[Update 3/11/2014: According to Reuters, a New York personal trainer has plead guilty to being part of a New Jersey ring that used violence to coerce Jewish husbands to agree to grant their wives religious divorces, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.
David Hellman, 31, was one of 10 men, including two Orthodox Jewish rabbis, arrested last fall in the alleged scheme in which they hired themselves out to unhappy wives who wanted their husbands kidnapped and beaten until they agreed to divorce, the prosecutors in New Jersey said.]
Under the rules of Orthodox Judaism and certain other sects within the Jewish faith, getting a divorce is a two-fold process. There is the standard civil divorce process, which requires filing for divorce in family court the same as any other couple. And then there is a special form of divorce called a “get,” which under Jewish law must be in place for a couple to be considered divorced and able to remarry within their faith. Read more