DY: “What is your recommendation in such a case regarding “propriety, good behavior, righteousness and Gan Eden”?”
“the issue here is not what the woman should do, and not what beis din should do. It’s what the husband should do.”
All these issues are intertwined and can be discussed together.
“If I had to guess, probably ???? ?????, not ???? ?????.”
So we agree there is no ???? ?????. Where do you find in halacha this scenario attributed to a ???? ?????? The ???? ????? I see halacha citing are situations as ??? ??? ??????? ?????? ????? ????? ????? ?????? ???? ?????
“This all may be true at a point where the marriage is salvageable.”
Which is what I am discussing. Why your seeming reluctance to acknowledge a marriage may be salvageable much much more often than modern society treats it or accepts? And very well may be salvageable even where one spouse thinks it is not salvageable. Much like ???? ????? taught us in his ??? *extending* the ability for one spouse to unilaterally salvage the marriage against the will of the other spouse! Placing an arbitrary or even objective timeframe after which one spouse who simply walked out could then wait it out for the timeframe to pass would simply undermine and effectively eliminate halacha’s (and ???? ?????’s) insistence that there is no unilateral right to a divorce; and all the halachas describing what does and what does not justify a divorce would go out the window.
Avrom: It isn’t a Torah value to unwarrantedly break up a family. There is no right-to-divorce or divorce-on-demand in Judaism. As far as the realisticness of the timeframe is concerned, don’t forget that halacha specifically says a divorce can only be done if the husband desires it. This point isn’t just theoretical or something that doesn’t simply mean exactly that. Halacha does not at all say that husband must desire it if it is requested of him (barring the occurrence of abuse.) The Torah explicitly says that a divorce only is done if he wants to do it, meaning if he doesn’t want to do it he has no moral, ethical or legal obligation to change his mind. What if someone gives you a gift and later changes his mind? You have no obligation whatsoever to return the gift to him as much as he wants it back. Secondly, what is or isn’t realistic is in the eyes of the beholder. A court cannot rule on the realisticness of a situation where there is no obligation in the first place. As I said earlier; perhaps objectively it is an unrealistic expectation; perhaps he is being delusional in thinking the her mind will change. Do we fault a person for unreasonably holding out for and davening for a refuah for an ill family member’s recovery when it is “unreasonable” to expect that to happen? Also take into consideration that she is sinning [being a moredes] by having unjustifiably walked out of the marriage. The Torah itself gives him the moral right to hold out when it says it can only be given according to his will. Now what I just related doesn’t jibe well in modern 21st century societal values; but it is our eternal Torah values even if secular society has embraced no-fault divorce.
BTW, a slightly tangential point that Ben Levi raised and DY seemed to agree with, is that if one spouse unreasonably seeks a divorce against the other spouses will, then the spouse wishing to continue the marriage, even if he agrees to terminate it per the insistence of his spouse, has the moral right to hold out for an acceptable custody arrangement for himself before giving it. After all he would like to continue the marriage both spouses committed to and raised children under and there is no obligation on his part to agree to a divorce and normally a parent lives with his children in his home. It is both callous and maleficent to unwillingly force a person out of a marriage he put his life into building and put him into a situation of being divorced when it is unreasonable and all other options have not been exhausted. And it is certainly unfair if not cruel (for both the parent and the children) that a parent and his children should lose daily access and daily interactivity with each other in their upbringing because a spouse capriciously demanded a divorce and the breakup of the family.
fny: I beg to differ. I strongly posit that most divorces were avoidable and in the long term the children suffer from the divorce having occurred rather than the marriage being preserved. The examples to the contrary are the exception not the rule.