By Ted Sherman and Salvador Rizzo/The Star-Ledger

TRENTON — The woman sounded desperate. Her marriage had deteriorated, her husband decided he did not want children and he refused to grant her a divorce.

The rabbi had a plan.

“We take an electric cattle prod,” he told her, according to a surveillance recording. “If it can get a bull that weighs five tons to move ... You put it in certain parts of his body and in one minute the guy will know ... ”

In a bizarre plot sounding more like a scene out of The Sopranos than the affairs of an ultra-religious community, two Orthodox rabbis and eight others were charged in New Jersey Thursday in a torture-for-hire operation involving threats of kidnapping, beatings and the use of such implements as handcuffs, knives and stun guns — all aimed at convincing recalcitrant husbands to grant their wives religious divorces.

Most of those arrested were taken into custody at a Middlesex County warehouse Wednesday night — some wearing Halloween masks and one in a Metallica T-shirt — as they waited to grab a supposed victim for a rough lesson in divorce law. It was all a set-up: The woman was an FBI undercover agent, there was no husband and the conversations were all recorded.

U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said at least one of those charged admitted he had participated in similar kidnappings in the past and investigators believe there may have been as many as several dozen assaults conducted by the same group over a period of many years.

1147 Mackenzie Court, Lakewood property owned by Rabbis Mendel Epstein. Epstein, is one of two rabbis charged in the recent scheme to force men to grant their wives religious divorces.

“One of the defendants almost bragged that they had done this to other people before,” Fishman said.

The cost of convincing was not cheap. According to the FBI, the going rate was $10,000 to pay off a rabbinical court to approve a kidnapping and then another $50,000 to $60,000 to pay for the “tough guys” who would mete out beatings and other torture until a reluctant spouse finally acquiesced.

Those charged included Rabbi Mendel Epstein, 68, who has homes in Lakewood and Brooklyn, and Rabbi Martin Wolmark, 55, a school administrator at a yeshiva in Monsey, N.Y. Both were arrested Wednesday night at their homes.

Also charged were Ariel Potash, 40, and seven other men who were said to be enforcers or witnesses — Jay “Yaakov” Goldstein, Moshe Goldstein, Binyamin Stimler, David Hellman, Simcha Bulmash, Avrohom Goldstein and Sholom Shuchat, who were all arrested in New Jersey. Their address and ages were not given.

All 10 appeared in federal court in Trenton Thursday and were ordered held without bail.

Divorce in the Orthodox community is governed not by secular law, but by a rabbinical court. And under Jewish law, a wife may not sue for divorce unless her husband agrees to provide her with a document known as a “get.” The court, known as a “beth din,” can order the husband to issue a get, however, in a bitter divorce dispute there is often no quick resolution and no guarantee he will accept the edict.

“It’s not like a civil divorce,” said family practice attorney Janet Pennisi of Millburn. She has represented Orthodox clients who have given away a lot in property rights for the sole purpose of getting their husbands to give them a get.

“For religious people, a get is everything, and there is no real authority to get it sometimes except through back alley approaches,” Pennisi said.

In fact, without a “get,” a woman can end up in limbo for years. She becomes known as an “agunah,” a woman chained to her marriage, unable to remarry.

According to a complaint outlined in federal court Thursday, the 10 men charged were willing — for a price — to provide the “convincing” by any means possible. In one recorded meeting, Epstein spoke about kidnapping, beating and torturing husbands to in order to force a divorce, according the complaint.

“This is an expensive thing to do,” he said. “It’s not simply … basically what we are going to be doing is kidnapping a guy for a couple of hours and beating him up and torturing him and then getting him to give the get.”

Epstein, known in the community as a divorce mediator, admitted on the surveillance tape to committing similar kidnappings.

“Basically the reaction of the police is, if the guy does not have a mark on him … then, uh, is there some Jewish crazy affair here, and they don’t get involved,” he said, according to the complaint.

In 1998, Epstein and Wolmark were both accused in a civil racketeering suit with taking part in the abduction and torture of a Brooklyn rabbi who refused his wife’s request for a get. No criminal charges were filed and court records show the lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.

Sources say the charges Thursday came out of the continuing investigation of David Wax, a 49-year-old rabbi and Talmudic scholar from Lakewood, and his wife, Judy, who were charged by federal authorities two years ago with kidnapping and severely beating an Israeli man who had refused to give his wife a divorce. That case has been repeatedly adjourned for months. Lawyers for the couple Thursday could not say if they were cooperating with the FBI.

Wolmark was initially contacted in August by an FBI undercover agent posing as an Orthodox married woman in an unhappy marriage. Accompanied by a second undercover agent acting as her brother, she told him she was desperate for a divorce because her husband refused to have children. She was willing to pay a large sum of money to obtain a divorce. Wolmark, according to the complaint, connected her with Epstein.

The planning for the kidnapping got underway last month, when a team of so-called “enforcers” drove to a warehouse in Middlesex County to determine if it was suitable for the kidnapping. In a graphic conversation, Epstein talked about the use not only of cattle prods, but handcuffs and other measures to be taken by hired enforcers.

“I guarantee you that if you’re in the van, you’d give a get to your wife,” he told the agent posing as the woman’s brother. “You probably love your wife, but you’d give a get when they finish with you.”

It would not take a lot of time, he promised.

“They don’t need him for long, believe me. They’ll have him in the van, hooded, and it will happen,” he said.

According to the FBI, most of those charged were arrested as they gathered to snatch the kidnap victim at the warehouse. They arrived in two dark minivans around 8 p.m., putting on Halloween masks, ski masks or bandanas, carrying rope, flashlights, surgical blades, a screwdriver, and plastic bags.

As they waited for the husband, an arrest team swept in.

The arrests were accompanied by a series of searches executed by the FBI in Lakewood, Monsey, Brooklyn and elsewhere, including Yeshiva Shaarei Torah in the Monsey section of Ramapo, N.Y., where Wolmark is an administrator.

Appearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas E. Arpert, the 10 defendants walked into a courtroom packed with family and friends. Wearing handcuffs, they sat stone faced as Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Gribko alleged they had kidnapped “literally dozens” of husbands reluctant to give a divorce.

One had a tracking device placed in his car, Gribko alleged. Another, an unnamed congressional staffer, was "assaulted in broad daylight in his minivan in Pennsylvania."

"The danger to the community in this case, for this violent crime, cannot be overstated," Gribko said.

All were denied requests for bail or house arrest from defense attorneys, who argued that seven of the men played only bit parts in the scheme. The judge scheduled a preliminary hearing for Oct. 18 in Trenton.

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