Goldberg, Judah Elyakim. Kocha de-Heteira: She’elah u-Teshuvah be-Inyenei Kidushin [“The Power of Permission”: A Responsum Concerning Marriage]

The author, a medical doctor and non-salaried rabbi of Cong. Chovevei Torah in Brooklyn, presents here a halachic responsum proposing that a woman whose husband never sexually consumated their matrimonial union and who is unwilling to grant his wife a “get” or bill of divorce, is allowed to later remarry, on the grounds that the original marriage was a “mikach ta’uth” or a case of misrepresentation and thus invalid. Years earlier, R. Isaac Elchanan Spektor of Kovno forbade such a dissolution of marriage, however Goldberg bases his opinion here upon the lenient views of R. David Friedman of Karlin. Thereafter, Abraham Aaron Yudelevitch, spiritual leader of Adath Israel on New York’s Lower East Side, issued newspaper ads deriding Goldberg’s views. A rejoinder to this book was written by the polemicist R. Tzvi Hirsch (Erno) Friedman (New York, 1924)