Calling off the search

"The Brazilian military said late Friday it is calling off the search for bodies of passengers and crew from the Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic earlier this month.
It was unlikely that any more bodies would be found, the military said." http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/27/air.france.crash.search/index.html

After reading the above report, I couldn't help but think of the article that I read in the Mishpacha magazine about Mrs. Anidjar, wife of one of the victimes of the plane crash.

"A Paris beis din has ruled that a French woman whose husband was on board Air France Flight 447 may not remarry, but has instructed the couple’s son to sit shivah and begin the year-long mourning period for his father.
According to the Paris beis din headed by Rav Yirmiya Menachem Cohen, there is no concrete evidence that Shlomo Anidjar, who is presumed to have been on the doomed aircraft, is dead. This means Mrs. Anidjar is still married, at least until the beis din is able to obtain more information about the crash, and that usually means that family members of the deceased cannot begin sitting shivah.
But apparently the presumption of death in this case is strong enough to rule leniently with regard to the couple’s son...... "
http://www.mishpacha.com/getPdf/1/263/14/0/53

Mayanot (by Rabbi Noson Weisz) Ties That Bind

"If a man marries a woman and lives with her, and it will be that she will not find favor in his eyes, for he found in her a matter of immorality, and he wrote her a bill of divorce and presented it into her hand, and sent her from his house." (Deut. 24:1)
From this verse our rabbis derive the rules of Jewish divorce in the Tractate Gitin of the Babylonian Talmud.
The basic rules are familiar to most people. The husband must write a bill of divorce and hand it to the wife in order for her to be considered single once again in the eyes of the Torah. If his whereabouts are unknown, or if he is mentally incompetent or simply unwilling to hand her the bill of divorce or get, the woman is stuck in the special status called aguna, much publicized in recent times........

"A certain Jew who lived in Warsaw decided to leave his Jewish wife and family and convert to Christianity. On principle, he refused to give his wife a get even in return for ransom. Rabbi Akiva Eiger was in Warsaw attending a rabbinnic conference and the matter was brought to his attention. He arranged a meeting with the recalcitrant husband and pleaded with him to give his wife a get. Upon his refusal, Rabbi Eiger recited the first Mishna in the Tractate Kidushin to the husband; the Mishna states that a Jewish woman returns to single status in one of two ways, through receiving a get, or through the death of her husband. He asked the husband to take his choice. The husband scoffed and left in a huff. He collapsed dead on the stairs leaving the building."

To read full article, click here.

Let us hope that Mr. Anidjar will receive a proper Jewish burial and that his wife will not have an agunah status indefinitely.

Those men who are not giving their wives gets, all I can tell you is to reread the story attributed to Rabbi Akiva Eiger.