Jerusalem – A special rabbinical court ordered by Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef has determined that the families of the two Israeli men who died in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane can begin the process of shiva, or the Jewish ritual mourning period.
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The men’s wives will remain agunot, or chained wives who cannot remarry, however, until the identification of some of the remains of the men by DNA testing.
The remains of Avraham Matsliah, 49, from Maale Adumim, and Shimon Reem, 55, of Zichron Yaakov, as well as the other 155 people on board the Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed on March 10 near Adis Ababa shortly after takeoff, have not yet been identified by DNA tests.
DNA samples have been taken from flight victims and from family members for matching by Interpol in Ethiopia, the Jerusalem Post reported. This could take six more months.
The court met for several days. It is headed by Yosef.
The rabbinical court took testimony from several members of Israel’s volunteer Zaka search-and-rescue organization which had limited access to the crash site and was unable to complete the research necessary for the rabbinical court.
BY MARCY OSTER
Silly people – all you have to is establish his ticket was scanned in as he entered the plane. Once we prove he was on the plane there is no need to find
DNA. (If they do all the better). To say the are agunoth until the DNA is found is showing this is only some grandstanding. “the court met for several days” yeh give me a break.They need to make it look like they have set up a special beis din and are on the case full time . Don’t they have other work to do?
Number 1 is right. What did they do for thousands of years before DNA testing? Historically, Batei Din made every effort to free agunot, even accepting the word of a single Gentile. A scanned boarding pass and a correct head count (the flight would not have taken off without a confirmed head count) should be more than enough proof of the husbands, A’H, demise.
Would you want to be a wife who went on with her life and then her husband miraculously shows up? Part of the process is waiting a certain amount of time after the tragedy to see if the person will contact them, even if the chance is statistically very small you can’t say it’s zero. It was the same with 9-11.