Feds Charge Rabbis With Torturing Men With Cattle Prods To Force Divorce

Federal prosecutors have charged two New York City area Ultra-Orthodox rabbis with using cattle prods to force Jewish husbands to agree to divorce their wives. 

Rabbi Mendel Epstein, 68, of Brooklyn and Rabbi Martin Wolmark, 55, of Monsey, Rockland County, were among 10 people arrested in the barbarous scheme with tentacles that ran all the way to the rabbinical court. Epstein is accused of running an unholy crew that charged women trapped in marital limbo $70,000 to $100,000 to strong-arm their stubborn husbands into granting a Jewish divorce known as a “get,” a criminal complaint reveals. Wolmark, who presides over the rabbinical court in Monsey, is charged with accepting money to make sure the court approved the gets. “They didn’t do it out of religious conviction,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Gribko told a judge Thursday in a federal court hearing in Trenton, N.J. “They did it for money.”

Prosecutors say the group conducted at least 20 kidnappings.