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The gett getter

    He's The Manhunter.
    Maybe you expect a Schwarzenegger toting a howitzer. Nope, Rabbi Yehuda Gordon packs something more powerful: a book of Psalms.
    His job is to track down recalcitrant husbands who refuse to give their wives a divorce. His domain is the former Soviet bloc, and he'll travel to the farthest corners of Siberia to save a lady in distress, by clinching her husband's signature on a gett, a divorce agreement.
    From the get-go, he's a go-getter gett-getter. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
    His arsenal is, you could say, disarming: Gentle persuasion. Wisdom and psychology. Humor. And lots of research.
    "I don't scream. When you speak quietly you can achieve much more. But sometimes I scream if it's somebody stupid." He speaks evenly, softly, with a thick but musical Yiddish accent, often punctuated with a half-chuckle, half-sigh.
    Born in Vilna, Gordon has a rich background: he was an explosives specialist in the Israeli army, and served with Ariel Sharon in Sinai during the Six-Day War; he graduated Hebrew University, (degrees in literature and sovietology), the Sorbonne (philosophy of literature) and Touro College (business administration). He became more religious and learned in kollel for 10 years.
    Now he looks like any other haredi rabbi. But he's The Manhunter.
    When he knocks on a door, that's it; he accepts only total surrender. "By the time I meet the husband, I know everything about him. And I sit on him for a week or two, whatever it takes. Some cases take maybe three years.
    "I know if I make a mistake, it's the wife who pays for it. So I know everything I say, or do, even how I dress, is very important."
    Long before he confronts a husband, he starts his meticulous preparations. "I get a file, I start to work on it, I invite the woman, the family, I call his friends, I learn the situation. I make a real investigation into his character. I have to know much more about him than he dreams I could know."
    He has handled hundreds of cases in eight years "and I don't remember having any failures."
    He travels every couple of months or so -- to the Baltic republics, Ukraine, Moscow, Siberia; he's on his way soon to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. "Sometimes I use rabbis there to get information, or to get the gett. I have very good contacts everywhere. I go when I have to, as an official of the Israeli government. But it's a dangerous place, especially for Jews and tourists. "
    He's protected by both God and the KGB. Miracles happen, he says, but he doesn't depend on them; when he has to, he plays it safe.
    "I had a case, an 18-year-old girl. Crying like crazy, her husband fled to Russia. Turns out he was a bigamist, she was pregnant -- mamish, a terrible story. So I went to the Ukraine and asked for the KGB. A high ranking officer comes to me, I tell him the story. He came back after an hour and 10 minutes -- I just had time to daven [pray]," he chuckles.
    "He already had all the information: when this guy wakes up, who is friends are, his work schedule, telephone numbers, addresses. So the KGB goes to him and says there's somebody here from Israel to speak to you. Oh, he was very surprised to see me. I said look, I came all the way here from Jerusalem, I don't want to play with you. I want a gett." Gordon had enough dirt on this fellow that the presence of a KGBnik was enough to convince him.
    He also works with Russian criminals. "Sometimes I hire their drivers. It's very good to work with them: if you pay them, on principle, they go all the way for you. It's a matter of honor. So I had this driver, 2.10 meters tall, from some special unit in the army, and he says to me Yehuda, you stay close and nothing will happen to you. He lived in a criminal area, and never even locked his car, because everyone knows, you don't mess with Sasha.
    "For three and a half, four dollars an hour, you get a commando with a machine gun, a knife." He lets go a jolly laugh as if to say, look at me, can you imagine I work with such people?
    "I have to do everything according to Jewish law, Israeli law, and the law of where I go. For instance, one time I had to give a [kickback] to get information. In one pocket I had $100, in the other, chocolate. I had my hands in my pockets, and I was about to pull out the $100. At that moment I saw a car with three men, and I happen to know that in Russia, if they want to arrest somebody, there has to be a policeman and two witnesses. So I saw this car, and one of the men was holding a camera at me. At the last second, I pulled out the chocolate. I would have been arrested for bribing an official."
    It is perilous work -- air travel is risky, but the trains are worse, filled as they are with thieves. Going by car has its own dangers. And when he finally arrives, he's not exactly greeted with open arms and a bowl of soup. "Once, in Siberia, I went to a neighborhood of [resettled] former Nazis from  Germany and Lithuania. It was a place of terrible crime, drug addicts, alcoholics, killers; by eight in the morning everyone's already drunk." Not a place for a nice rabbi. "I had to get a husband, a killer."
    Nu?
    "I got him."
    He protects himself against the many perils in a way some people don't expect. "One policeman said to me, 'There's one thing I don't understand: you're a normal person, why do you mumble to yourself all the time? Crazy people do that.'
    "I laughed, because when I'm in action, I say Tehilim [Psalms]."