By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

In the theater of international geopolitics, it is not uncommon for world leaders to hurl colorful epithets at their enemies. Recently, President Donald Trump characterized the Iranian leadership as not merely evil, but certifiably crazy — having crossed the threshold from malice into psychosis. For the Torah-observant Jew, this issue has intriguing halachic repercussions.

The question is: What exactly is a shoteh — and does the behavior of the Iranian mullahs suggest that they qualify?

The Halachic Category of Shoteh

The Torah exempts a shoteh — a person of unsound mind — from the obligations of mitzvos and strips him of much legal standing in halacha. A shoteh cannot serve as a valid eid (witness), cannot conduct binding legal transactions, and critically for our purposes, cannot give a Get (a bill of divorce).

If a man who is a shoteh gives his wife a Get, the document is halachically null and void, and the woman remains an agunah — chained to a marriage she cannot legally escape. Nor can Chalitzah be considered valid.

But who qualifies as a shoteh? This question is far more nuanced than it might appear.

The Gemara in Chagigah 3a describes specific behaviors that classify a person as a shoteh: one who walks alone at night, sleeps in the cemetery, tears his clothing, and one who loses what is given to him.

The Gemara itself notes a dispute: Rav Huna held that one does not acquire the status of shoteh unless all these signs are present simultaneously, while Rabbi Yochanan ruled that even a single such sign suffices. The Gemara resolves this by noting that each behavior, taken alone, might have a rational explanation — walking at night due to fever, sleeping in a cemetery to invoke an impure spirit, tearing one’s garment out of distracted thought — but when all appear together, they establish a presumption of mental incompetence, akin to a forewarned ox. The Gemara in Rosh Hashana 28a further establishes that one who alternates between lucid and non-lucid periods is treated as fully competent during his lucid periods and as a full shoteh during his episodes.

According to Rashi and the Me’iri, these definitions serve as the criteria for mental incompetence across all areas of halacha.

The Rambam, however, offers a broader and more expansive understanding (Hilchos Eidus 9:9). A person who is non compos mentis is not acceptable as a witness according to Torah law, and this applies not only to one who goes around unclothed, destroys utensils, and throws stones, but to anyone whose mind is disturbed and continually confused when it comes to certain matters — even if that person can speak and ask questions coherently regarding other matters. Such a person is an invalid witness and is considered a shoteh.

This Rambam opened a centuries-long debate that would erupt into one of the most dramatic controversies in all of rabbinic history.

The Get of Cleves: A Storm That Shook European Jewry

During 1766–67, a great controversy flared up, which was to become known as the Cleves Get — one of the causes célèbres of the 18th century. Though its focal point was Frankfurt, it came to involve many of the great Poskim of the day.

The Get of Cleves was a major Halachic  controversy centered in Cleves, Germany, concerning the validity of a divorce document issued on August 27, 1766, to Leah bas Jacob Guenzhausen by her husband, Yitzchok ben Eliezer Neiberg, who had fled the community shortly after their marriage, taking her dowry of 94 gold crowns, amid allegations of his intermittent mental illness.

On the Shabbos following his wedding, Yitzchok vanished. After an extensive search he was found two days later in the house of a non-Jew in a nearby village and brought home. A few days later, he informed his wife’s family that he could no longer stay in Germany because of the grave danger which threatened him there, and that he was obliged to immigrate to England. He declared his willingness to give his wife a Get in order to prevent her from becoming an agunah.

The Get was duly written and administered in the border town of Cleves by Rav Yisrael Lipschuetz, the Av Beis Din. But when Yitzchok’s father learned of the divorce, he smelled a conspiracy — a plot by his daughter-in-law’s family to extract the dowry — and he immediately moved to have the Get declared invalid on grounds of his son’s mental incompetence.

The rabbis of Pfalz, Hagenau, and Fuerth upheld the Get and declared the woman free to remarry. Both sides appealed to all the rabbinical authorities of the time. The rabbi of Cleves received the support of almost all of the leading scholars of the generation, among them Rav Saul Loewenstamm of Amsterdam, Rav Yaakov Emden, the Noda B’Yehuda of Prague, Rav Yitzchak Horowitz of Hamburg, and ten Rabbonim of the Klaus of Brody. The Beis Din of Frankfurt was virtually alone in its opposition

The Get of Cleves controversy set the precedent for defining incompetence and insanity in divorce cases according to halacha. The position of the Frankfurt rabbinate forced the rabbinic community of the eighteenth century to crystallize around a more lenient understanding of the relevant definitions and to enshrine them in halacha, making it easier to ensure that women in failed marriages could not be held ransom by husbands who feign madness and then claim they are not competent to issue a Get.

Remarkably, even in later generations, Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zatzal addressed the controversy, writing that the Frankfurt Beis Din’s refusal to align with the overwhelming majority of their contemporaries verged on a violation of Lo Sasur — the Torah prohibition against deviating from the ruling of the majority.

Rav Moshe Feinstein: The Messianic Husband

The question of the shoteh and the Get did not remain a historical curiosity. Dealing with a similar issue, Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l was asked in the 1960’s whether a particular individual was eligible to perform Chalitzah. 

Rav Yisroel Belsky: The Far Rockaway Chalitzah Case

In the early 2000s, a similar and sensitive question arose in Far Rockaway. A question of Chalitzah (the levirate release ceremony) arose involving a man whose mental competence was called into question. Rav Yisroel Belsky zt”l, the renowned posek of the OU and Rosh Yeshiva of Torah Vodaas, was consulted. He also ruled that in that particular case, the brother-in-law was eligible to give a Chalitzah.

The Messianic Claimant: Rav Yisroel Dovid Harfenes

More recently still, another case arose. A husband had developed a sincere and unshakeable belief that he was the long anticipated Moshiach.  This author posed the question to Rav Yisroel Dovid Harfenes shlita, one of the leading Poskim in the United States and a very prolific mechaber.

Rav Harfenes ruled that the delusional Messianic belief, was not sufficient in itself to render the man a shoteh incapable of giving a Get. The key halachic indicator, he explained, was the man’s management of his financial affairs. As long as he remained responsible and competent in monetary matters — his Get would be valid. The Messianic delusion, operating in isolation, did not rise to the level of the shoteh as defined by halacha.

Which Brings Us Back to Tehran

And so we return to President Trump’s assessment of Iran’s mullahs.

To be clear: the Islamic Revolutionary regime has been, from the perspective of international law and basic human decency, a malevolent force. It sponsors terrorism across the region, brutalizes its own citizens, and has driven its economy into the ground through ideological rigidity and monumental mismanagement.

But Trump went further. He didn’t merely call them evil. He called them crazy.

Is there halachic merit to that assessment?

Which brings us to recent developments. Dubai has been a crucial financial corridor for Iranian businesses and individuals seeking to bypass Western sanctions, with shell companies registered across Dubai’s sprawling free zones masking the origin of Iranian oil and commodities, and informal currency exchange houses moving funds across borders outside the reach of conventional banking oversight. Iran had, over many years, carefully and methodically constructed a shadow financial architecture to circumvent American pressure. They knew that the United States would freeze their assets the moment it had the opportunity. Their entire Dubai operation was a deliberate workaround — a sophisticated, painstakingly constructed alternative to Western banking.

And then, in an act of almost incomprehensible strategic self-destruction, Iran launched 189 ballistic missiles, 941 drone attacks, and cruise missiles against the very country that housed those assets — the United Arab Emirates — targeting Dubai’s airport, the Burj Al Arab hotel, and the Palm Jumeirah.

The result was entirely predictable. The UAE is now considering cutting off Iranian access to billions of dollars held in the Gulf state — a move that could cripple Tehran’s access to foreign currency and global trade networks at a moment when its economy has been deteriorating.

Iran just bombed its banker, the one institution that had been its gateway to the global economy for decades.

From a purely rational standpoint, this is baffling. Even granting that the Iranian mullahs are engaged in an existential military conflict, one would expect a minimally rational actor to protect its financial infrastructure — not destroy it. One does not burn down one’s own bank.

The Halachic Verdict?

So how do we apply the shoteh framework to the Iranian mullahs?

Recall the ruling: as long as a man manages his money responsibly, his Messianic delusions do not render him a shoteh under halacha. Financial competence is, in many ways, the litmus test.

By that standard, President Trump’s assessment may be (warning: pun imminent) right on the money.

The author can be reached at [email protected]