We often read of the plight of agunos and divorced women. We of course should feel their pain and help in any way we can. But there is also another side - the men. A societal problem of which many are not aware.... Ha-levi that all people's pain should be healed - men and women alike....
In addition, halacha doesn't agree with the typical approach of the courts to automatically give of all the children to the mother ואכמ"ל.
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From Arutz 7
MK Yehuda Glick (Likud) devoted his Knesset address Monday to the plight of divorced fathers and the high rates of suicide among this group.
"A relative of mine committed suicide three months ago in the same situation," said Glick. "Three children, a year after his divorce. Last week a young man in Haifa committed suicide and many, many more have done the same. It seems to me that the time has come to be more aware of the appalling situation of men who are involved in a divorce process."
"Hundreds of people are killed, month after month," lamented Glick. "Divorced men commit suicide seven times more than their married counterparts."
Glick read out parts of a Yediot Aharonot article by Yifat Glick, including the suicide note written by Hanan Dadon, who was the MDA's Southern Region spokesman and a member if the 669 rescue unit. "Today I understood that there is no value to my life. My divorce will leave me destitute. How can I stay debt-ridden and still pay 14,000 NIS a month in child support? How can I work two jobs yet not be able to look my children in the eyes?
"I am supposed to start a new phase in life, to begin a training course on the fifteenth of the month," wrote Dadon. "Yet what's the point if in the end there won't even be bread and margarine and I will have to live with my father?"
"It's not appropriate for me to talk about people in distress?," retorted Glick. "I'm talking about a group of people who according to official statistics of the state of Israel suffer from more that 100 suicides a year."
On Wednesday the initial vote on a proposal by MK Betzalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) and Yoav Kish (Likud) to cancel the early childhood custody which automatically leaves young children with their mother. The law is not the controversial "Parents and Children" proposal which confers prerogative rights on social workers over parents. The present proposal is intended to cancel the present situation whereby mothers are automatically preferred to fathers with regard to custody of children under the age of six.
