....this would prevent some of the illegal child marriages carried out in a couple of fundamentalist Jewish sects!

well..... the mikves at least. One has to wonder what other absurdities are to come. I guess many young brides will have to wait a few more years.

I am a husband and a father and i am shocked at what i have just read about braces being a chatziza in the mikvah. After so many people have worked so hard in getting women to go to mikvah to come out with a ruling such as that is unthinkable and dangerous to the whole concept of women and mikvah . It is hard enough getting them to mikvah in the fist place now you just stop them going . Its just wrong . what about people with plates in their head ar screws in their legs etc does that barr them too? if yes then their (screwed)pardon the pun . i just hope it does not have any far reaching consequences for the wider community other then his followers . and who takes the responsibility of those who just stop going and live in sin . I am very upset to hear such a ruling which to me and im sure many others find diabolical and unthought of . after thousands of years and through so many holier generations of women going to mikvah it has never been heard of (and please dont tell me braces are a new thing because fillings which happen to be metal have existed for that many years )

What a pathetic load of rubbish - has ynet nothing better to print than drivel like this.

Then basically this means that if a woman who breaks her leg and has to have a metal plate inserted in the leg for the bone to heal correctly cannot go to the mikveh and cannot have sexual relations with her husband until she has another operation to remove the plate. Someone explain why the ashkenazi charedim always go in the direction of making things more difficult for people. And you wonder why more and more people don't give a damn about so called halacha. Whatever happened to the school of Hillel ?

I thing the only solution is obvious. No teeth. Barefoot, pregnant, no teeth, no naping in the afternoon get, behind the machizah, and cook me dinner wench while I live without working and chant tabu incantations over foriegn object all day. Oh sory I just stepped back in time to peasantry of the unlearned. The book written by an unknown author and thus not a prophet (see dev 13) who claims to have heard G-d speak to Moses and who have added so much over and above what Moses states in Devarim as the entire Torah is just being tacked onto daily, isn't it. End result? People wrongfully flee from real Torah and Israel is lost. As the genetics get more whacked by another false addition by an unknown author, I think it is great to see the ones that are falling of the normal looking ladder can't cover it up. We will clearly see where the curses are really found and G-ds favor or disfavor will be like writing on the wall. So far from those days in the dessert when people actually listened to someone who cared about the people. G-d gave us the Torah for good and man uses it now for this. Tisk Tisk. Measure any eyebrows lately? Rabbi?

..but nothing hiders as much as a nappy set of teeth

Ari Galahar has cretainly succeeded in one thing: demonstrating his appalling ignorance of a simple subject. Of particular interest is his report that: 'according to halacha, or at least the haredi version, the immersion of a woman who intends to get her hair cut, but immerses goes to the mikveh prior to this, is disqualified because her hair at that point is no longer considered a part of her body.' The source is actually none other than the Hatham Sofer. In those days there were only haredi and reform. It is clear which camp Galahar belongs to.

Your powers of logic are astounding! Anyone can see the difference between the two cases. But don't worry, the problem will clearly never apply to you.

what next? No sex at al?- Judaism on the way to extinction

Maybe they'll hold the women's braces for them. Up their... YOUR WORD HERE. These people simply have to have more pressing things to do than dennegrate women and make themselves even more despised by most of the world's Jews. There should be zero tollerance for anal-retentive ideas like this. THIS is what chases people away from, Judaidm. To have a group of people make very conservative, very devisive and very disturbing determinations is maddening. Who are these people to make those decisions for someone else?

It doesn't apply to you, but you can't pass over a good bashing of religion. No one makes you go by this rules and having teeth straight is being done at an early age, before marriage, but the article is meant for you to be able to attack. This is what YNET does best in it's "Judaism" rubric.

Im gald we cleard that issue up but i also have anohter question regarding religion: I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

Why stop at braces? wouldn't the same be true for crowns, caps and fillings?

I gather from the talkbacks that you're all regular users of the mikve who are aghast to discover that Rabbi Eliashiv considers your braces a problem. Rabbi Eliashiv's rulings reflect and appeal to those of his "Lithuanian" outlook and carry nothing more than his moral authority. After the rulings are handed down, the practical-minded Orthodox consult their own rabbis and do as they say. So with the wigs, so with the Shabbat elevators, and so with this.

One of YNets worst. If the braces are of the kind that they cannot be removed, then then they are not considered chatzitza, and the woman can go to the mikve. It's astounding how low YNet can sink in trying to make hareidi Rabbanim and their followers look stupid. If only the subjects would be researched a bit better, the writer would realise how stupid he sounds.

If this article elicits any concern, then I fear for the greater issue: Conversions. Part of an Orthodox conversion requires the immersion in a mikveh and also precludes any hatzitzah (division). Get ready for the true impact of this ruling.

I know I wouldn't slosh that water around in my mouth, and I don't remember it ever being a requirement. Maybe this Rabbi can pass a recommendation to remove the teeth of women when they're young so dentures can easily be removed during the ritual bath.

Don't worry - no extinction in our future - with Love Parades and all.

Banning artificial heart valves or artificial joints? Before anyone says that braces just straighten teeth, keep in mind that long-term it prevents jaw problems, damage to teeth or gum disease. Since gum disease is clearly linked to heart disease, stroke and certain types of cancer- there's a pikuach nefesh issue.

Avi, if you're going to quote the West Wing, at least give credit where credits due.

so now we can hire orthondists as mikveh ladies.. wow how lucky they are

No, you are wrong. The difference is that metal plates (most of them, anyway) are designed to be permanently implanted, whereas braces are meant to be removed after a few months or years. (I had braces in my teen years, they were removed eventually.) Note that R. Elyashiv's ruling was not made with respect to dental fillings, which are much more common-place and are meant to stay in indefinitely. So you do not know what you are talking about.

It is an established rule in the Talmud) and Shulkhan Arukh that a chatzitah in one's mouth (or any other internal place) is still a chatzitzah, even though you don't "slosh" the mikveh water in their.

Braces have been around for a while, something like 100 years. In all that time, no Chief Rabbi of Israel, no Posek (halakhic authority) ever even considered a ruling like this. These extreme Hareidim are more reformist than the Reform, since Reform has stopped inventing new Jewish practices for at least the last 50 years.

In my hotdogs, that is. A hotdog cannot be given the evil eye because it can't see it, Can a potato give an evil eye. I wait for the day of this impotant Rabbinical ruling.