUDENT IN THE YESHIVAH HAD A DISPUTE with his neighbor about the ownership of a machsan, a basement storage unit. The neighbor had sued the student in secular court in Eretz Yisrael without bothering to take him to beis din. The only witness in the case was a woman, whose testimony favored the student. This testimony would be accepted and entirely resolve the matter in secular court but not in beis din, where the halachic guideliness regarding testimony apply. A young Rav advised the student to simply accept the summons to secular court and rely on the witness's testimony, indicating that because the neighbor had chosen secular court the student had no obligation to go to a beis din.

The talmid posed the question to R' Gustman who responded that, on the the contrary, everything should be done to convince the neighbor to litigate the case in beis din. The Rosh Yeshiva added,
"It is irrelevant whether you would be more likely to win secular court. If you would be more likely to lose in beis din, and you lose there, it is the will of Heaven that you lose.

David Page, "Rav Gustman," p. 174, Artscroll Biography of R' Yisrael Zeev Gustman, the youngest Dayan of Vilna.

Milah and Length of Purification Period

"The day when the father performs milah, the first duty a man must perform for his son, should imbue the father with the sacred resolve to "raise his son to walk in moral strength before God, the God of the Law," and to serve his son, by his own conduct, as a model for such a way of life. Similarly, the fact that the woman's path to purity following the birth of a daughter is twice as long as after the birth of a son certainly should serve to impress the mother with all the solemnity and grandeur of her own task to become teacher, guide and model for the Jewish woman of the future. After all, the mothers' influence in the molding the moral standards of her daughter is twice as great as her influence on the moral development to her son. With sons, the main thrust of their training comes from the father, to whom they can look as a model for the own future male role. With daughters, on the other hand, the mother is not only their role model but also the molder of their character, so that after the birth of each daughter she will do well to prepare herself with redoubled intensity, both for her own sake and for the sake of her newborn daughter, in order that the both may ascend the lofty path or purity and morality to the heights of God's own idea of holiness." R' Samson Raphael Hirsch, Vaykira 12: 4-5, The Chumash, Judaica Press, Gertrude Hirschler translator.

High Threshold for a Get

THE LEVEL OF SENSITIVITY TO THE PEOPLE OVER WHOM HE had responsibility, the level of creativity, and the level of wisdom that R' Gustman was called on to employ, both as the Rabbi of Shnipishok and as dayan, were high. This was especially so because the young rabbi was being supervised by one of the most sensitive, creative, and wise poskim of his time, R' Chaim Ozer. He learned from R' Chaim Ozer that apparent "common sense" and the" obvious" do not always lead to the halachically correct result.

R' Gustman related a lesson he learned from R' Chaim Ozer in that regard, concerning the high bar for issuing a get. The story the Rosh Yeshiva told was as follows:

In Shnipishok, well-known in his community, lived a couple notorious for their acrimonious and vociferous fighting that could be heard in the neighborhood on any given day. After a few years of fierce battling, the couple decided to divorce and they came to R' Gustman for the get during the very early years of R' Gustman's tenure there.

R' Gustman, who was then still a young rabbi, was sure that this ill-suited, unhappy couple were prime candidates for divorce, and with that attitude, he mentioned the case to R' Chaim Ozer, who asked to speak to the couple themselves. Afterward, R' Chaim Ozer's reply was sharp and unequivocal: "They should certainly not be divorced. Absolutely not."

This response came as a shock to R' Gustman. He remonstrated, "But they are unhappy and fight all the time! Everyone in the town knows how they go at it! Who could be unhappier in a marriage than they are? Who could be more appropriate candidates for the institution of divorce due to sheer unhappiness?"

"We go by the rov [majority]," replied R' Chaim Ozer. "Let us do the calculation together: For eight hours a night, they are asleep and do not fight with each other. Then, the husband is gone all day for at least ten hours, working, praying, etc., during which time they also do not fight. Then there is time they spend alone in the bathroom, again without quarreling. During all of these times throughout the day, they do not fight. Therefore, the actual time they are alone with each other to fight on a daily basis cannot be more than twenty minutes. We go by the rov. Since most of the time, they do not fight, they are not candidates for divorce. It is not worth issuing a get for twenty minutes of fighting."

From this calculation of R' Chaim Ozer's, R' Gustman, as a young rabbi, learned the lesson of the high standard required for breaking up a Jewish marriage. It was this rule he followed as a dayan and later as a Rav and Rosh Yeshivah.

David Page, "Rav Gustman," pp. 81-82, Artscroll Biography of R' Yisrael Zeev Gustman, the youngest Dayan of Vilna.

[I think what's going on here is that he met the couple and could see that nothing extraordinary was happening, that neither of them were insane. They were just two people that needed to work on their middos and learn to control their mouths. The talk about rov is just a cute way of saying, look you are not together all that much, can you just control yourselves for 20 minutes a day? To let you get a divorce would be playing to your yetzer haras and destroying your children and we can't allow that.]