A Brooklyn man who created a storm of controversy throughout the Orthodox Jewish world by marrying of his minor daughter is now saying that he did not do it.
In a sworn affidavit submitted to New York state Supreme Court, Israel Goldstein has claimed that he never married off his young daughter in a ceremony known as “kedusha ketana,” or minor marriage.
He also compared his ex-wife, who is bringing suit against him, to Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who was recently convicted of drowning her two young sons.
Goldstein’s claim in secular court contradicts what he has said before, to a Jewish religious court and to the media, that he married off his then-10-year- old daughter to exact revenge against his wife, Gita Goldstein, for going to civil court to obtain a divorce.
He has refused to grant his ex-wife a Jewish divorce.
According to a Hebrew-language document signed by the three judges of the Tausig religious court in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, Goldstein walked into the court in September 1993 and announced that he had married his daughter “according to the laws of Moses and Israel.”
Although he refused to divulge the names of the groom and the two witnesses required for any Jewish marriage, the Rabbinic judges accepted as fact that Goldstein had committed his daughter, Sarah Leah, to marriage in accordance with Jewish law.
Their document saying so was part of Gita Goldstein’s original complaint against her ex-husband. She is suing him, and wants to sue the groom and witnesses he previously said he used to marry of their daughter, for damages.
She has asked the court to award her and her daughter $30 million.
When asked by a reporter attending the preliminary court hearing Aug. 30 whether he did or did not in fact marry off his daughter, Israel Goldstein smiled briefly and said, “It will all come out in court.”
It looks as if he may be right.
State Supreme Court Judge James Shaw ruled Sept. 7 that Gita Goldstein’s case against her ex-husband will go forward, and that he is required to answer her attorney’s questions before a judicial hearing officer in a session still to be scheduled.
Israel Goldstein appeared in court without an attorney and told the judge that he was representing himself.
He submitted a rambling affidavit in which he attacked his ex-wife as being “the equivalent of the murderess Susan Smith” for “taking away children from their father.”
Because she went to a civil court to obtain a divorce from him, she is “neither pious, Torah observant or Orthodox in any fashion. Gita Goldstein has spit on God and on his Torah law,” he testified.
In the affidavit he also called her attorney, A. David Stren, “an asinine moron” and “primitive-minded.”
“At the end of the document Goldstein claimed never to have actually married off his daughter.
“Unfortunately for Mr. Stren and Mrs. Gita Goldstein, who commenced their litigation in the secular court and who have violated the Jewish law as prescribed by God in His Torah, I never married off my daughter or performed kedusha ketana,” testified Goldstein in the affidavit.
“Therefore there is no `groom’ or witnesses for me to identify, and certainly no groom to come forward and offer a get,” or Jewish divorce.
“If Sara Leah is suffering emotionally, it is surely from all the childhood years she was deprived of her father,” he testified in the affidavit.
Sara Leah lives with her mother and younger brother in Montreal, where her mother works as a teacher in an Orthodox nursery school.
In a recent interview Gita Goldstein said her ex-husband harasses her and her relatives with threatening phone calls in the middle of the night.
After they were separated several years ago, but before she had gone to the secular courts, Israel Goldstein had allegedly kidnapped their son from a playground. He later failed to show up at a custody hearing, and the courts awarded her sole custody, she said.
Shortly after the minor marriage was made public in an article last May by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Orthodox rabbis ruled that Sarah Leah is not actually married because her father never named the groom or witnesses involved in the marriage.
Stren said, however, that he fears that the Rabbinic ruling does not truly free the girl.
Goldstein “could reveal the witnesses at any time. It’s a sword of Domacles hanging over her (Sara Leah’s) head until the entire issue is put to rest,” said Stren.
The goal of suing Goldstein and ultimately, the groom and witnesses, is “to make sure that people participate in this type of thing know that there is a price to pay,” he aid.
Israel Goldstein, in an interview at the state Supreme Court building the day of his preliminary hearing, responded to a reporter’s questions by smiling and contradicting statements he had made previously.
According to Stren, Goldstein’s new testimony that he did not marry off Sara Leah doesn’t necessarily derail his case.
“We’ll see whether he duped people or had co-conspirators,” said Stern. “If he’s semicoherent I might get the court to order him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.”
But “if he’s devious in his answers, there are contempt citations for that sort of thing, making him subject to jail if the judge thinks it is appropriate, he said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
