To the extent that the underlying issue is the child custody arrangement - that is surely something that should have been settled in civil court. Both spouses had equal access to civil legal representation there. It is not a reason to use the 'get' as a tool of extortion. To state, as the NY law does, not to put an impediment in the way of remarriage or not to fail to remove an impediment, is not coercion by civil law on religious law. (One writer gave the unlikely examples and false analogy of forcing inter-marriage or a Catholic to remarry). If that were the case the NY law would not have been passed. This impediment that Friedman fails to remove is in his power to remove. There is no religious requirement for him to withhold the 'get' as in the examples cited. On the contrary, civil ethics as well as religious law would agree that the 'get' should be granted. Plain logic dictates that if Friedman agreed to the civil divorce, despite his disagreement over the custody ruling, then the 'get' should be granted to bring closure to the marriage. The writer is correct, "Is this really the type of person that we want on our congressman's staff?" - someone who will use a religious precept as a tool of extortion to achieve something he couldn't obtain through civil proceedings.

Right on - in asking for more comments from women themselves, in asking for responses from your readers about gender issues in their community, and in speaking about discrimination in Israel in general (not just hareidi vs. secular issues). As a woman who has lived in Israel for nearly 25 years, I can speak clearly about the issue of women earning so much less than men earn over here. Statistically, the average earnings of women compared to men in Israel is reported on annually, and it has hardly budged above 60% (compared to above 80% in the US - which is also not great, but better.) In my particular non-profit, which employs very few men, I have seen those few men hired at immediately higher starting salaries than the women they replaced or continued to work beside or even work under.

Although Liana Finck is doing a wonderful service - and congratulations to the UJA - Federation of New York for sponsoring another great project - in reviving public awareness of the Bintel Brief. Why, however, did she render the letters into comical Yinglish? It's true that Cahan wrote in his autobiography that he received incorrectly written letters - but he stated that they were corrected before publication. Another translation, by Diana Shalet Levy, edited by Isaac Metzker (1971) used correct, general English to reflect the proper version of the letters as they appeared in the newspaper in Cahan's (and the letter writers') native language, Yiddish.