Meir Kin, right, married
Daniela Barbosa on Thursday night, though he has refused Lonna Kin an Orthodox
Jewish divorce.Credit Isaac Brekken for The New York Times
LAS VEGAS — The wedding was a
modest affair, held in a reception hall overlooking an artificial lake tucked
behind a suburban strip. But just minutes after it ended, the bride and groom
hurriedly scurried past dozens of protesters here who were chanting “Bigamist!”
and “Shame on you!”
One of the wedding guests on Thursday
evening glared at the demonstrators, repeatedly hissing: “Mazel tov. Mazel tov.
Mazel tov.” The bride, in a lace and sequin floor-length gown, grasped the hand
of her husband and looked at the crowd in silence.
Meir Kin, the new husband, has been
divorced for more than seven years, under California’s
civil law. But he has refused to give his previous wife the document known as a
“get,” as required by Orthodox Jewish law to end a marriage. In the eyes of
religious authorities, the woman he married in 2000 is what is called an agunah
— Hebrew for chained wife. Without the get, the woman, Lonna Kin, is forbidden
under Jewish law to remarry.
Jewish
law prohibits men from taking multiple wives. But Mr. Kin, according to several
rabbis here, apparently relied on a legal loophole, which says that if a man
can get the special permission of 100 rabbis to take a second wife, he is able
to do so.
The couple first separated in January 2005, shortly after Ms. Kin filed for
divorce in New York. But she
withdrew the motion, on the advice of a lawyer who later told her that it would
be easier to secure a get if her husband initiated the civil divorce. Mr. Kin
then moved to Los Angeles, and
filed for divorce there six months after he arrived. Long before the divorce
was finalized in 2007, she said, he told her he never planned to give her the
religious document.
Typically, such disagreements are
adjudicated by a religious court made up of three rabbis, known as a beit din.
Mr. Kin was approached by a local rabbi with a list of several such religious
courts his wife would be willing to submit to, but he has not responded,
according to Rabbi Yehoshua Fromowitz, who runs the AhavasTorahCenter,
a synagogue here,
Instead, Mr. Kin, who in recent years
moved to Las Vegas, has repeatedly insisted that Ms. Kin
agree to binding arbitration from one particular religious court based in
Monsey that is controversial and has been widely denounced by rabbinical
authorities in the United States and Israel.
Several leading rabbis, including the chief rabbinical office of Israel,
have said they would not accept a divorce document signed by this particular
court. Mr. Kin has said that the head of the beit din, Rabbi Tzvi Dov Abraham
of Monsey, granted him dispensation to marry again.
“The
rabbinical court system is such an ad hoc system where any man is able to call
himself a rabbi and any three rabbis are able to call themselves a court, so
that even if it’s not accepted by anyone, he is able to hide behind this,” said
Rabbi Jeremy Stern, the executive director of the group that organized the
protests against the wedding. “What empowers him to continue is the support of
friend and family and community. We need everyone to say clearly we will not
tolerate this kind of behavior.”
A Las Vegas
rabbi declined to perform the wedding on Thursday. The groups protesting say
they believe Mr. Abraham traveled from New York
to officiate. He did not return repeated phone calls for comment.
Mr. Kin, according to several members of
the small Las Vegas Orthodox community, has worshiped at two synagogues
affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, which is known for welcoming
a broad array of Jews. The rabbis at those synagogues do not count him toward a
quorum needed for prayer because of the controversy over his divorce case, but
they have declined to publicly rebuke him or force him out, according to Rabbi
Shea Harlig, the head of Chabad of southern Nevada.
Mr. Stern and other rabbis supporting Ms.
Kin say they will continue to press that Mr. Kin be exiled from the local
Jewish community.
Ms. Kin is still holding out some hope she
will receive the get — she communicated with Mr. Kin by email as recently as
this week, she said, and she continues to send her son across the country
several times a year to spend time with his father.