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The case against David and Judy Wax in U.S. federal court marks a strange twist in a chain of events that started with a divorce dispute in Israel's Rabbinical Court over the victim's refusal to give his wife a "get," an Orthodox Jewish divorce document permitting a wife to remarry.
Absent from U.S. court documents is the name of the victim, Yisrael Briskman, who apparently fled Israel after refusing to grant a divorce. But his name shows up in a 2008 public notice from the High Rabbinical Court of Jerusalem, placed in religious publications in Israel and abroad.
The notice deems it forbidden for the Jewish community to do business with Briskman, extend kindness to him or give him a place to stay. It also calls upon the public to notify the court of Briskman's whereabouts.
Following a brief federal court appearance Monday, David and Judy Wax were released on $500,000 bond pending trial. A federal magistrate in Trenton, N.J., has ordered the two to surrender their passports, but declined a prosecution request that they wear electronic monitors while free.
According to the FBI complaint, the victim was lured to the Wax home in Lakewood, which is home to a large Orthodox Jewish community, to discuss opportunities for the victim to work on a book the rabbi was writing about the Talmud. Once in the home, the victim was allegedly bound, robbed, shown a body bag and told he'd be buried alive in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains if he didn't agree to the divorce.
David Wax is also accused of threatening to have the victim's father killed if he didn't pay the wife $100,000.
"He has no history of any type of criminal behaviors or violent behaviors. He's the father of eight children," Mitchell Ansell, David Wax's attorney, told The Associated Press. "We're confident that when all the facts are made public, he'll be cleared of these charges and his good and honorable name will be restored."
Attorneys for both defendants said they would plead not guilty.
Those jews love divorces but God doesn't allow them according to the KJV Holy Bible. As Jesus said in Matthew 19:4-6 a man shall take a wife and they shall be as one flesh. Plus it says what man joins together let no man put asunder. In Matthew 19:8 He shows that it wasn't God that gave man divorce but Moses because of how man hardened his heart. Shows from the beginning it wasn't so. Thus showing that God still didn't allow divorce. In Matthew 19:9 Jesus says, not God, that he would prefer that he whosoever shall his wife away not do it except for the act of fornication for whoever marries her which is put away commits adultery. He says. Not God. For he is saying if you divorce your wife whoever marries her is committing adultery as is anyone who marries you if you put her away for even with the divorce you are still married to her according to God. Thus neither of you can remarry while the other lives without committing adultery. You remain one flesh even after a divorce in God's eyes Jesus shows.