This American Life - 553: Stuck in the Middle

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

People caught in limbo, using ingenuity and guile to try to get themselves out. Prologue: Rachel has two kids. Elias, age seven, is a vegetarian. Theo, age five, is not. But Elias wants Theo, and everyone else in the house, to be vegetarian too. So Rachel and her husband are in the middle of negotiating the desires of two very strong willed kids. (12 minutes)Act One: Sara Corbett's father-in-law Dick is 81. And he's become obsessed with a limbo most of us hate – the music he hears whenever he's on hold. (14 minutes)Act Two: Mark Oppenheimer reports on agunah in the Orthodox Jewish community. An agunah is a woman whose husband refuses to give her a divorce – in Hebrew it means "chained wife." If you're an Orthodox Jew, strictly following Jewish law, the only real way to get divorced is if your husband agrees to hand you a piece of paper called a get. Without the get, women who want out of their marriages can stay chained to their husbands for years. In New York, a couple of rabbis were recently accused of using violence to force men to give their wives a get. (17 minutes)Act Three: Brett Martin documents a previously unnoticed human phenomenon, one that involves airplanes, crying, and Reese Witherspoon. (11 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Elias stopped eating meat when he was three or four. His mom can't remember. It's been so long. He was seven when I talked to her. And he doesn't think that anybody else should eat meat either. And he freaks out. He cried and pleaded at his grandmother's at New Year's when he heard that she might cook brisket until she offered not to. There was the time that he got so upset in a restaurant

smelling the meat cooking in the kitchen and seeing all the people around them eat their meals that he had to go sit up front by the door. And it kills him especially to think that his little brother might still be eating animals. His brother Theo had just turned five at the time of this interview and emphatically is not a vegetarian. What a surprise, two brothers. Their mom, Rachel, says that Theo is not asking to eat meat in front of Elias.

He's not asking to eat it all that often. He wants to eat meat in front of Elias. He's not asking to eat it all that often. He wants to eat meat sometimes. And I think he feels it's not fair that Elias, you know, I think he calls him the god of food. And that Elias doesn't have the right to be the god of food and tell Theo what to do. It causes a lot of conflict. And I think there are conversations almost every single day around this. She recorded one of those conversations for us when she was taking Theo, the meat eater, to a party. There was going to be food at the party,

and his brother was going to be there, the god of food. What would Theo eat? So, Theo, we're going to this potluck. What do you think is going to be there? Well, I hope there's meat, and if you give me meat, just let me eat it. So what do you think would happen if you ate meat at the potluck? Well, we would, Elias would fight.

You and Elias would fight? Well, that would be bad, but I don't know what's going to happen. Well, do you think it's, this is, tonight is a night for Elias' class. Do you think you could not eat meat tonight so he doesn't have to have a freakout in front of all of his friends? What do you think? No. to have a freakout in front of all of his friends? What do you think?

No. I want to eat some because he always says, don't eat any meat for the rest of your life. I know. I think things will change when he gets older. But I just want you to think about whether or not you think it's worth it for him to scream and yell at school tonight with all of his friends, okay? Think about that, okay? Deal?

Well, when he's not looking, I'll eat some. When he's not looking? Yeah. Do you think this gives Elias too much power over Theo? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a concern. And at some point, probably a year into his vegetarianism, he asked that we wouldn't be eating meat either and that the house wouldn't be eating meat either and that

the house wouldn't have any meat. And that was something that my husband and I had to, you know, take a step back and think about. And, you know, people would say to us, you know, how could you have your seven-year-old making decisions about how you're going to be running your family? And I guess our response has always been, you have to hear how our child talks about meat and how it feels to him when he sees us eating meat and other people around him and his close family eating meat. It's such a painful experience for him. Okay, I just want to say, before we go any further,

if you are hearing all this and you're feeling judgy about these parents, and I know you are because that is a national pastime, judging other people's parenting, I just want to say, I totally felt that way until I heard Elias, just like she says. And hearing Elias made me realize, oh, right, she actually is in a really tough situation where she has these two kids and they both have really strong feelings about this. And she doesn't want to crush either one of them. Anyway, listen, here's Rachel with Elias.

What made you decide to become a vegetarian? Do you remember? Yep. So basically, I just always thought that how they got me was finding dead animals, like on the side of the road or something. But then I figured out they're actually killing them and I thought it wasn't that nice so I stopped eating it. What do you think about other people eating meat? I really don't like it. And what do you what do you say about what you want to do with your life? What's your goal in life?

One of your goals, I know you have lots of them. To get everybody vegetarian. And what do you feel about animals? I feel like, well... Do you like them? Yeah, I love animals. And I know that there are only like 1,000 giant pandas left in the world. And also 30 armored leopards, so they're pretty in danger. What do you think about how the way people treat animals in general?

Well, most of them not very nice. Like think about lambs. They get killed for nothing. Every time you talk about that, you start to cry, huh? Yeah. Lambs in particular are hard for you, huh? Mm-hmm. The family did stop eating meat at home after Elias asked.

Though Rachel says that they actually didn't eat much meat before that either. Maybe once a week they'd have fish or turkey. And for now, she and her husband's strategy with their two boys is that they try to get them to talk to each other and see each other's point of view, crossing their fingers that in the long run, that's going to be best for both of them. In the short run, though, it is complicated.

You know, for any parent, there are always the things that you let go in the short run because you cannot fight every fight. And for a while, Theo, the one who eats meat, was secretly going out and getting turkey sandwiches with his dad after soccer. They would even dance this little turkey dance when they did it. Or here's Rachel with Theo, the meat eater, on a Thursday. Fridays, the boys' school serves pizza and you can get plain or pepperoni. And of of course Elias does not like it if Theo eats the pepperoni. What do you think is going to happen tomorrow about the pepperoni pizza?

Well since we don't have lunch at the same time people ask me and then I'll just lie to say I got peanut butter jelly or any other snacks. Okay. Think it's going to work? I don't know. It will be a hard choice to do peanut butter jelly or cheese. But what are you really going to do? Peppermint. So is it okay for your five-year-old to tell you they're going to deal with the situation just by lying to their siblings? To tell you they're going to deal with the situation just by lying to their siblings? Well, I will say that we have come some way since that was taped, and we don't lie about it anymore.

And that was sort of, I think, an interim fix. What made him stop lying? I think probably the more we are talking about it, the more I realize it didn't feel great. And so I was sort of being more open with Elias and saying, you have to realize that this is the reality of who Theo is and who he has the right to be. And Theo has his own choices and he has the right to those choices. And even though for you this doesn't make any sense right now. One of the things you recorded was a conversation where you're talking to him about whether Theo has the right to do this. Can you tell me a little bit about what happens with you and Theo?

Like, you know, when he wants to eat meat and you don't want him to and the pepperoni whole thing that happens every Friday. I normally kick him in the butt and yell at him a lot. Literally you kick him in the butt? Yeah. Do you think that makes him want to eat meat less? Or do you think maybe the opposite? Opposite, probably.

And what do you think about when we talk about that you can't control other people and what they eat? What do you mean by that? That it's not your job to tell other people what to do, but what they get to eat, right? We've talked about that. Right. Do you think it's true that you don't have a right to tell other people what to do? Yeah, I guess.

You guess, but it's hard. Mm-hmm. I feel like when he says that, he's not totally sure he believes it yet. No, I agree. You can hear it in his voice, like, I know that this is the right thing to say. Exactly.

But this can't be the truth, can it? Exactly. Yeah. Okay, an important fact. Theo is not being crushed by Elias's demands. If anything, between the two of them, Theo is the dominant brother in most situations. He's outgoing, he's funny, he's a big personality in whatever room he walks into. And he gets his way with Elias all the time. Like, for instance, when the family took this day trip to visit Rachel's mom, and coincidentally, it happened to be the day of a herring run, which comes once a year. And so they stopped at this herring ladder, whatever that is.

We are cheering for the herring, and they're doing their final leap into the water to go back to their spawning grounds. And we finally leave. We go back to my mother's house and Theo runs to the refrigerator, opens the door, pulls out the jar of herring, goes, I can't wait to eat that herring. And it was just like, wow. And of course, there then became Elias, you know, pleading and crying and hoping and hoping that Theo wasn't going to eat this herring that we just saw all of his cousins. Did he eat the herring? Oh, yes. So he ate the herring out on the porch. Theo, Elias, I think, cried in the living room.

Elias, however, is always coming up with new tactics. Like in the car recently, he made this proposal to Theo involving matchbox cars, and Rachel flipped on the recorder. So tell me what you were just saying, that Elias, you had a plan. What was the plan? You said, Theo, if you, what? Um, be a vegetarian for two weeks, I'll get you three new cars. What do you have to say?

Thank you. No, but does that seem like a fair deal? If you are vegetarian for three weeks, you'd get three cars? Two. Two weeks. Is it worth it to you? Is that true, Mama? Will you really give me? This is not my negotiations. Yes, I will.

If you do it for three weeks, I'll give you eight. But will you give me if I do it one week? So this is where they are now. Rachel and her husband insert themselves in the middle of these negotiations, or they get dragged into the middle between the two boys. As parents, they have to ad hoc their way through each new

thing the boys come up with on this. Like here with this Matchbox deal, the boys could not agree on what is a critical part of any negotiation, of any contract, and that is the start date of the deal. Would their deal begin before or after Friday's pepperoni

pizza day at school? I'm getting pepperoni! So you want to start after Friday? Being a vegetarian starts on Friday. No! Fine a vegetarian starts on Friday. No! So. Fine.

It starts on Saturday. All right. Good. Wait. Can you guys shake on it? I think this is interesting. Well, today on our program, people stuck in the middle. You know the saying, necessity is the mother of invention?

Being stuck in the middle of some situation is just like that because that is when ingenuity has to kick in. That is when you see people trying to MacGyver their way out, trying stuff that it is surprising to see anyone try. We have three stories today of three radically different sorts of situations and their outcomes from WBEC Chicago. It is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass.

Stay with us. This American Life, today's show is a rerun. Act one. Do you hear what I hear? So there are certain locations that we all find ourselves in sometimes where we're just supposed to sit and wait, stuck in the middle of not exactly nowhere, but nowhere interesting. I'm talking about, you know, the rows of chairs and airports that you sit in by the door for your flight or doctor's office waiting rooms. And finally,

the mundane spot that one man found himself in, over and over, Sarah Corbett has the story about her father-in-law. I showed up for the first time at my father-in-law's house in 1992. He sat me down at the kitchen table, and we had a nice get-to-know-you sort of conversation. I was 24, Dick was about 60, and he pulled out a pen and took notes on what I was

saying. At the time, I had no idea why he was doing this, but Dick is like this about everything that interests him. He spent his entire career working for IBM, going back to the 50s and 60s when working at IBM was like working at NASA. The kind of problems he worked on took weeks or months to solve, and he loved it. He's thorough, a process man. As Dick sees it, if something catches his attention, it's clearly worth gathering data on. And if it's worth gathering data on, it's worth getting to the bottom of, including recently, a certain piece of music. Hello, could you do me a great favor? This is a very unusual call, but you know the music you have, the holding music? When you put me on hold, it plays it.

Could you do that for me for a minute? I appreciate that very much. That's Dick, and for the last two years, he's been very, very interested in a piece of hold music. The first time I heard it when I was talking to Stanford Hospital, that's the call that started the whole thing. I loved the song. Just very unusual. It was bells and synthesizer and just clapping.

It was an unusual piece. It's very hard to describe. He heard the hold music again when he called the medical billing center in Atlanta, and again with his cardiologist. Then he had a hernia, then a kidney stone. This one song, it turns out, is the hold music for Dick's entire health care network. He's 81, in great health, but 81 is 81. And he's the one who deals with all the appointments, the follow-ups, the billing,

both for him and his wife, Mary Ann. So if I called any number of doctors in the appointments, the follow-ups, the billing, both for him and his wife, Mary Ann. So if I called any number of doctors in the area, I would hear that music, and every time I heard it, it would just, again, remind me of what in the devil is that tune? He couldn't find the name of it. He couldn't find it, period, anywhere except on hold. And of course he took notes on the phone calls where he was hearing it, because Dick takes notes on every phone call.

The song's not in the databases of music apps like Shazam and SoundHound, by the way. Dick tried it. To identify the song, he needed human help. And a surprising number of people in medical offices, strangers he met over the phone, were willing to take this on. These were exactly the kind of people Dick is always looking for when he's on a quest. The kind of person that would, you know, get into it. A few people called their communications departments

to see if they could turn anything up. No luck. A woman seven states away spent a whole weekend looking up songs online to try and find a match. Dead end. You know who was the least helpful? Dick's family. We did not get into it.

Dick called us, his sons and daughters-in-law, and tried to hum the music over the phone. We blew it off. Dick described the whole song as haunting, but it was like a ghost none of us saw or even believed in, and he could tell. I think when you get older, you get more of that in your life,

where people are questioning whether you've really seen it right or you remember it right or whatever and that does get you to feel a little isolated a little you know yes you do I did feel a little bit that way like I can't go on keep asking people

what's this music all about I can't describe it and you sort people, what's this music all about? And I can't describe it. And you sort of find that you better just let it go. And you don't want to, but it sort of fades after a while. Until you hear it again when you call another doctor's office. And then it's back. So I'll put those in here. This is Dick, going through some of the overstuffed cabinets at my house in Maine.

He does this almost every time he comes to visit. He'll spend entire weekends in our basement sorting out the tools we rarely use, collapsing all the empty cardboard boxes that accumulate down there. He'll sift through old papers, double-check our tax returns. He sees in my cabinets a bonanza of things that need sorting and labeling. I think I'll get a box for all your goodies like this, one of those cardboard boxes, before we throw them out. I'll label it and put those together. This is the advantage of having a process man in the family.

Dick stays with your problem until it's been solved, the cabinets or whatever. A couple of years ago, my husband and I were about to buy a new house when Dick swooped in and spent three days doing a copious market analysis, which made it clear that we were about to make a bad investment. He doesn't let himself off the hook for anything, big or small, because things don't let him off the hook. Yeah, he's not fooling around. This is his wife, Marianne.

With life or feelings or getting things right or doing it completely, there's nothing in his life that is inconsequential. Everything matters. Can you think of anything that you've done that you did sloppily or hastily? Not really. Nothing? I don't think so. It would be just not in my vocabulary to do something and say, okay, that's good enough. Let's go. And yet, I don't say that's right. I really don't say that's right. And a lot of times, I think that it's wrong, and I should be on to something else.

I can hear the music in my head now. This woman, Denise Carter Stanley, was Dick's jackpot. She's the registrar at the Medical Imaging Center where he went one day to get a CAT scan. Great gal. She was a single mom, and she had been going to school at night, and we talked about a lot of things. And she was the kind of person that would, you know, get into it. Denise is on hold a lot inside the larger hospital network.

She says she's been hearing the hold music every day for what she estimates is about an hour and a half a day for the last seven years. She likes the music. The first time Dick walked into her office, there was Denise playing the hold music, his hold music, on speakerphone at her desk. In seven years, have other people asked you about the hold music? Actually, they have. They have. But I just, I never got into it with them the way that he and I did. They were just like, you know, casually, yeah, that hold music, do you know who it's by? I'm like, no.

But when he came in, it was really different. It was like he was really interested and really wanted to know. She called the IT department at her hospital. They thought she was crazy. She made more calls. Let me see if I even still have all my information. Are you like Dick, that you keep notes on all this stuff? Yeah, I do.

Because sometimes you just get fixated on something, and you have to know. You can't rest until you know. So you're a persistent person. Yes, very. When you recognize somebody else who's persistent, do you have a special bond with them? Yes, because I know them.

They get me. I get them, and they get me. So is that how you feel about Dick? Yes. Because I know then they get me. I get them and they get me. So is that how you feel about Dick? That he's one of your tribe? Yes. Denise digging around finally turned up the key fact. The music came from Cisco, the company that provides the hospital's phone system. Cisco's the number one supplier of corporate phones like this in the world. Dick went to his local library, and a woman there,

I want to say her name on the radio because she cracked a case, her name is Abby Sesselberg. She went to YouTube and found an audio recording that's called simply One Hour of Cisco Call Manager Default Hold Music. Can we do it? I want to hear it. Okay. There are hundreds of comments posted about this song, pages and pages. I'm sure some people can't stand it, but most of the comments are like this.

Best hold music ever made. I love this song. So addictively pleasant. Please put me back on hold so I can listen to it some more. I work in a call center, and this music is the best to listen to after dealing with rude customers. I thought I was the only person who loved this.

I've been looking for this song for almost three years. Dick read these comments with relief. I just can't seem to help myself. I have been calling and asking another diamond on campus to put me on hold. See? She's calling and asking people to put her on hold because I love that hold music. You see, there are other crazies, huh? You see, there are other crazies, huh?

Well, I must say, you know, from being, what, compulsive about it, in the early times when I was trying to find them, I'm saying, you know, why are you so compulsive about this? You're crazy? And then I started to read this, and I must say, it did a lot for my mental health. Yeah, you're feeling better about yourself now. You're not alone.

My mental condition, yeah. The librarian also helped Dick find a title for the song. It's called Opus Number One. And that's when I finally got into it. Dick, this is for you. My name is Tim Carlton, and I am the composer of Opus Number One. You're hard to find, by the way. Do you know that about yourself? Yeah, I don't really have much of a web presence. Tim was 16 years old when he wrote Opus No. 1. It was recorded in 1989 on a four-track tape by one of his high school buddies, Derek Diehl. Tim was a Yanni-loving computer nerd, messing around with a drum machine and a synthesizer in his parents' garage in California. That five minutes of tape is now on 65 million Cisco phone sets worldwide

as the default hold music. It's what everyone hears unless someone inside the system makes an effort to change it. Tim was in his 20s when he got a call from Derek about Opus No. 1. Derek had taken a job at Cisco designing phone systems. And he's like, dude, if you send this over and give us permission to do this, we can make this the default. I think I can get this in. And it was like putting an Easter egg in a DVD or software, just like a little hidden gem that, oh yeah, the next time you're on hold,

it might be my music. I just thought it would be a cool piece of trivia. So, and then technically what happens? So they license the music from you? I mean, do they renew their license every few years? Like, are you making any money off of it? Not a penny. So I think that's probably my most legit claim as a music artist. I didn't make any money from my music. Tim's not a musician anymore.

He's an IT guy now. He manages the server at a bank in California. Tim's not a musician anymore. He's an IT guy now. He manages the server at a bank in California. What is it like to be put on hold and hear your own music? It's really embarrassing when you're not expecting to hear that and then all of a sudden you have that memory pop up. I start blushing immediately. It's a different time. It's not the same person I am today. So is it sort of like looking back at a picture of yourself from 1987

and saying, oh, why was I wearing that outfit? Oh, exactly. That's exactly it. So has anybody, has it ever yielded anything good for you? I mean, is it ever, if it hasn't made you money, has anybody ever bought you a drink in a bar, picked up women with it, or is there any rock star application here? No, I don't think I've ever actually tried to use the, you know, I wrote the default hold music for a lot of companies. Tim and Derek are still friends, and Derek's the only one after all these years making any sort of music.

He creates new ringtones for phones, which Tim admits he's a little jealous of. It's something that people are choosing to put on their phone as opposed to this music being forced on them. I think that would have been more entertaining to me. I see. So you feel like your music has been forced on millions of people. Yes. So it's not exactly something to brag about. That's, I think, the source of my embarrassment, yeah.

I told Tim my father-in-law wanted a copy of the song to put on his iPod, because he wants to play it around the house as he does chores and pays bills. In the comments on YouTube, lots of people said they wanted a copy. Tim found this almost impossible to fathom. But he and Derek sent it anyway. Full fidelity, in stereo. Sarah Corbett in Portland, Maine. Her father-in-law, Dick, is now 92.

Like I said earlier, today's show is a rerun. He still loves Opus No. 1. If you have not had enough of this song, it's available at Better Hospital Phone Systems everywhere. We also have links to streamable and downloadable versions at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Nowhere to go Nowhere to go Nowhere to go Nowhere to go Nowhere to go Nowhere to go

No one to be with me Coming up, Orthodox Jews and karate and cattle prods and so much more. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This is American Life from Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, Stuck in the Middle,

stories of people who cannot get out of some situation, some limbo they are caught in, and so they use ingenuity and guile or any anyway, unconventional means to get themselves unstuck. We have arrived at act two of our show. Act two, sunrise, sun get. Not that long ago, there was a kind of wacky news story that was news for a day or so in New York City. It was on the cover of the tabloids. It was on all the local news channels in the tri-state area.

And at its heart were people stuck in a kind of limbo. Mark Oppenheimer has more. The news was pretty startling. A group of men, including a Brooklyn rabbi named Mendel Epstein, had been arrested for conspiring to kidnap a husband and torture him until he gave his wife a get. The get is simply a piece of paper a husband hands his wife saying, essentially, it's over. We're divorced. Jews can get civil divorces like anyone else. But if you're an Orthodox Jew, strictly following Jewish law, the get is the only real way to end a marriage. Usually this goes off without a hitch. But sometimes a woman wants to get divorced and the husband refuses to give a get.

That's where Rabbi Epstein came in. to give again. That's where Rabbi Epstein came in. According to the complaint, Epstein talked about forcing compliance through the use of tough guys who utilize electric cattle prods, karate, handcuffs, and place plastic bags over the heads of the husbands. The criminal complaint against Epstein and a fellow rabbi named Martin Walmart alleged that the rabbis agreed to arrange a beatdown of a reluctant husband, and they were asking for more than $50,000 to do it. Here's the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Paul Fishman, laying this all out to the press.

The charges are kidnapping and extortion, violent crime, to get Jewish men to give divorces that they wouldn't otherwise give. And it's not really an exercise of religion, it's really about money and violent crime. When the story first broke, what kind of got lost is that it's not just about cash, karate, and cattle prods. It's also about women who are stuck, essentially trapped, in failed marriages. For the past couple years, as a religion reporter, I've been interviewing Jewish women in just this situation.

And it can be pretty horrible. Some men refuse to give a get because they still love their wives and hope to reconcile. But others just this situation. And it can be pretty horrible. Some men refuse to give a get because they still love their wives and hope to reconcile. But others just want leverage so they can demand, for example, lots of money. Anywhere between half a million and two million dollars, depending on the day and, I guess, the position of the sun in the sky. This is Gital Dodelson. She's an Orthodox Jewish woman, and she's what's known as a Naguna. That's the word in Hebrew for a woman whose husband refuses to give her a divorce. Literally, it means a chained wife.

Besides money, lots of money, Gital says her husband has a long list of demands for her to meet if she wants her get. He wants—I have a four-year-old son. He wants 50-50 custody, where my son would be a week with me and a week with him. But Gital lives in New Jersey. Her husband's on Staten Island. The boy would have to enroll in two schools and alternate weeks. Keep in mind, Gital already has a civil divorce, and the custody and financial arrangements have been settled by a judge. Gital says that her husband, who, by the way, didn't return my calls, is always changing what he's asking for.

At one point, she says, he demanded they get rid of the coordinator who's overseeing the custody of their son. Another time, he insisted that she promised to tell the boy someday that the divorce was all his mother's fault. Gittal says she should have seen it coming. I was young and dumb,

and there were a lot of things that maybe should have been red flags that I wasn't paying attention to. He said while we were dating, he told me once that he's always right. Now, I laughed because I don't know who says that when no one says that seriously, so I assumed he was joking. And he wasn't joking. You know, a week into my marriage, I was looking back and kicking myself because, I mean, I should have stopped dating him right there, but I didn't realize. And, you know, by the time I realized, it was too late.

I actually find it easier to explain now that he hasn't given a get for four years because the way he's trying to control me now through the get, that's what he tried to do throughout the whole marriage. Everything was subject to his control and subject to his demands. He had to have a final say in everything, even in what we were having for supper or the brand of laundry detergent that I used or anything. And nothing was too small for him to care about.

Of course, there are always two sides to every divorce, and I tried to get her husband's side. When he didn't call back, I tried his parents, his uncle, even his grandmother, his Bobby, and none of them would talk to me. I finally spoke with her husband's lawyer, who disputed nearly every one of Gital's assertions. He said the sticking points for his client are tiny, reasonable things,

like what hour on Friday he can pick up his son, so he doesn't have to drive after Sabbath begins at sundown. But Gital's side of the story has been backed up by a rabbinic court called a Bezdin. A Bezdin is a group of three rabbis Orthodox Jews sometimes turn to to settle disputes outside the civil courts. When her husband wouldn't give a get, Gital tried to bring him before the Bezdin, but he refused to show up. So the rabbis issued something called a siruv. It's basically a contempt of court.

It's supposed to ostracize him in the community. Gital's brother Aryeh is a full-time scholar of Jewish law, and he says the siruv is usually an effective tool. You know, siruv is, you know, if followed properly by the community, is an incredibly powerful thing. It sort of cuts him off from every aspect of Jewish life. I mean, you know, you can't stand in his, you know, within six feet of him, six square feet, eight square feet, whatever it is of him. You can't count him for a minion. The minion is the quorum of 10 men needed for an Orthodox prayer service.

It's sort of like telling a devout Catholic that he can't receive communion. You know, he's really, you can't give him an aliyah. He can't be called up to the Torah in shul, which is, you know, it's a big honor. And, you know, he doesn't get that anymore. He can't serve as a chazender,

you know, in the shul. Chanting prayer, he can't do that. You're supposed to boycott his business, I think. Well, you can't be near him, right? Well, you can't be near him, right? Well, you can't be near him. And so, you know, so theoretically, if followed properly, it should be enough to both shame them as well as, you know, on a practical level, they don't have, you know, they're losing all their contacts.

You're not supposed to talk to him. You're not supposed to, you know, you can't give him a ride, can't do him a favor. This sort of ostracism would have worked back in the old country, where you spent your whole life around the same couple thousand people. If you were the village cobbler, and all of a sudden you have no customers, you probably figured that it made sense to give your wife a get. But in the modern world, a seer roof doesn't always work so well. Aryeh believes that the Orthodox Jews on Staten Island,

where his brother-in-law lives, are still treating him like one of their own. So the shaming and community pressure isn't working. Gital, of course, could just walk away. She's already got her civil divorce. The finances are all settled. So is the child custody. But she can't get remarried. She's a 25-year-old woman. She'd like to have more kids. And I should point out, most Jews wouldn't care. Plenty of less religious Jews would be happy to marry Gital. But in the Orthodox world, where she was raised, where her whole family is, where she wants to stay, she can't make a new life for herself. Her ex-husband can cast about for a new wife and then give Getal a get if he finds somebody.

But for Getal, it's different. What would it be like, I mean, could you date? Would it be like, I mean, could you date? Well, I mean, in my community, you don't date unless you're actively looking to get married. And since I'm already married, that would pose a little bit of a problem. I don't think I could find anyone who would be willing to date me under these circumstances where I say, hey, I'm looking to get married, but you might have to wait two or three or four or 10 or 20 years because there's this man who's refusing to give me the get. And he doesn't feel any urgency because he can get out of it whenever he wants. He can give me a get and be done with the whole thing within a day as soon as he decides he wants to.

So for him, it's just a waiting game where why not wait longer? If his demands were something that I could give, I would have given it in a long time ago because this life is agony. I mean, to wait and wait and never know and to be tied together like this, I would give anything I could to be finished with it. Almost anything. She wouldn't resort to violence or hire a rabbi like Mendel Epstein, the rabbi who was arrested in Brooklyn.

Now, most of Epstein's work was above board. He'd advocate for women in rabbinic court. He'd serve as a go-between with the husband's family. That's how he made his living. But according to the FBI, Epstein took his work on behalf of women one step too far. Rabbi Epstein, I should mention, is currently out on bail, but neither he nor his lawyer responded to my request for an interview.

However, about a year ago, before he was arrested, I actually met him, interviewed him at his dining room table. I recorded it on my phone. The interview started off pretty uneventful. So tell me what you do. Explain to me what you do. Well, on the simplest level, people come to ask if they should get divorced. At some point, the interview kind of took a turn. Epstein told me about this case from 1992,

when he got a call from a chained wife named Jennifer Klein. She had a civil divorce, but no get. And now her ex-husband had kidnapped their young son and fled to Peru. Epstein says he told her, call the FBI. She said she'd done that, but she'd also heard that Rabbi Epstein could do things that the FBI couldn't do. Epstein told me that the woman had already found a group of ex-CIA agents who were going to help her find her husband and child. How did she find them?

I don't know. She found them. Nothing to do with us. She found them. Epstein says she found them. Nothing to do with us. Epstein's daughter, Batsheva, a lawyer, was sitting right next to him, so he was choosing his words carefully, but not super carefully. As he continued with his story, he, the wife, the former secret agent man, and a Jewish scribe are all bound for Peru. They find the husband, break into the house. The kid's there. They save him. And then they head to the bathroom, where the hired muscle had found the husband.

The husband was already down on the floor, completely naked. Seems he was taking a shower with the Indian maid. We put him down and then we had a conversation with him. He said the words he had to say, please write, he didn't say please,

write and give a get to my wife and I agreed to it and you're the messengers. He did everything he had to do. So they also made it. So how did the CIA man convince him to give the guest? I don't know if we want to discuss that. I don't know if we want to discuss that, his daughter said.

Let's just say it got a little physical. Gotcha. Now the CIA has this little pill. Just to be clear, the guy was an ex-Delta Forces commando, not CIA, but whatever. The CIA has this little pill. They put it in his mouth. In a second. Out go.

So the guy weighed about 200 pounds. We lifted the guy out, and we put him in the bathtub locked the door I asked the guy in the see how long is he gonna sleep how long will he wake up so he said rabbi we didn't do diagnostics here you understand no blood test like you do in a hospital first of all if he wakes up. Wow! If he wakes up. Secondly, when he... The Houston Chronicle reported on this story in 1992 and ran a photo of the woman and her son

reunited and posing with the hired gun from the Delta forces. There are legends that this is exactly how these matters got settled back in the Eastern European villages. You hired a thug from the Tsar's army, he gave the husband a little talking to, and suddenly you had your get. Similar legends had floated around Epstein. The violence that he's accused of doing now,

I would never have dreamed that that was what he engaged in. This is Rivka Haut. Thirty years ago, Rivka and a couple friends founded an organization to help free Agunot. And back then, they worked with Mendel Epstein. She says, like everyone, she heard the rumors about some of his tactics, but she never imagined anything like what he's accused of now. I was very saddened because I knew Mendel many years. very saddened because I knew Mendel many years. And I still feel very sad about it. I figured the most he does is grab men and kind of threaten them. He's a big man. You've seen him. You

know that he's physically a big man. And I like a little fist fighting or slapping around. That was my assumption. Over the last few decades, as more Orthodox women decided it was okay to get divorced, Mendel Epstein got a reputation as the rabbi women could trust. He was willing to take the women's side. He even published a little handbook to guide women through the divorce process. And Rivka says Epstein was her guide, too. She and her fellow activists were all Orthodox, but they were pretty modern.

They had TVs in their houses. Some of them wore pants. So they needed someone like Epstein to help them establish trust with the ultra-Orthodox women who needed their help. Mendel Epstein that I knew way back when was a mentor to us. He taught us a lot about Agunot, and he was a great help to Agunot. He tried to do the right thing, and he was out to get justice for women. And he did. He helped many, many women. Then at some point,

she can't remember if it was 10 years or 20 years ago, there was an incident, and her opinion of Epstein changed. The way it worked for me, we were working on a particular case, and he called me the night before, and he was bad. He started saying very bad things about this woman, who was a wonderful woman, and I was shocked. And I said, what are you talking about? We're going out tomorrow. We're demonstrating on her behalf. He said, no, you're not,

because you don't have a seraph. And I said, we have a seraph. I'm holding it in my hand. It's a rabbinic court document. He said, no, I got them to rescind it. I had them rescind it, and you can't go out. You don't have a seraph. Why had he had it rescinded? Because he went to work for her husband. Oh. You know, if an attorney would do that, they'd get disbarred. But these rules don't apply. So he stopped working for her.

So the husband made him a better offer. I guess. I guess. And that was a different phase of him. And at that point, we had to tell women, don't ask him for help and don't go to him. A colleague of Rivka's remembered this too. Again, Epstein and his attorney declined to talk to me about any of this. Right now, a lot of Orthodox Jews are pretty embarrassed by these husbands who won't free their wives. It's cruel, and they know it looks very bad to the outside world.

A couple of solutions have been floated. One would be to grant women annulments, like in the Catholic Church. One well-known aguna in the Orthodox world, Tamar Epstein, recently announced that she considers herself free of her marriage, and everyone assumes it's because she found a rabbi to annul it. But this idea is controversial. It hasn't caught on, not yet. So for now, if you're an aguna like Gital Dodelson, a desperate woman trapped in this limbo,

paying some rabbi to intervene almost makes sense. You know what, the numbers that I've heard, my husband is demanding a lot more than that for the get. So you're telling me I'd pay a third party a small amount of money and he'll get rid of the problem for me instead of having to fight it out with my husband and give him much, much, much more? If you take out the fact that he's beating people up, that sounds like a pretty good deal. Not that she'd ever hire someone to beat up her ex. She's not willing to go that far.

But as it happens, there's an old Jewish teaching that recalcitrant husbands should be beaten. And it wasn't some schmuck from Brooklyn who said so. It was Maimonides, the 12th century Spanish rabbi considered the greatest Jewish sage of all time. Maimonides wrote that a man could be beaten until he gave his wife a get. Here was his reasoning. Deep down, he said, all of us are torn between our good inclinations and our evil inclinations. And being beaten might be just what a man needs

to drive out his evil side so that he can see the wisdom of releasing his wife. Maimonides doesn't say anything about karate chops and cattle prods, but the principle is the same. Mark Oppenheimer. He edits the religion and politics magazine ARC. You can find it at arcmag.org. That's A-R-C-M-A-G.org. Since we first broadcast this story in 2014, Gittal did finally get her get. Mendel Epstein was sentenced to a 10-year prison sentence for asking undercover agents for $60,000

to kidnap a man and force him to grant his wife a divorce. He was released early in 2022. Rivka Haut died in 2014. If you think that I'll wait forever Rivka Hout died in 2014. And when I look into your olive-colored eyes I feel a breach, it makes me cry It makes me cry, I wake up early Deck three, contrails of my tears.

When you're on an airplane, you are definitely stuck in the middle between the place that you left and the place that you are going. And Brett Martin says, in that atmospheric limbo, things are different for us in at least one significant way. A couple of years ago,

I was on a flight from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The movie was Sweet Home Alabama, which you'll remember. It was about a Southern girl played by Reese Witherspoon who moves to New York, joins the fashion industry, and then is forced to return home and come to terms with her white trash roots. At the end, there's a wedding scene when the character has

to explain to her big city husband-to-be that she's leaving him for her earthy down-home high school sweetheart. You see, the truth is, I gave my heart away a long time ago. My whole heart. And I never really got it back. And I don't even know what else to say, but I'm sorry. I can't marry you. Into the stunned silence that follows walks Candace Bergen as the jilted fiancé's dragon lady of a mother, who, coincidentally, also happens to be the mayor of New York. After a volley of insults, Witherspoon decks Bergen.

And it was at this moment, somewhere between when Witherspoon drawled, nobody talks to my mama like that, and her father, Earl Smooter, raised his face to the heavens and declared, praise the Lord, the South has risen again, that something began to happen to me. My face got hot and constricted. A softball rose in my throat that required a surprisingly I should say that Sweet Home Alabama is not a very good movie. It's actually a pretty terrible movie. I have no particular attachment to Reese Witherspoon, and I'm not from the South. Also, this was the fourth time I'd seen it.

See, my name is Brett, and I cry at movies on airplanes. Not sometimes, always. And not some movies, all movies. Don't believe me? Here's a by no means complete list. Bend It Like Beckham. 101 Dalmatians. What a Girl Wants.

Daredevil. Let me be clear, I'm not afraid of flying. I like flying. And I'm not a crier, at least not on land. Like many men I know, even sensitive ones, who know that having a cry can be healthy and good, I pass some invisible line in adolescence when I simply stop doing it. There have been many times in life that I probably should have cried,

actually tried to cry, and wasn't able to. Because, of course, I didn't happen to be at 30,000 feet. Needless to say, this can be embarrassing. I once confessed my problem to a friend, and he thought for a long moment before saying, I'm sorry to hear that. Does it make your mascara run? Earlier this year, I was flying from Denver to New York and found myself seated next to a big burly guy with a cowboy shirt and a western belt buckle. Before takeoff, we talked about football or college basketball or something. Then they announced the movie. It was Under the Tuscan Sun. I glanced at my macho new buddy, thought about watching Diane Lane experience love and loss while rediscovering her inner

strength in a farmhouse in the Italian countryside, and read the SkyMall catalog instead. For a long time, I thought I was alone in this. Then a few months ago, I was at a party and overheard another guest describe how he fell to pieces watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond on a flight to California. I started asking around and found I wasn't completely alone. Greg is a 32-year-old guy in jeans and a Mets hat who just finished writing a book about college sports.

I think it might have been the only movie available was Dirty Dancing 2, Havana Nights. The parents watch them dance and they see how special this relationship is. And at that moment, they've gone from angry parents to sort of accepting of Javier. I mean, I got choked up. As my fellow weepers will tell you,

even not watching the movie is no guarantee of safety. Here's my friend Lindsay. So I was on a flight, I believe California to New York. The specifics don't really stand out, but I do remember that it required a $2 deposit for earphones or something, and I wasn't ready to pay the $2, so I didn't have $2, and I decided I'd read my book. But, you know, the movie's playing, and I see it,

and I can't take my eyes off of it, so I end up watching the entire duration of the movie without sound. And at various points throughout it, I started welling up, thinking, wow, I can't believe I'm crying in a movie. I can't hear the sound, too, and it's Freaky Friday. Or take Stephen, an avid film festival goer and a professional movie critic who can discourse at length on the differences between early and late period Kurosawa. His plane hadn't even taken off. And they were just running this loop of commercials and in-flight programming and stuff.

They hadn't started the movie. It was very early on. And there was this Amex commercial, a man traveling through Europe and, you know, I think it was nighttime. I want to say it was raining or something. And this kind of haggard traveler, this businessman, is walking briskly through the street and then they close up on a wallet, clearly his, that he had left behind unknowingly. And then you see kind of cut to the hotel where he's checking in and the woman asks for a credit card and then he pats himself down and realizes he doesn't have it. He goes into a state of panic. I think that's when I started

choking up. And then he gets American Express on the phone. They explain that it'll be okay. I'll have a credit card in the morning. And then I start to relax a little bit. And then he gets American Express on the phone. They explain that it'll be okay. I'll have a credit card in the morning. And then I start to relax a little bit. And then he says, wait, I'm not going to be in this city. Tomorrow I have to travel. And then I started choking up again. And then they said, oh, we'll have it waiting for you in that city. And then I just started crying after that.

I was so happy for him and relieved. And it was a pretty tense situation there for about 15 or 20 seconds. This is one of the strange features of our problem. We're less likely to cry at the sad parts of a movie or financial services industry commercial than at the happy ones, the parts where everything turns out all right. For instance, in the movie Larger Than Life, which I saw somewhere over the Atlantic a few years ago, it wasn't the moment when Bill Murray is separated from the elephant that his dead circus clown father has left him as a means to change his life as a down-on-his-luck motivational speaker that had me reaching for the tissues. It was when they were reunited.

In fact, the first time this happened to me was during one of the happiest scenes I'd ever seen. It was in Big Night, Stanley Tucci's movie about fraternal love and Italian food. Midway through the movie, Tucci's character and his brother stage a feast in their New Jersey restaurant and at one point bring out a whole roast pig. The camera pans across the faces of the guests,

just amazed by this unbelievable bounty being wheeled into the room, and the lump began to rise in my throat. I found myself brimming over with joy, with the sense that somewhere in the darkness miles below, just like on screen, people were laughing, communing, sharing a meal. It was impossibly beautiful, and there was just nothing to do but cry. And there was just nothing to do but cry. I've never heard of anyone crying inappropriately on trains or on buses or in boats or cars. What is it about airplanes? I remember getting off the plane thinking,

I should really actually be embarrassed by the fact that I just cried during Freaky Friday and I didn't even hear the sound to it. But I wasn't. It's like, you know, what happens in air stays in air, I guess. The people I talked to offered a lot of excuses. It's the recirculated air, your eyes are dry, you're often tired and leaving people behind. And of course, there's the obvious conclusion. We're all scared to death.

But I've been on hundreds of planes, including quite a few tiny ones, one seaplane that landed on water and one blimp. I've taken the controls of a plane. I've jumped out of a plane. I've searched my soul, and honest to God, I find no fear of flying. And all the frequent criers I interviewed felt the same. No, something else happens up there, in that weird hanging state between where you're going and where you've left, where there's no phone calls to take, nowhere to go, nothing to do. Some strange overhead compartment of the heart opens up, and critical judgment grabs its flotational seat cushion and follows the lighted pathway to the big yellow slide. My friend Greg says this actually makes the ride better. Think about it.

You're stuck in a seat for 5 or 10 or 15 hours, and how would you rather pass the time? Sitting there being a critic or just simply giving in? I mean, I wouldn't have watched Havana Nights, you know, in the waiting area, waiting to get on the plane. On Earth, no, not a chance. But once you step on the plane, I'm open to and accepting the movie.

And then once you do that, it's going to leave me jelly. Turn me into jelly. My own theory goes something like this. My father once told me that the reason squirrels get hit by cars is that evolutionarily nothing in their little hardwired brains is capable of understanding a large object hurtling toward them at 70 miles per hour. Well, even though I fly all the time, nothing in my little hardwired brain is capable of understanding, I mean really understanding, stepping onto a metal tube, hanging in space for a while, and then stepping off 6,000 miles away, in a place with different weather, different stars, different time. It puts you into a kind of sterile infantilizing travel purgatory. You're strapped in, given a blanket, a little sippy cup

and tiny silverware, forced to do whatever you're told and borne away at speeds you can't conceive without seeing where you're going. We all deal with this dislocation differently. Many times I've thought, why can't I just have air rage? Why can't I be the guy drinking 14 mini bottles of Amaretto, surfing down the aisle on the dinner cart? But then, I do a lot of yelling and screaming down here on the ground. What I don't do is cry. Not over breakups or reunions or triumphs or deaths, or leaving home or coming back,

or any of life's other bumps and transformations. And maybe that's the key to my air. What? Sorrow? Maybe I cry the tears I should be shedding on Earth. of life's other bumps and transformations. And maybe that's the key to my air. What, sorrow? Maybe I cry the tears I should be shedding on Earth. And all of you people who don't cry on airplanes, you're probably the ones I see sobbing on the subway or on street corners or at funerals. You probably get it all out at home.

Well, boo-hoo. Do us all a favor and keep it in the air, you babies. Brett Martin is a correspondent for GQ and the author of a book about prestige television, Difficult Men, Behind the the scenes of of my mind. And it's not something I'm proud of, but I'm stuck smack dab in the middle of it. Well, our program is produced today by Jonathan Menjivar with Alex Bloomberg, Ben Calhoun, Sarah Koenig, Miki Meek, Brian Reed, Robin Semyon, Alyssa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Senior producer for this episode was Julie Snyder. Production up on today's rerun from Henry Larson and Matt Tierney.

Our story about Rachel and her vegetarian son Elias was co-produced with Jillian Gunther. Elias, by the way, is now a freshman in college. He's vegan. His brother became a vegetarian for a few years, but gave it up. He eats meat now. Research help today from Michelle Harris and Julie Beer. Music help from Damian Gray and Rob Geddes. Our website, thisamericanlife.org.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Ms. Tori Malatia. You know, I was just thinking the other day about how young he and I both were. So young when we made the deal to start the radio show. And we had that lawyer, a woman, helping us. And we were both so strong-headed. And we're recording. Fine. It starts on Saturday. All right. Good. But can you guys shake on it?

I think this is interesting. I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life. Now stop, smack, tap in the middle of it. In the middle of This American Life, what's it like in the hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath Gaza? Oh, we had a fancy room, really. We had a room that was all ceramics,

both the tiles and the walls. And above, above, there were these tulips painted with green, beautiful leaves. Of course, it wasn't always so nice. Details of life as a hostage, next week on the podcast on your local public radio station.