‘GET’ HIM! David and Judy Wax leave court in Trenton yesterday after being charged with kidnapping runaway husband Yisrael Briskman (above). (
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It was either gonna be a divorce or a funeral.
A New Jersey rabbi and his wife used hired goons, kidnapping and brutal beatings to force an Orthodox Jewish cad to grant his wife in Israel a long-sought religious divorce, federal prosecutors said yesterday.
Judy and David Wax of Lakewood, NJ, could face life in prison if convicted of coordinating the Oct. 17, 2010, kidnapping and assault of Yisrael Briskman, who prosecutors said was targeted after he failed to honor wife Chaya Dina Briskman’s request for a “get” — a divorce document recognized under Jewish law. Instead of granting the “get,” Briskman fled Israel for Brooklyn.
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David Wax, 49, lured Briskman to his suburban home to discuss work on a set of Talmudic books published by Wax’s Taryag Legacy Foundation, according to a federal criminal complaint.
But Wax ushered Briskman to a bedroom, where two goons punched him in the face, handcuffed and blindfolded him, prosecutors said.
During the 30-minute beatdown, Briskman was shown a body bag and asked repeatedly by his attackers to consent to Chaya’s divorce, according to the complaint. Briskman eventually agreed to grant the “get,” but Wax wasn’t finished.
Briskman was placed in a taxi with Wax while a van followed them. Wax told his captive that the trailing van was driven by an “Italian team” that would “take [Briskman] to the Poconos and bury him alive,” according to the complaint.
Wax then called Briskman’s father in Israel during the taxi ride and told him to fork over $100,000 to his daughter-in-law’s family. If not, Wax warned, the father would receive a “special gift.”
“It’s called a bullet . . . in your head,” Wax told the father, according to the complaint, before asking, “Do you want a funeral or a divorce?”
After a failed attempt at forcing Briskman to withdraw $800 from an ATM, the rough-and-tough rabbi transferred his victim into another car, driven by wife Judy, 47, who then dropped off Briskman at his cousin’s Brooklyn home and told him not to squeal to the cops. The Waxes surrendered to FBI agents early yesterday.
“They were so sloppy,” said one law-enforcement source, who noted that the couple didn’t account for getting blood on their carpets and had to have them replaced a day after the attack.
They were charged yesterday with kidnapping and coercion and were released after posting $500,000 bail each.
“Everything that’s written is all speculation,” David Wax said outside his home last night. “I’m a plain Joe.”
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton and Jeane MacIntosh