how much is any life worth?

Posted on 2009/12/05 by davka

redeeming prisoners

The val­ue of פדיון שבויים‎ (Pidy­on Shvuy­im, the redemp­tion of pris­on­ers) is very impor­tant in Jew­ish life. Mai­monides states that it takes prece­dence over sup­port­ing the poor or cloth­ing them… because the prob­lems of the cap­tive include those of the poor: being hun­gry, thirsty, unclothed, and they are in dan­ger of their lives.

an entire world?

Tal­mud Bavli San­hedrin 4:8 (37a) states:

Who­ev­er saves a life, it is con­sid­ered as if he saved an entire world.

How­ev­er, not all pris­on­ers should be redeemed at any cost, in part to pre­vent those seek­ing finan­cial gain by cap­tur­ing any of the Jew­ish peo­ple (on the pre­sump­tion that they’ll be paid a ran­som). And while there remain cir­cum­stances in which this restric­tion does not apply, the most out­stand­ing is when the pris­on­er is a Torah schol­ar, it is instruc­tive that the most famous case of some­one refus­ing to be redeemed was that of R. Meir of Rothen­berg who died in prison after sev­en years in captivity.
Should a sol­dier, tak­en as a pris­on­er of war be ransomed?

stateless or stated

At a time when the Jew­ish peo­ple was weak and state­less, one could eas­i­ly argue that we had no way to pre­vent maraud­ers from cap­tur­ing us. And, there­fore, it was impor­tant to ran­som cap­tives. But, is it pos­si­ble that the sit­u­a­tion has changed in a world where sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of Jews are pro­tect­ed by the appa­rati of the State of Israel?
On August 29, 1969 TWA flight 840 was hijacked from its Rome to Athens to Tel Aviv route and redi­rect­ed to Dam­as­cus. In Syr­ia all pas­sen­gers were released except for two Israelis: Shlo­mo Samueloff a pro­fes­sor at Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty and Salah Muallem a trav­el agent. Var­i­ous attempts were made to call atten­tion to the pris­on­ers’ plight. An eye­wit­ness account of the hijack­ing, writ­ten by For­eign Ser­vice offi­cer Thomas D. Boy­att who was a pas­sen­ger on the flight was pub­lished in the Decem­ber 1969 issue of For­eign Ser­vice Jour­nal. The fol­low­ing adver­tise­ment for a peti­tion appeared on page 6 of The Tech the MIT stu­dent news­pa­per on Fri­day, Decem­ber 5, 1969.

call for petition to release the damascus 2

call for peti­tion to release the dam­as­cus 2


Israeli offi­cials had orig­i­nal­ly said they would nev­er accept a deal to trade the pris­on­ers. Nonethe­less the Wikipedia arti­cle on the release men­tions 71 Syr­i­an and Egypt­ian sol­diers as the “ran­som price”, a New York Times arti­cle from the peri­od states that the “unbe­liev­ably com­plex” exchange arranged for two Syr­i­an MIG-17 pilots, “five sol­diers and six civil­ians”. One won­ders what the “six civil­ians” were doing in Israel that they could be con­sid­ered part of a ran­som? Were these six civil­ians prisoners?!

ron and nachshon who?

In Octo­ber of 1986, Lieu­tenant Colonel Ron Arad was shot down over Lebanon. Many pre­sume that he is dead, though in Octo­ber 2007, twen­ty-one years after his cap­ture, Israel received a let­ter writ­ten by Arad to his fam­i­ly short­ly after his cap­ture. Israel con­tin­ues to func­tion on the assump­tion that he is alive.

ron arad

ron arad


Eight years lat­er, in Octo­ber of 1994 Nachshon Wachs­man was cap­tured (prob­a­bly in uni­form) when return­ing home from a train­ing exer­cise. Nachshon was kept pris­on­er some­where in the Ter­ri­to­ries for six days. He died dur­ing an abort­ed res­cue attempt in which the team com­man­der was also killed.
The fol­low­ing year, Ben­jamin Netanyahu dis­ap­proved of a pris­on­er swap writ­ing to then Prime Min­is­ter Yitzhak Shamir:

The deal may have saved a few Israeli lives, but it’s clear to me that the price we’ll even­tu­al­ly pay is that the deal will sen­tence many oth­ers to death. A nation must act first and fore­most in the inter­est of the major­i­ty, and I see no way of jus­ti­fy­ing the deal as hav­ing served the major­i­ty in any way. 

What is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the nation to those who are cap­tured in its defense? Are these to be con­sid­ered Shvuy­im for whom we must arrange Pidyon?

how would I feel if gilad was part of my family?

I am for­tu­nate. No one I know per­son­al­ly has been cap­tured and tak­en pris­on­er, nor have they been injured or killed in com­bat. I do not live in Israel where the aware­ness of Gilad Shal­it’s cap­tiv­i­ty is con­stant­ly main­tained. In addi­tion, I am not a gov­ern­men­tal leader on whom rests the respon­si­bil­i­ty for the pro­tec­tion of any coun­try’s cit­i­zens, nei­ther the civil­ians nor the sol­diers whose task it is to don a uni­form and take up arms in defense of the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion. I hope that I, even though I might be pas­sion­ate­ly con­cerned, would be able to dis­pas­sion­ate­ly eval­u­ate the larg­er sit­u­a­tion were I faced with such a challenge.

gilad shalit

gilad shalit

  • Why is the case of Gilad Shalit on every­one’s mind, but that of Ron Arad most­ly unknown (at least among Amer­i­can Jews)? Per­haps because the case of Gilad Shalit is still so fresh we hope that we can save him… before the trail becomes cold. 
  • A failed 2006 attempt to res­cue Gilad Shalit has caused even more deaths than the failed attempt to save Nachshon Wachs­man. What makes his life worth that of near­ly a thou­sand others? 
  • Is it true that sav­ing his life would be as though we had saved an entire world? Per­haps not, but there might be oth­er val­ues involved. My broth­er Jay reminds me that Israeli youth who enlist in com­bat units need to know that the state will do all it can to to free them if captured. 
  • Is not the con­cern expressed by Netanyahu, in 1995, when he did not have to respond to the vot­ers in the same way he does now as Prime Min­is­ter, valid? 
  • Cer­tain­ly not all those slat­ed to be trad­ed for Gilad Shalit will turn around and com­mit more acts of ter­ror and war against Israel. Have they been cap­tured for the pur­pose of such an exchange? Most are prob­a­bly kids who’ve tossed stones, yet cer­tain­ly Israel has cap­tured oth­ers for this purpose. 
  • What does Israel gain by, and what is the cost of, keep­ing these thou­sand prisoners? 
  • Is mak­ing this exchange, per­haps, a sim­ple expres­sion of human com­pas­sion that might be under­stood, appre­ci­at­ed and reciprocated? 

These are wrench­ing questions.
Gilad Shalit is men­tioned (on the “sick” Mi-she­ber­akh list) every week in near­ly every Shab­bat ser­vice we attend… while Ron Arad seems to be unknown. I’ve had links to Arad in my Hag­gadah since it first went online and peo­ple still don’t know who he is. That orig­i­nal page regard­ing Ron Arad is now only avail­able as a Web archive. How­ev­er, a new orga­ni­za­tion deal­ing with those miss­ing in action is avail­able. (And, in the same con­text, even Ariel Sharon, while he remains comatose, is not men­tioned [though I add him from the congregation]!)
Most of the online com­ments to sto­ries regard­ing the pris­on­er exchange for Gilad Shalit express the con­cern that Israel is func­tion­ing accord­ing to the con­cern that Netanyahu raised in 1995 (quot­ed above). And yet, since at least since Shlo­mo Samueloff and Salah Muallem were released there does not seem to have been any upsurge in Israelis cap­tured for ran­som. There­fore I must dis­count this reason.
Nonethe­less, it irks me. And yet, I should not take this out on Gilad Shalit.
I am (or have tried to make myself) hard/harsh on this. Even though I don’t want to be.
I ask myself painfully:

Is it only my geo­graph­i­cal, famil­ial and emo­tion­al dis­tance from the imme­di­a­cy of the sit­u­a­tion that makes me feel that this exchange should prob­a­bly go through, even though it is not appropriate?

The sub­ject of Pidy­on Shvuy­im is time­ly for a cou­ple of rea­sons. Recent weeks have seen an increase in the buzz sug­gest­ing that the cur­rent Israeli gov­ern­ment, head­ed now by Netanyahu is about to exchange 980 pris­on­ers in Israeli cap­tiv­i­ty in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the young Israeli cor­po­ral who was cap­tured while on duty at his army post on 25 June 2006. I wrote about this sub­ject at the time of his cap­ture (to col­leagues) and again (pub­licly) in June of 2008. In 2008 two oth­er sol­diers Ehud Gold­wass­er and Eldad Regev were still pre­sumed to be alive, pris­on­ers of war held cap­tive in Lebanon.
When Deb­bie and I were in New Orleans to help clean up after hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na I saw some­one wear­ing a but­ton call­ing for the release of Gilad as well as Ehud and Eldad. I have not been able to acquire that button.

Forty years ago on the date of this post­ing, which match­es the date of the call for the peti­tion sign­ing in The Tech, and unbe­knownst to the stu­dents who pre­pared the ad at that time, Shlo­mo Samueloff and Salah Muallem, “The Dam­as­cus 2” were released.
[I am indebt­ed to Dr. James Drey­fus for help­ing me track down the iden­ti­ty of The Dam­as­cus 2 in mid-Decem­ber of 2008.]

free damascus 2

free dam­as­cus 2

Date: 1969
Size: 3.175
Pin Form: straight
Print Method: cel­lu­loid
Text Free Dam­as­cus 2

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear, or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lay­ing around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.

Posted in judaica, lapel buttons, politics | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

esther’s song

Posted on 2009/11/29 by davka

purim in november

On Thurs­day night, Novem­ber 19, 2009, Deb­bie and I went to see the opera Esther at the New York City Opera in Lin­coln Center.
The opera, the last one by com­pos­er Hugo Weis­gall is based on the bib­li­cal Book of Esther. It uses the basic sto­ry­line (with some mod­i­fi­ca­tions in the sequence of the telling) and builds on that in an attempt to update some of the ideas. Much of the dia­log comes from the bib­li­cal text, with addi­tions that seem to be from Psalms. Weis­gal­l’s musi­cal idiom is hard­ly bib­li­cal and the one hat-tip to nusach seemed to me, and to the fam­i­ly of Jew­ish musi­cians sit­ting behind us, almost gra­tu­itous. While the sto­ry is ancient and the music dates from the late 20th cen­tu­ry, the mar­ket­ing was def­i­nite­ly of the moment.
That amal­gam intrigues me. The opera was mar­ket­ed almost as though it was a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty event. Per­haps as a way to bring in a new audi­ence, the 92YTribeca held a sym­po­sium that dealt with the opera. The online edi­tion of the For­ward ran adver­tise­ments encour­ag­ing read­ers to take a date to see purim come to life.

advertisement for esther in the forward

adver­tise­ment for esther in the forward

Signs inside the opera house indi­cat­ed that cer­tain per­for­mances were Jew­ish Sin­gles Night!

jewish singles night at the new york city opera

jew­ish sin­gles night at the new york city opera

a man you what?

I have been famil­iar with the Weis­gall name for many years, dat­ing back to my time in Young Judaea when we stud­ied the his­to­ry of Zion­ism. Lat­er, when I attend­ed Cal State U at LA I learned a new word from the sis­ter of Ralph Schoen­man (a rabid anti-zion­ist, but not the issue here), the man who was the pri­vate sec­re­tary for Bertrand Rus­sell. It was then that we learned that our moth­er was not only not a “house­wife”, nor a “home­mak­er”, but our father’s amanu­en­sis. I then came to under­stand that Mey­er Weis­gall, Hugo’s uncle, was the “trust­ed lieu­tenant” and, like­ly, the amanu­en­sis of Chaim Weiz­mann. Weis­gall was able to pub­lish 23 vol­umes of Weiz­man­n’s “Let­ters and Papers”.
In 1999 a book turned up on the new books shelf of the library at Tem­ple Adat Shalom in Poway: A Joy­ful Noise: Claim­ing the Songs of My Fathers by Deb­o­rah Weis­gall. The name was famil­iar, but I could not quite place it. I checked out the book and read through it. Deb­o­rah is Hugo’s daugh­ter and from that book I gained a new appre­ci­a­tion for the musi­cal wing of the Weis­gall family.

zionist opera

Hugo’s uncle Mey­er had been involved in the pro­duc­tion of an ear­li­er “opera” that told the sto­ry of the Jew­ish peo­ple: The Eter­nal Road with a libret­to by Franz Wer­fel and score by Kurt Weill. The Eter­nal Road was an attempt by Weis­gall to call atten­tion to the plight of Euro­pean Jew­ry in the late 1930s. Hugo Weis­gal­l’s Esther seems to be a sim­i­lar attempt to call atten­tion to the sit­u­a­tion of the Jews six­ty years later.
The a‑tonal nature of the score of Esther makes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of leav­ing the opera hum­ming a tune almost impos­si­ble. The a‑tonality, how­ev­er does not dimin­ish the emo­tion­al impact of the score, which is intense. The acoustic pow­er is great, even at low deci­bel lev­els. It is, how­ev­er, almost all at the same emo­tion­al lev­el. I hoped, in the sec­ond act, for Esther to sing an aria in soft dis­so­nance explor­ing the excru­ci­at­ing choice she had to make, whether to cast her lot with her peo­ple and approach Xerx­es, or con­tin­ue to hide the nature of her ori­gins. My hope was in vain. Only near the end of the third act, after the fact, after the “Jews” have ably defend­ed them­selves does Weis­gall allow Esther to take the lev­el down a notch (but bare­ly a notch) to feel bad about all those who have had to die in the process.
There are odd­i­ties in the pro­duc­tion. Except for Morde­cai and Esther, all the Jews appear dressed in gray rags. They look like poor East­ern Euro­pean Jews about to be sent to con­cen­tra­tion camps. Grant­ed, they fear a sim­i­lar exter­mi­na­tion, but still, the asso­ci­a­tion is far too obvi­ous. Some of the odd­i­ties are uncalled-for. One of the adver­tis­ing images for the opera is of a young (pre­sum­ably) Israeli female sol­dier. There is no con­nec­tion what­so­ev­er between the image and the opera.

israeli soldier advertising the opera

israeli sol­dier adver­tis­ing the opera

In addi­tion, dur­ing the harem scene, before she is to be brought to Xerx­es, while, at stage right Esther sings regard­ing her con­cern about what to do with the king, an appar­ent­ly naked young woman emerges from the bath at cen­ter stage and gets tow­eled off. Sim­i­lar­ly, in an inver­sion of the Abra­ham Ibn Ezra state­ment “hamayvin yavin”, when Xerx­es does meet Esther, he is so tak­en by her that he can­not stop repeat­ing the phrase (I para­phrase) “Esther = Ishtar”.
The New York Times review was very pos­i­tive. Not till lat­er was I able to find some dis­sent­ing opin­ions.
Very few lines from the libret­to are mem­o­rable. In fact, some of the most strik­ing lines of the Book of Esther, are miss­ing entire­ly. Morde­cai does not tell Esther to hide her ori­gins when she first goes to the palace. And Esther 4:13–14 (per­haps the only the­o­log­i­cal com­ment in the entire book) which has tak­en on polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance due to its use among cer­tain Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians and (even, though I can’t find the ref­er­ence now) then-Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, is not there:

Mordechai had this mes­sage deliv­ered to Esther…
“If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliv­er­ance will come to the Jews from anoth­er quarter.
And who knows, per­haps you have attained to roy­al posi­tion for just this moment.”

More recent­ly, Esther’s response has been picked up by Sarah Palin.

In fact, the only line I actu­al­ly remem­ber does not come from any bib­li­cal text, but from the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty slo­gans of the peri­od at the time of the oper­a’s com­po­si­tion: The Unit­ed Nations revoked the Zion­ism is Racism res­o­lu­tion. When Esther real­izes that her fate is tied up with all the oth­er Jews in Per­sia and around the world, she states:

We are one!

The date of pub­li­ca­tion for this post is Novem­ber 29, 2009. A num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant dates relat­ed to this sto­ry clus­ter at this point for which there are numer­ous dif­fer­ent lapel buttons.

  • On the Gre­go­ri­an cal­en­dar, Novem­ber 29, 1947 = 16 Kislev 5708 (Decem­ber 3, 2009) marks the date the Unit­ed Nations vot­ed to par­ti­tion British Man­date Pales­tine in two and estab­lish two states: a state for the Jews and a state for the Pales­tini­ans. The Jews accept­ed the option imme­di­ate­ly, while the Pales­tini­ans have, sad­ly, yet to accept this, and seem even to deny both that it hap­pened in our his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry and its rel­e­vance to the con­flict of the moment.
    Var­i­ous maps of Israel appear on very many buttons.
  • Chaim Weiz­mann, for whom the elder Weis­gall may have served as an amanu­en­sis died on Novem­ber 8 1952⁄2009 = 21 Chesh­van.
    Chaim Weiz­mann appears on a vari­ety of but­tons, some (with black rib­bons attached) dat­ing explic­it­ly to his death.
  • Gol­da Meir, a woman who, even if you dis­agreed with her, could be con­sid­ered a mod­ern-day Esther, died Decem­ber 8 1978 = 8 kislev or Novem­ber 25, 2009.
    Gol­da Meir appears on very few but­tons. I am aware of only two.

This but­ton dates (as explained above) to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of Amer­i­can Jew­ry with Israel dur­ing the peri­od when the Unit­ed Nations con­sid­ered Zion­ism as a form of racism. The but­ton was also released in “cel­lu­loid” form. Oth­er relat­ed slo­gans appeared such as “We are all Zionists”.

We Are One עם אחד

We Are One עם אחד

Date: ca. 1978
Size: 3.5
Pin Form: straight clasp
Print Method: litho
Text We Are One
עם אחד

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear, or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lay­ing around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.

Posted in judaica, lapel buttons, music, personalities, who | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment