Ethan Tucker on the Jewish Duty to Recover Hostages

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2023

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pidyon shvuyim, the redemption and release of captives, is an old and urgent task that Jewish communities are obliged to meet. It is an obligation derived from the Hebrew Bible, developed in the writings and reflection of the rabbinic sages, and deepened and explicated in the work of Jewish medieval thinkers whose communities were situated inside Christian and Muslim host cultures.

At the moment when these laws were conceived, the buying and selling of human lives was common; thankfully, slavery of that kind is rare today. Then, since persons had a market value, the Jewish community often had to raise the funds necessary to purchase the freedom of their hostages. This led to much debate about the practice. Did meeting the demands of the captors incentivize further hostage-taking? If the hostage’s family was wealthy and eager to pay any price for release, did they nevertheless have an obligation not to, lest they increase the price for the rest of the community?

These questions are not merely historical any longer. There are 203 Israelis captive and bound in Gaza. Some of them are young children. Some of them are elderly. Some of them have disabilities and handicaps.

The current situation introduces new questions, too. In the times before the modern state of Israel, Jewish communities did not have a sovereign state to act on their behalf, nor did they have a military. And today's captors do not seem to want money, as their predecessors did. They aim instead at a different sort of currency: leverage, shame, and power.

What can and should be done to secure the freedom of Israel's hostages?

This week, the rabbi Ethan Tucker, president and rosh yeshiva of Hadar, joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss the history and development of pidyon shvuyim. Together, they try to uncover the roots, the extent, and the limits of the obligation at a moment that presents a difficult set of moral tradeoffs.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Pidion Shvouim, the redemption of captives, is a very old and urgent duty that Jewish communities are obliged to meet.
0:16.0	It's an obligation that is derived from the Hebrew Bible itself, developed in the writings and reflection
0:21.2	of rabbinic sages, further deepened and explicated in the work of Jewish medieval thinkers,
0:27.0	whose communities were situated inside Christian and Muslim host cultures, the Jewish community
0:32.0	must work to get their hostages released. Now, at the historical moment when these laws were conceived, the buying
0:39.2	and selling of human lives was much more common. Thankfully, in the West, slavery of that kind
0:44.9	is rare today. But it meant that persons had a market value, and the Jewish community often
0:51.0	had to raise the funds necessary to purchase the freedom of their
0:54.7	hostages by meeting their market value. And you can see how this would engender much discussion,
1:00.7	for doesn't meeting the demands of the captors simply incentivize further hostage-taking?
1:06.6	What if they demand more than the market value? Doesn't that incentivize hostage taking even more?
1:12.7	What if a hostage's family is wealthy and eager to pay any price for the release of their beloved hostage?
1:19.1	Does that person, does that family have an obligation not to increase the market price for the rest of the community?
1:26.7	Those are just some of the opening
1:28.0	questions that shape this very old Jewish discussion. Now, unfortunately, this is not an abstract
1:34.5	and historical question for the Jewish people today. As of this recording, there are 203
1:40.7	innocent Israelis bound and bleeding underneath the ground in Gaza, and their families
1:46.7	and their countrymen desperately want them back. Some of them are very young children.
1:52.6	Some of them are very elderly. Some of them have various disabilities and handicaps that,
1:57.2	in normal times, their families care for. The most vulnerable women and children are enduring some kind of hell,
2:04.3	and the hearts of the Jewish people all over the world are breaking.
2:07.6	Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.
	...

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