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.]