World
Last Afghan Jew at last grants divorce wife has wanted for decades
But still questions remain over whether ceremony on Zoom with non-Jewish witnesses will be valid
September 19, 2021 12:05
But still questions remain over whether ceremony on Zoom with non-Jewish witnesses will be valid
September 19, 2021 12:05The last Jew in Afghanistan has agreed to give his wife a divorce after refusing for more than 20 years following his rescue from the rule of the Taliban.
Zebulon Simentov signed the documents granting his wife a get on the eve of Yom Kippur in the unnamed neighbouring country to which he was evacuated two weeks ago.
For security reasons the location to which he was taken along with a group of 30 women and children has not been disclosed.
The rescue operation was organised by Israeli businessman Moti Kahana and funded by Brooklyn-based Rabbi Moshe Margaretten’s charity Tzedek.
Mr Kahana told the JC that he was still unsure whether the get would be valid, since it took place on Zoom, with two now-Jewish witnesses: an Episcopalian archbishop Robert Gosselin and a Muslim judge who had also been rescued from Afghanistan.
Archbishop Gosselin works closely with Mr Kahana’s humanitarian organisation Global Development Corporation (GDC).
Mr Kahana was on the Zoom call from his home in America as the documents were signed. He joked on Twitter about the get: “Since we are Jews, there is bound to be an argument.”
Mr Simentov is reported to have agreed that if a problem does arise with the get he will go to Israel to ensure it has rabbinical approval. His former wife, who is from Tajikistan, has been living in Israel with their two daughters since 1998.
Mr Kahana told the JC that he was keen to press his US contacts including Senator Chuck Schumer to facilitate travel documentation to bring Mr Simentov out as soon as possible.
He said he was hopeful that the last Afghan Jew would eventually end up in Israel after spending time with his family in the US. He said: “I think that he will be in New York at least by Succot.”
In Kabul, Mr Simentov had been living in some disarray in the premises of the city’s synagogue. He had repeatedly told visitors over the years that he would not provide his wife with a get, saying only: “Oh, I’m done with her.”
At one point Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Council of European Rabbi, offered to fly to Kabul to talk to him, but Mr Simentov refused to see him.
Mr Kahana, who spent many thousands of dollars of his own money saving Syrians from the Assad regime, is being paid by Tzedek and other NGOs to carry out the Afghanistan rescue operation.
He says he will continue the Afghan rescue missions until the funding runs out. To date, he says, he has a waiting list of more than 1,000 people who are desperate to leave Afghanistan, with a focus mainly on women. “Our first priority are people who have an American green card, but we are being very careful with the vetting of the people we bring out.”
Among those already helped by GDC and Rabbi Margaretten’s Tzedek were the Afghan women’s soccer team — now understood to be in Australia — and four children, hiding in a Kabul apartment, whose father was murdered by the Taliban and whose mother was desperate to bring them to America.