The Rav has been talking a lot about the Get of Cleves again.

I did a deep-dive on that a few weeks ago – and we learned a lot of real Jewish history, as a result.

But, it seems there are more ‘sparks’ to pick up, so I am translating more of the recent comments from the Rav, where he’s stressing everyone needs to learn about the ‘Get of Cleves’ and to study it – and if you have more information or ideas to share about it, feel free!

In the meantime, here’s the first bit of the recent translations:

====

Shiur given over in the olam, Thursday night, Parshat Ki Tisa 5785, 13th Adar, Ta’anit Esther.

(The Rav has been talking about learning the Ketzot HaHoshen, and the SHACH, and the Shulchan Aruch.

It’s also permitted to learn the Nodah B’Yehuda.

It’s also permitted for Shuvu Banim to learn, about the whole matter of the get, because there were two gets.

One get, he [i.e. the Nodah B’Yehuda] was against, one get he was in favor of. The Get from Cleves, he was in favor of. The get of Galuna, he was against.

All of this, we need to know. Like we learn Ketzot HaHoshen, we need to learn the Nodah B’Yehuda, to know about the two gets, what happened with the get of Galuna, and what happened with the get of Cleves.

==

The Get of Cleves – the get was written by the grandfather of the ‘Tiferet Yisrael’, Rabbi Yisrael Lipshitz.

He was called ‘Lipshitz’, he was the grandfather of the Tiferet Yisrael. R. Abish Avraham Abba, he was called ‘R’ Abish’, he was the Rav of Frankfurt [he possulled the Get of Cleves].  The father of the groom, he was a chassid of Avraham Abba, of R’ Abish, Avraham Abba Frankfurter. He was his chassid.

He [the groom re: the Get of Cleves] was called Yitzhak ben Eliezer, and she was called Leah Niehuiz. She was Leah Niehuiz.[1] One was from Mannheim and and one was from Metz, the chatuna was in Metz.

==

And they came from Mannheim, and on Shabbat [the Shabbat Chatan], he suddenly disappeared.

He went to do hitbodedut, he was a Breslover, he went to do hitbodedut. Every person needs to know the story – ‘the Get of Cleves’. And they found him on Sunday, they went to look for him, they found him by some goy, in some village.

He simply ran away with the money.

So, they said, then, it appears he was insane. Why was he ‘insane’? Whoever runs away with the money is not crazy. A person knows how to steal, true, that he transgresses the commandment ‘do not steal’[2], but for this [they say he’s insane]?!

So, they went to Rav Abish of Frankfurt, and they said, h’es not normal, he stole money, he ran away from the house, this was shabbat [of] sheva brachot!

==

So, he revealed this, Shimshon Copenhagen.

‘Copenhagen’ was his family [name], that he was from Copenhagen – the capital of Denmark.

So, the groom [from the Get of Cleves] revealed the whole, true story to him, that he was now enroute to London, and that she would be an aguna for the rest of her life, if they didn’t go to Cleves know [to arrange the get].

This [the meeting with Shimshon Copenhagen and the writing of the get] was in the city of Cleves on the Rhine, enroute to London. Because they were on the way to Mannheim, and the wedding was in Metz.

So, on the way to Mannheim they were passing Cleves. And so he said to Rabbi Shimshon Copenhagen: I’m prepared to give a get now. And if not – she won’t see me ever again. I am going to London.

And he became one of the very biggest askanim (communal ‘fixers’).

So, it’s impossible to say that he wasn’t ‘normal’. He was the most sane person in the world. He also stole all the money from the dowry, and he also ran away.

==

He explained that by the goyim, it’s not like how it is by the Jews, by the zionists, that you can do all the transgressions in the world, and be called a ‘modern man’. A ‘liberal’ man, a person with freedom of expression, a ‘free thinker’.

They call this ‘pluralism’.

By the non-Jews, it’s not like this. If you do a transgression – they hang you. There are no excuses.

==

So, he told him [to Shimshon Copenhagen] that he’d done some transgression, Hashem should have mercy, and they were going to hang him. If he didn’t run away now, from that whole area, so they would hang him. This was pikuach nefesh (saving a life), and he had to leave here.

Tov. So they went to Rav Yisrael Lipshitz [who was the Rav in Cleves], they told him the whole, true story, immediately, he wrote the get.

==

So, when the parents of the groom heard about this, they had such a shock.

She was 16, altogether, and he was already 20, for sure, he was 20, and she was 16. And the parents went immediately [to their rabbi, R Abish Frankfurter]. He straight away wrote a letter to Yisrael Lipshitz, that he was possulling (nullifying) the get [on the grounds that the groom was insane].

The Rav Yisrael Lipshits wrote back, no, I saw that he was totally normal. That he examined him.

In the end, he [i.e. the groom of the Get of Cleves} built a synagogue in the name of Yitzhak Hamburger. He built a synagogue in London, there, he married [again] afterwards.

==

In any case, this was called the ‘Get of Cleves’.

And the Nodah B’Yehuda permitted the get, and R’ Abish Avraham Abba nullified the get. After a year [R Abish] died, in 5629, he passed away.

The get was in 5627. There was the marriage in Elul, on the 11th of Elul, and on that shabbat it was the 14th of Elul. On the 17th of Elul, they’d already written the get, and a year after this R’ Abish – who nullified the get – died.

And it was a kosher get.

Today, we already know that this was a kosher get, but then, they didn’t know. Back then, they didn’t know who was right, if it was R Avraham Abba of Frankfurt [or the Nodah B’Yehuda].

==

And the Nodah B’Yehuda wrote to him, around four letters, maybe six letters.

But the gabbaim (of R Abish Frankfurter) didn’t pass the letters on, because the Nodah B’Yehuda proved to him that the get was indeed a get. If Avraham Abba would have admitted that he’d erred – that is to say, that after he’d said that the get wasn’t a get, he would say that the get was indeed a get – so then this would be told to the King of Denmark.

The King of Denmark was responsible for the whole place, so the king would have got rid of him, because all of the rabbinut was only with the permission of the king.

If the king heard that someone made a mistake, then he would get rid of him, just for making one mistake. So it was impossible to say this.

The gabbaim didn’t want for him to know that he’d made a mistake, they hid the letters that the Nodah B’Yehuda wrote to him, that the get was a get.

This is the story, of the Get of Cleves.

==

TBC

Translated from Shivivei Or, 401.

==

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In ‘official history’, her name is given as Leah Gunzhuisen.

[2] See Shemot 20:12.