A ktav siruv ( or seruv ) is a letter indicating that a certain person is in contempt of a rabbinic court that issued the siruv letter, and thus the person is allegedly subject to ostracizing in the Orthodox Jewish community.
Nowdays it seems there are many siruvim being posted only against Jewish men and almost never against Jewish women. Many of these so-called siruvim are likely either forged and/or fraudulent and invalid according to halacha for various reasons.
Before assuming that a particular seruv letter is valid, one should carefully examine it while considering that:
- A BD may issue a siruv, but it cannot issue any rulings on a case until and unless both litigants have appeared before the BD and made their claims.
- It is a halacha in Shulchan Aruch, based on a Biblical commandment, that a BD must not hear claims against any party unless both parties are present. This would seem to make hearing “secret information” a violation of halacha.
- If this letter resulted from a wife summoning her husband to Beis Din, the BD cannot issue a ruling on the Get if the husband hasn’t appeared yet.
- If the husband did appear before the BD already, and the BD heard the case, does the siruv letter indicate that?
- A BD almost never issues a “herem” against a recalcitrant party, they issue a “seruv” that clearly states “Ktav Seruv”. The “Ktav Seruv” must state that the accused party refused to appear before ANY BD.
- In the event where a wife was in court without a valid heter to do so (a common event nowadays), the BD is supposed to issue a “Ktav Seruv” against the wife, not against the husband. In such a case, issuing a “Ktav Seruv” against the husband is simply brazen feminism pretending to be Judaism.