A rabbi from New Jersey has admitted to kidnapping and threatening to bury an Israeli man alive if he refused to give his wife a religious divorce in 2010.
David Wax, 51, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping charges in a Trenton federal court yesterday. He admitted that the victim's wife paid him $100,000 to shake down her husband for a "get," a religious document an Orthodox woman must receive from her husband before she is considered divorced. According to prosecutors, in October 2010, Wax rounded up a gang of co-conspirators, lured the victim—identified by the Associated Press as Yisrael Meir Briskman of Israel—from his Brooklyn home, blindfolded him, handcuffed him, beat him for several hours and threatened to bury him alive in the Poconos if he didn't grant his wife the get.
Once Briskman agreed to the get, Wax forced him to call his father in Israel and ask for $100,000 to reimburse the wife for Wax's fee. Wax's wife, Judy Wax, allegedly drove Briskman back to Brooklyn; she was also arrested in 2011, and both Waxes pleaded not guilty at the time.
This isn't the only recent incidence of no-"get"-begetting-violence; ultra-Orthodox communities in Monsey, NJ and Brooklyn were raided by the FBI last year after it was alleged that a number of prominent rabbis were involved in a massive kidnapping, torture and extortion scheme. The rabbis were accused of charging as many as two dozen wives upwards of $80,000 to kidnap and torture their Orthodox Jewish husbands to force them to grant a get; one rabbi is accused of using an electric cattle prod on his victims
