Relatives of man in divorce dispute temporarily resign from Artscroll amid controversy

NEW YORK (JTA) — Two relatives of the man who has refused to give his wife a religious divorce temporarily resigned their positions with the religious publisher Artscroll.

Yosaif Asher Weiss and Yisroel Weiss will temporarily resign from Artscroll, according to a blog post yesterday on the publisher’s website.

Artscroll had come under fire for continuing to employ the two because Yosaif Asher Weiss’ son, Avrohom Weiss, has declined to grant a religious divorce to his wife, Gital Dodelson.

The pressure resulted from a long article Dodelson published Nov. 4 in the New York Post describing the situation.

Artscroll published a letter from the two men in which they assert that accusations against their family amount to a “campaign of slander” and accuse the Dodelson family of perpetrating a “heinous desecration of G-d’s name.” Nevertheless, they wrote, the controversy has the potential to “distract Artscroll from its holy work” and, as a result, they resigned “until the situation is resolved.”