Not Burying the Family of a Get Refuser

The Gemarah gives courts the ability to hand out penalties beyond the ones specified in the Torah. They can even override a mitzvah if it is deemed necessary to safeguard the Torah. To use an analogy, Rambam compares this to a surgeon cutting off a limb to save the body.

The gemarah leaves the decision of what penalties to impose up to the courts themselves. The Geonim are the ones who largely set out the framework for what penalties they choose to employ. Paltoi Gaon is the first to mention not burying family members of a person who has been found in violation of a court decree. Although not explicitly connected to a get refuser yet, this is the origin of the right of the court to not bury a person related to someone in violation of a court order.

Other penalties they can impose include not counting the person in a minyan, pulling their children from school, banning a person's spouse from synagogue, declaring their wine and bread to be like the wine and bread of non-Jews, removing a person's tzitzit and mezuzot, not circumcising sons, and not eating or drinking with him.

Paltoi Gaon's position is supported by many other rishonim including the Rif, Nemukei Yosef, Rashba, Rb. Yerucham, Rivash, Binyamin Ze'ev, and the Beit Yosef.

(There are some who incorrectly add the Ramban to this list - the teshuva in question was actually authored by the Rashba and misattributed to the Ramban).

In parallel to the above, Rabeinu Tam (1100-1171) wrote about a get refuser and mentioned penalties the community could enact that would be allowed on a get refuser. He did not mention refusing burial, but he did mention not engaging in commerce, not socializing with him, not eating and drinking with him, and not visiting him should he become ill.

The Rema is the first person to connect these two ideas and say that a community can refuse to bury the family of a get refuser. Writing in the shulchan aruch he quotes the Binyamin Ze'ev from above, he says that a beit din can refuse to bury the relatives of a get refuser, and also includes the penalties mentioned both by Rabeinu Tam for a get refuser, and those mentioned by the other rishonim for anyone in violation of a beit din's order.

Similar Cases in the Times of the Aharonim

There are a few similar cases from the modern era in which some version of these rules have been applied. The first similar case I found was in the Shvut Yaakov (1661-1733). A man was in violation of a beit din's orders, and his son-in-law died without sons. The court was allowed to prevent his daughter's halitza until the man consented to follow the court's demands.

The second case is a modern case from an Israeli rabbinical court in 1950 penned by then future Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. The court was trying to put pressure on a man to grant a divorce to his wife. While they never got to the point of actually issuing a seruv, they did entertain the option of refusing to bury members of his family should it get to that point. Ovadia Yosef does say that removing a man's children from school should not be done anymore based on the Maharshal, but does not say anything about not longer refusing burial to family members.

A third related case is from Israel in 2017. Israeli Rabbinical courts were trying to convince two men to grant divorces to their wives. They imposed various penalties, including an order not to bury the recalcitrant husbands if they died. The two husbands fled the country and sued, claiming that the courts didn't have the right to impose these penalties. The supreme court denied their claim on all accounts except for the burial issue. The court ruled that since a husband's obligation to grant a divorce expired upon the passing of the husband, that denying them burial was a violation of Israeli law.

The most recent case is from 2019, (and is the one that inspired this source sheet). It is the case of Meir and Lonna Kin. Meir Kin has refused a get to his wife for decades, even after remarrying himself. When Meir Kin's mother died and her body was flown to Israel for burial, the Chief Rabbi delayed her burial until Kin agreed to grant a divorce. Although news reports conflict over exactly what happened, it appears that either the rabbinate changed it's mind and buried her anyway, or Kin agreed to their stipulations and then reneged after the burial occurred.