NEW JERSEY
NJ.com
By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on March 11, 2015
TRENTON —A Lakewood rabbi accused of arranging forced divorces orchestrated the beating of a Brooklyn and demanded $50,000 for his work, a convicted Jewish religious leader said on Wednesday.
In the ongoing federal conspiracy trial of Rabbi Mendel Epstein, David Wax detailed the roles of three of the four men accused of resorting to violence in exchange for large sums of cash to extract divorces from unwilling husbands.
Wax, the founder of a charitable organization that funneled millions of dollars to Israel, directly linked Epstein and two of the three other men on trial with him to the 2010 attack on Yisrael Bryskman, an Israeli national who was living in Brooklyn to avoid giving his wife a divorce according to Orthodox Jewish custom.
On the witness stand for the entire day on Wednesday, Wax said he and Epstein had phone discussions about forcing Bryskman to agree to the divorce -known as a get – at Wax’s Lakewood home.
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