The case of the Lebanese-born man who found himself at the center of a scandal in Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community has made its way into the Tel Aviv court system.
In October 2021, Eliya Hawila married a young Syrian-Jewish woman in Brooklyn, New York in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony – despite having been raised in a Shi’ite Muslim family in southern Lebanon.
Shortly thereafter, Hawila’s bride and her family discovered his background, with the couple separating and news of the ‘Lebanese groom’ sending shockwaves through the Orthodox community.
Hawila later apologized for the deception, but insisted he is sincere in his desire to live as an Orthodox Jew, and said he hopes to reconcile with his estranged wife.
In early April 2022, however, a Brooklyn rabbi who investigates questions regarding Jewish ancestry found that Hawila was in fact born Jewish.
Hawila later underwent an Orthodox conversion le’chumra (as a precautionary measure) to remove any doubts of his Jewishness – a practice employed when the last four generations of a person’s most recent Jewish ancestors were not religiously observant. He arrived in Israel in late April 2022.
The doubts about his halakhic status as a Jew have placed his wife in a precarious position. If he is to be considered fully non-Jewish before his conversion, then their wedding was null and void. However, if there is even a doubt about his Jewish status at that time, then the wedding will go into effect and his wife will require a halakhic divorce in order to marry someone else.
The woman’s family opened a case at the rabbinical court in Tel Aviv and presented to the court a letter from the rabbis of Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community stating that Hawila was a Muslim through and through at the time of the wedding and not Jewish at all, and asked the court to declare the marriage null and void.
Rabbi Zvadya Cohen, the head of the Rabbinical Court of Tel Aviv, contacted Hawila’s great-grandmother, who lives in Lebanon, and who informed him that although she is a practicing Muslim, her own great-grandmother, a woman named Sarah Devik, was a Jewish woman who married a Muslim man.
Rabbi Cohen informed the family that as a result of the doubts regarding Hawila’s Jewish status, the marriage could not be annulled without a divorce. The court placed a restraining order on Hawila to prevent him from leaving Israel until he provided his wife with the divorce she required.
After many months, the court succeeded in obtaining the valid divorce, allowing the restraining order to be lifted and bringing the entire affair to an end.
It’s good that Batei Dinim in Israel have the power of the state behind them
Only when the government is Right wing
Mazal tov! We need to still work on getting other men to give their wife a gett. They’re are so many agunos.
Yes, there are terrible men who wont give a get no matter what. HOWEVER, in most other cases the women are not so innocent. Don’t think that many of these women are not holding back their children from their fathers.
I know of horrible stories where the women were torturing their ex husband’s and dragging their names through the mud!!
There are ex husbands dragging their ex wife through the mud and claiming the opposite. You don’t know if the ex wife is really holding back their children,they like to say that.
Which is why you should never have an opinion on any aguna case you hear about, until you have a deep knowledge of both sides of the story!
As I once heard from a rabbi that deals with gittin; “there are 3 sides to every story. His side, her side, and the truth”
Oh Please! Everyone knows most woman alienate the kids from their father. Reb Avigdor Miller zt”l himself said today’s (fake) “agunahs” do it to themselves by making their own bed (as they say) by either locking their husbands out of THEIR OWN home! and then kidnapping the poor children and alienating them from their own father! and then they come with their fabricated crocodile tears when they have to sleep on those same beds they made for themselves and (with those same crocodile tears) “cry agunah!”. All frum community’s need to start waking up already about this sad despicable charade.… Read more »
I’m a divorced woman who has to force my kids to go to their father for court assigned visitations . Than this is what so many gossip about? Alienation? I need help and support.
This does not need to be men against woman. Divorced womans club and divorced mens clubs are very toxic. How can one move on in life in peace if they think all men are in the wrong or all woman are in the wrong.
Kidnapping and parental alienation is illegal . The men who claim this, ironically, end up being annoyed at taking care of their kids.
When women fight it uglier than men by nature a man should wanna give. Woman on the other hand a very selfish so says Gemara and chassidus
Where exactly does it say that?!
Some men that give a gett do so with conditions that a woman and their children have to settle for
In most cases the men are at fault. (Excluding not giving the get) Still not disagreeing that they are 3 sides to every story because I’m sure that the women are not always completely innocent. But everyone woman deserves a get if asked for.
Every child has a right to have both their mother and their FATHER. Both EQUALLY in their lives.
Every child should have a right to choose and not be forced to go due to court assigned visitations.
The fact that you took your own personal children and your (ex) husband and dragged them through a custody matter in arkoes / the non Jewish court (thus subjecting your own children to the highest depths of trauma) which is obviously against Jewish law! (Which I would assume and would like to believe that “frum” yidden still care about Jewish law) and you come on here and write such asinine comments oh so proudly??. Just further demonstrates my point of the pure alienation that your seemingly (based on your pathetic comments) doing in such a despicable fashion. And further bestowing… Read more »
My ex husband took me to a non Jewish court and got the kids involved and they couldn’t sleep at night. I begged him not to go to court and i was ready to agree to anything ,so thanks for telling me to be ashamed for what he should be ashamed about
That’s why it’s important that everyone has a halachic prenup such as by the Yashar initiative
And men who use the gett as a threat
And the sad woman that use their own children as pawns and as a threat as well. Sad sad sad
You dont always know how the men are traumatizing and scaring the children,telling them that their mother is going to be in big trouble if they miss out one day of visitation even if for example the child has a party they don’t want to miss out on. Than instead of working out and agreeing to seeing the children extra on another occasion they would rather say they’re being alienated form their kids. Very very sad,very nebach on these little kids.
Yeah…. You’re speaking of an extremely unheard of and (where even if such a situation were “true” it’s obviously an extremely) rare ‘scenario’. However, on the other hand. It is very known that a lot of these “single mothers” (with crocodile tears and all) are all notorious for doing their despicable parental alienation. Just plain sickening.
Most of these men just don’t know how to be reasonable when to see the kids and can’t compromise if something fun comes up for the kids even if they are offered extra time if they can compromise and they don’t listen to where the kids want to be. They think they own their kids. And than they say they’re being alienated when in reality they would see their kids more if they were reasonable. But they’re just looking to make their ex wife look bad as revenge. So who’s using their children for their benefit? It’s so easy for… Read more »
And those “many that give a gett”, it should come without conditions
If he was found to be Jewish, why the ruckus?
She didn’t want to stay married to that con man.
It’s pretty simple
And this is definitely one of those topics you want to be honest about. What it must be like to find out someone is hiding their identity and where they’re from…
Wackiest thorniest halacha issue of the decade i would think. Fakes be a jew, finds out he actaully is. Needs a get because he was deceptive at ttime of wedding.
His grandmother says that she is a Muslim but claims that her grandmother was Jewish. In other words there is a doubt whether or not the grandmother is reliable, thus a doubt whether or not he is Jewish. As a doubt the wedding can’t be nulidade and a get is required. Moreover, for him to be considered Jewish a conversion will be required. However, she doesn’t have to stay with him.
Everyone gets the article. He was deceptive at the time of the marriage, period. The facts found out after are not related to the previous reality.
They told her lol
The rabbi who married him should have checked if he was a jew before preforming the marriage. It was an orthodox wedding!
I heard it was a chabad rabbi who was suppised to check before the wedding. The choson had been learning in yeshiva before and they didnt check if he was jewish either
It was the Syrian community that told the Chabad Rabbi that he was Jewish and that they did research to make sure. Unfortunately, that was not true. They failed the girl.
The Syrian Rabbi asked the Chabad Shliach is the man Jewish the Chabad Rabbi said “I have no idea You have to find out, I do not know” the Syrian Rabbi never checked it out, and this is what happens when you don’t check.
The rabbi did infact check and found out he was jewish. the boy himself did not know he was jewish only that he had a love for jewishness therefore he was kind of deceptive. hope everyone involved finds happiness here on