Freedom Under Siege: The Last Seder in Kfar Etzion

How can one celebrate the festival of freedom, with the clear knowledge that your life or liberty will be taken from you in just a few days? The Seder night of 1948 was one of the last nights of freedom for those in besieged Gush Etzion, but this fact did not prevent the isolated group of men from creating the most celebratory atmosphere possible under the circumstances.

Main832

The Nebi Daniel convoy, the last convoy to leave the besieged Gush Eztion, and the agenda for the last Seder. Image courtesy of the Dov Knohl Gush Etzion Historical Archive

On the 14th of Nissan (April 23), the eve of Passover 1948, the defenders of Gush Etzion knew that their fate was sealed – and that if they stayed where they were, they would die. They were surrounded by Arab villages which served as bases for the Arab Legion, a Jordanian military force that outmatched them by orders of magnitude. Efforts to reinforce the settlement bloc had failed, and a plane meant to land there on Passover eve was forced to turn back due to thick fog.

Most of the women and children had been sent just to Jerusalem, just north of Gush Etzion, several months earlier. The last few women had left more recently. The men remaining there had all the reasons in the world to become mired in despair: their personal situation was hopeless, they missed their wives and children (some of whom, having been born in Jerusalem, they had yet to meet) and were worried about them. After all, Jerusalem was also under blockade and anything but a safe place.

Family in Kfar Etzion, part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. Photo courtesy of the Dov Knohl Gush Etzion Historical Archive

Shlomo Garnak ob”m shared the mixed feelings they felt with his wife:

“We’re planning here for the Passover holiday. But I lack the sense of a holiday eve. When they put together a plan for guard shifts on the Seder night, I said I don’t care if I guard from 6 in the evening or 8 or 10. If you and the children are not here – celebrations are far from my mind. And still we must overcome and not let despair and bitterness control us. We especially must not arouse grief and sadness during the holiday.”

They were a wonderful mixture of the diversity of Jews present in the Land of Israel at that time – Holocaust survivors who’d just arrived to the Promised Land, Israeli sabras who consciously chose to take part in establishing new communities in one of the most dangerous locations in the country, and volunteers who came to support their efforts.

The quiet before the storm: the trees planted in Kfar Etzion, before the war began. Picture courtesy of the Dov Knohl Gush Etzion Historical Archive

This home, which they’d just started building but a few years before, turned into a military camp before their very eyes: holes formed by shells adorned the walls of the white houses, cow dairies were turned into weapons storage facilities, and playgrounds became fortified positions.

Endless debates accompanied the decision to stay in the bloc, which lay outside the territory assigned to the Jewish State in the UN partition plan. They fought not to save themselves, as the settlements of the Gush Etzion bloc (Kfar Etzion, Revadim, Masu’ot Yitzhak, and Ein Tzurim) were at this point clearly beyond rescue, but rather to give hope to besieged Jerusalem, by keeping the Arab Legion busy to the south, and preventing if from invading the Jewish neighborhoods of the Holy City.

It was in this atmosphere that the holiday arrived.

Agenda for the last Seder night. Courtesy of the Dov Knohl Gush Etzion Historical Archive

Between standing guard and caring for the wounded, the men found the time to decorate the collective dining room in Kfar Etzion. Spring-themed landscape pictures were hung and flower pots spread out throughout the room, adorned by verses from the Song of Songs – “the vineyard has flowered, the nascent fruit has opened,” “the buds have been seen in the land.” The courtyard, neglected since the beginning of the siege, was cleaned up and organized. The customs of Passover eve were adhered to in full, despite the void left behind by the children who had left.

“This morning we held a siyum masechet [celebratory ceremony for completing the learning of a Talmudic tractate], in which the “first born” took part [the ceremony allowing them to eat rather than adhere to the traditional fast for first born on Passover eve]. I also participated, in the name of our eldest son. There were cakes and drinks. The happy news encouraged us and excited us until we went out to dance. And now everyone is rushing to finish the last meal of chametz [leavened bread and grain food, forbidden on Passover].”

(Letter from Akiva Galdenauer ob”m to his wife in Jerusalem)

“I just finished bedikat chametz [ceremonial check for chametz to ensure none is present for the holiday]. Yair my son was not with me, and there was no-one to hold the candle. In these days, I miss you most. But the encouraging news of our victory in Haifa [most of the city of Haifa fell to Jewish forces a few days before] sweetens the suffering of detachment. Perhaps we are close to victory. True, we have no illusions that the war will end quickly. But the recognition that our strength is with us to acquire our state with God’s help, immunizes us in these grim and dark days.”

(Letter of Shmuel Arazi ob”m)

As evening came, a holiday prayer was conducted at Neveh Ovadyah – an impressive stone house, less than two years old, which served as the central beit midrash or house of religious learning in Gush Etzion, after which everyone gathered for the Passover Seder – the religious kibbutz members together with the Nebi Daniel Convoy drivers and members who remained there.

Neveh Ovadyah, the building serving as the religious and communal center of Kfar Etzion, where holiday prayers took place. Picture courtesy of the Dov Knohl Gush Etzion Historical Archive

The traditional Haggadah, which now took on a new and contemporary significance, was peppered with newly written Zionist texts.

“Every so often, a [Kfar Etzion] member got up and read from the works of our time, things related to the project we are defending. The whole group joyously sang passages which have become popular during Eztion Passovers.”

From the diary of Yaakov Edelstein, Kfar Etzion member

Between the song Vehi She’amda [a song about how enemies seek to eliminate the Jews in every generation] and the tune Betzeit Yisra’el Mimitzrayim, [“When Israel Left Egypt”] passages from the poems by Yitzhak Lamdan (Mitzpeh Beyehudah) and Uri Tzvi Grinberg (Hayakar Mikol Yakar) were read aloud. When they came to the verse “And I pass over by you, and I see you trodden down in your blood, and I say to you in your blood, Live!” they read passages from Shalom Karniel’s article – “In Your Blood, Live.”

Tzvi Lifshitz, one of the participants in the Seder, described the scene:

“there was some excitement when the door opened and everyone got up and excitedly called out ‘Pour Your fury on the nations who have not known You’– all the humanistic hesitations which accompanied the reading of these verses in previous years were now rejected. The blood of our dear friends, who fell in defense of the Gush and in the War of Liberation throughout the country, demanded revenge.”

Later, when they reached the song “Next Year in Rebuilt Jerusalem,” most of the members got up in a wild dance. But some remained to sit with a bowed head round the table – they could not dance as they remembered their friends and the members of the convoys who had come to save them, who did not get to sit with them now around the Seder table.

The relative quiet which enabled this Passover celebration did not last. The attacks on Gush Etzion renewed already during the holiday, with one of the fiercest battles taking place ten days after the Seder was held. On the 4th of the month of Iyyar, the day before Israeli independence was declared, the last of the defenders surrendered. Some were massacred by Arab forces, and the others were taken into captivity in Jordan.

The Knesset would later mark the day Gush Etzion fell as the Memorial Day for all the fallen of Israel’s various wars and conflicts.

“…I do not know of a more glorious, tragic and heroic struggle in all the valiant battles of the Israel Defense Forces than that of Gush Etzion…Their sacrifice, more than any other war effort, saved Jerusalem… The Gush Etzion campaign is the great and terrible epic of the Jewish war… If a Hebrew Jerusalem exists… the gratitude of Jewish history goes first and foremost to the fighters of Gush Etzion.”

 From a speech by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, 1949

How the Inmates of a Concentration Camp Celebrated the Festival of Freedom

Despite the lack of food, the threat of deportation, and the difficult prison conditions, Jewish prisoners at the Gurs concentration camp in southern France insisted on celebrating Passover at any price. One of them wrote the Haggadah they read from by hand – from memory.

832

1941 was a difficult year for the Jewish People. This was the year in which the persecution and discrimination which was their lot since Hitler rose to power formed into the “final solution” for erasing the Jewish People and its memory entirely – in Nazi-occupied Europe and the whole world. This was also the year in which the first death camp was established on Polish soil, in the city of Chelmno.

In that same cursed year, on a different war front, prisoners of the Gurs concentration camp in southern France gathered to celebrate the Jewish festival of freedom – Passover. When evening came, the men – husbands, brothers, and sons – arrived in the women’s barracks. There, with empty hands and full hearts, they held a Seder. “And soon the old and pleasant tune of this night echoed: “Ha Lachma Anya” [Poor Man’s Bread]. There was no meat and wine for the holiday meal, but thanks to the initiative of one of the prisoners, these persecuted Jews had a Haggadah with which to celebrate.

First page of the Gurs camp Haggadah

Aryeh Ludwig Zuckerman had been imprisoned at Gurs for over a year. At this camp near the Spanish border, some thirty people died from hunger and disease every day. In the face of the suffering and the despair of the twelve thousand Jews imprisoned at Gurs, Zuckerman decided to take action that Passover.

Zuckerman was every inch an educator, and was known as one of the most energetic figures in the camp. He organized Torah and shop classes, as well as cultural activities that included plays and concerts performed by denizens of the camp. Zuckerman was also one of the managers of the camp clinic and its Chevra Kadisha burial society.

He wanted all the prisoners in the camp to have something for the approaching holiday of Passover. Since they had no way of securing food, he took responsibility for matters of the spirit and worked on writing the Haggadah in Hebrew letters.

Indeed, he wrote the Haggadah in his own handwriting and from memory (as can be seen from a number of errors he made). His daughter recalled how he engraved the whole Haggadah in Hebrew letters, aside from the songs at the end of the Haggadah, which were engraved in Latin letters.

According to Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, a fellow prisoner who helped Zuckerman put out the Haggadah, Zuckerman wasn’t able to write it all down. As Passover approached, he rushed to send it to Rabbi Shmuel René Kappel. The Rabbi, a chaplain of the French Army Corps, took Zuckerman’s papers to Toulouse and had it printed in thousands of copies.

Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, Gurs Camp, 1941-2,
Yad Vashem, Photographic Archive b 926/5

In an anonymous testimony written after Passover of 1941, one of the prisoners remembered the enormous difficulty of celebrating the Festival of Freedom in conditions of terrible uncertainty. The anonymous witness told of how the “feast” of this seder was poorer than anyone had ever seen.

“Many received, in addition to the matzah, a little salad instead of maror, charoset, and an egg. Only some of the people got to eat a meal, albeit in tiny portions. There were those who were fortunate and received food packages, and then shared the food fairly among all those seated.”

But what they lacked in the material, they made up for in spirit. The thousands of prisoners in the camp insisted on adhering to tradition even in the face of the death that was all around them. Thanks to them and the work of Zuckerman, Ansbacher, and their partners, the spirit of the holiday was maintained, and there was even a sense of hope:

“A refreshing April night and moist spring wind descended on the dark lanes between the shacks. From within the shacks, lights burst forth and voices were heard saying the blessing after the meal and singing. The song of the words sung and heard innumerable times, was the song of the uplifting of the spirit, of consolation and hope.”

The song Chad Gadya in Latin letters, the Gurs Haggadah

The next morning, Rabbi Ansbacher received irregular permission to conduct the Passover holiday prayers in the camp yard. The Rabbi held the prayer in the open air and also gave a sermon with words of consolation to the camp prisoners during the Yizkor prayers for the dead.

The painter Fritz Schleicher was there to immortalize the event (below). He himself was murdered in Auschwitz on October 5, 1942.

On May 1942, Zuckerman understood that the Jews were being deported east to Poland. He and Rabbi Ansbacher, together with the Jewish leadership in the camp, worked to smuggle the camp’s Jews out before they could be sent to the death camps there.  Thanks to his friendship with the man in charge of burial for non-Jews in the camp, a friendship he’d formed as part of his work in the Chevra Kadisha, Zuckerman was smuggled out of the camp together with his family inside of a coffin. After making it out, he took care to find a hiding place for them in the forests in the south of Belgium. After doing so, he joined the Belgian underground to fight the Germans. He died in Belgium in 1958.

Rabbi Ansbacher was seized earlier and imprisoned. He was on the list of those to be deported, but managed somehow to escape and find shelter in Spain – where he survived.

The Passover Haggadah of the Gurs camp is one of two Haggadahs written in southern France during the Holocaust in the period of the Vichy regime. In 1999, Yad Vashem republished it to retell the story to new generations.

On May 1942, Zuckerman understood that the Jews were being deported east to Poland. He and Rabbi Ansbacher, together with the Jewish leadership in the camp, worked to smuggle the camp’s Jews out before they could be sent to the death camps there.  Thanks to his friendship with the man in charge of burial for non-Jews in the camp, a friendship he’d formed as part of his work in the Chevra Kadisha, Zuckerman was smuggled out of the camp together with his family inside of a coffin. After making it out, he took care to find a hiding place for them in the forests in the south of Belgium. After doing so, he joined the Belgian underground to fight the Germans. He died in Belgium in 1958.

Rabbi Ansbacher was seized earlier and imprisoned. He was on the list of those to be deported, but managed somehow to escape and find shelter in Spain – where he survived.

The Passover Haggadah of the Gurs camp is one of two Haggadahs written in southern France during the Holocaust in the period of the Vichy regime. In 1999, Yad Vashem republished it to retell the story to new generations.

**

Further Reading

The Gurs Haggadah: Passover in Perdition, edited by Bella Gutterman and Naomi Morgenstern, translated from the Hebrew by Nechama Kanner, editing by Yaacov Peterseil. Jerusalem: Devora Pub, Yad Vashem

Let’s Raise a Glass for Miriam the Prophetess

What was Miriam the Prophetess’ part in the Exodus from Egypt? How does the Jewish Midrash explain her role in the journey from slavery to freedom and why do some set aside a sixth cup for her at the Passover Seder table?

Main832

Postcard reproducing the work of German artist Ludwig Gustav Wilhelm Scheuermann (1859-1911), presenting the biblical image of Miriam, sister of Moses, holding a musical instrument. The Postcard collection, the National Library of Israel

As opposed to the Passover Haggadah, the Jewish Midrash tells us of the significant role played by Miriam the Prophetess in the Exodus from Egypt. Every Passover we are told of the Children of Israel’s journey from slavery to freedom, but it often goes unmentioned that Miriam the Prophetess, sister of Moses, had a significant role in that journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. These acts earn her, in some traditions, a place of honor at the Seder table.

What was Miriam the Prophetess’ role in the Exodus?

The Exodus is remembered in Jewish tradition as a rapid departure, almost a hasty flight, from Egypt. Thus, the Jews left the country so fast that they didn’t have time to properly bake bread, leading to the matzas we eat during the holiday instead.

We can imagine our ancestors quickly leaving their homes and barely managing to take food with them, grabbing what they could and getting out. It therefore seems very strange that just after the Red Sea is split in two and the People of Israel cross over to the other side, the Bible describes Miriam the Prophetess taking her timbrel and starting to play and dance.

“And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.”

(Ex. 15)
Anselm Feuerbach painting, 1862. Displayed at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin

Where did Miriam manage to find a timbrel in the middle of the desert – did she take the time to bring it along during the hasty exit from Egypt?

When you are forced to leave as quickly as possible, you only take what you really need with you. It’s certainly logical to bring along that which is required to survive in the desert – food, water, clothes. Why did Miriam choose to bring a timbrel – a musical instrument akin to a modern tambourine? In his commentary, Rashi describes how Miriam and all the other Israelite women, during the challenging, complex, and even terrifying moments of the departure from Egypt, still believed there would be reasons for happiness, dancing, and merriment. “The righteous women in that generation were confident that God would perform miracles for them and they accordingly had brought timbrels with them from Egypt” [Rashi, Ex. 15:20]. Therefore, Miriam brought a timbrel with her on the journey. She knew she would have the opportunity to use it.

A photo of The Golden Haggadah, Barcelona, 1320. The Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This is the unique strength which characterizes Miriam’s leadership throughout the Exodus: the power to believe that the painful reality can reverse itself. The power to try and bring about change, to imagine a better reality than the present one and to strive to realize it.

According to the Midrash, the entire redemption, all of the Exodus, was based on Miriam’s act of rescue. The Talmudic story tells us that when Pharaoh decreed that all the newborn boys be thrown into the Nile, her father Amram, a great leader in his generation, divorced his wife Yocheved, deciding that if the children were to be murdered anyway, then there was no point in having them and thus no point in being married.

The people followed suit and divorced their wives, too. A moment after Pharaoh’s terrible decree, the Talmud describes how despair gripped the people, with families collapsing wholesale.

It was in this atmosphere of doom that Miriam emerged as a leader: “His daughter said to him: Father, your decree is harsher than that of Pharaoh” (TB Sotah 12a). Miriam appeals to her father and reproaches him: your decree is harsher, as he only condemned the males, while you are also condemning the females. He is wicked and so his decree will ultimately be abolished. But you are ensuring the decree will be realized by your own hand.

Amram, a leader of the generation, is able to heed his daughter’s innocent, seemingly naïve voice, and decides to remarry his former wife, after which Moses is born. It is for this moment that the Jewish sages describe Miriam as a Prophetess: As a young girl, she saw beyond the immediate need for survival, beyond the here and now, and led to the birth of the People of Israel’s great leader. In a difficult moment of existential danger, Miriam managed to foresee the horizon beyond and believe in a better future. Operating within a difficult reality, she refused to give up.

Moses Abandoned on the Nile, by Paul Delaroche

When Moses was placed inside the basket, her mother doubted her and asked “My daughter, where is your prophecy?” (Ex. Rabbah 1). He and his wife were helpless and despairing. They sat at home, and the sorrow for their son filled their hearts. But again, Miriam refused to play along. She went to the river and made sure Moses found a home with Pharaoh’s daughter, taking care to ensure her prophecy came true.

Miriam’s strength came through in these moments, when despair seemed to be overtaking belief in the good.

Later on, as the People of Israel wandered the desert, the Jewish sages speak of how Miriam had a well, one containing flowing water and which she took everywhere. It was a well that allowed the People of Israel to drink water in the desert and survive its dryness. Miriam herself was a flowing well, especially in the hard times when despair spread, when things seemed doomed and there was no solution on the horizon. It was then that her vitality burst forth most prominently.

This is why a relatively new custom has emerged among certain communities of placing a cup for Miriam next to the traditional cup reserved for Elijah the Prophet during the Seder meal. The cup for Miriam, however, is filled not with wine but water, and is made of glass. It is a cup reminding us of the hope and belief in miracles that happen every day.

The custom of leaving a cup of wine for Elijah the Prophet is based on a halachic dispute over whether Jews are required to drink four cups of wine at the Seder – or five, one for each redemption of the Jewish People. Everyone agrees on the four cups, but the fifth is up for debate. Therefore, the custom emerged to place a fifth cup, but not to drink from it.

While Jewish religious jurists simply call this cup “the fifth cup”, it has become popularly known as the cup of Elijah. According to the Maharal of Prague, this name was given because Elijah is the symbol of redemption, and thus the cup of redemption is named for him. But according to the Gaon of Vilna, it is because Elijah will come at the End of Days and resolve all halachic disputes – including the question of the fifth cup.

The cup of Elijah attained a special status at the Seder table. Which is why we place Miriam’s cup next to it.

The cup of Miriam the Prophetess seeks to correct a historic and narrative injustice by securing a place of honor at the Seder table and in the story of redemption, for the women who also led the people:

“This is the cup of Miriam, the cup of living water, in memory of the Exodus. May it be God’s will that we merit drinking from the waters of Miriam’s well for health and redemption. May it be God’s will that we learn from Miriam and all the women to come out with timbrels and dancing in the face of the miracles of daily life and sing to God in every moment – Amen!”

The blessing written on Miriam the Prophetess’ cup seeks to give thanks for the ability to believe in the good even during difficult times, and gratitude for the strength to not surrender to despair or pain but rather to find the moments and points of light, and to sing, play, and rejoice in daily life.

From a distance everything looks like a miracle

but up close even a miracle doesn’t look like that.

Even someone who crossed the Red Sea when it split

saw only the sweating back

of the man in front of him

and the swaying of his big thighs

Yehudah Amichai, translation by Robert Alter

The Story of a Nation That Redeems Its Captives

From Abraham who saved his nephew from captivity, to IDF helicopters carrying Israeli hostages back from Gaza - for thousands of years, Jews have fought, paid any sum necessary, and even endangered their lives to redeem and save their brethren from captivity and imprisonment

"The Commandment of Redeeming Captives"

One of them was the father of the Jewish nation. The other was his nephew, who joined the biblical Patriarch in leaving their place of birth on an almost mad journey to a new land. It took some time, as well as a brief adventure in Egypt, before they finally settled in Canaan. But then, the nephew fell captive – he and all who were with him. It happened because of a war they had absolutely nothing to do with, between different groups of petty monarchs with outrageous names like Kedarlaomer and Amraphel.

When Abraham heard his nephew Lot had fallen captive, he did not hesitate, even for a moment. He got his family and entourage together – a mere 318 people, all told – and set out to pursue the four captor kings and their armies, who had just won a decisive victory in the Valley of Siddim (near the Dead Sea) against five other kings. The pursuit began nearby in Sodom and reached all the way to Damascus, but Abraham was finally able to save Lot: “And also Lot … he returned and also the women and also the people” (Genesis, 14:16).

Abraham meets with Melkitzedek. 15th century. St. Peter’s Cathedral in Leuven, Belgium

With the captives now freed, the King of Sodom and the King of Salem (Shalem, Jerusalem of today) received Abraham and his people with flowers and gifts (well, bread and wine, anyway). Abraham handed them the loot he was able to take in battle. He went to war not to get rich, but to save Lot and the others taken captive with him.

This is probably the first incident of captives being freed in the recorded history of the Jewish nation.

Judaism considers human captivity to be a grievous sin. One of the Ten Commandments is “Thou Shall Not Steal” – and this commandment in fact refers to kidnapping – stealing people, not inanimate property. The punishment for this is death – “And he who steals a man and sells him, and he is found in his hands, will be put to death” (Exodus, 21:16).

Consequently, and possibly also due to our past, as a nation redeemed from captivity and slavery in Egypt, freeing captives from their captors has become a supreme moral value in Judaism. Something that must be done.

Maimonides says this of the imperative to free captives:

“And you have no greater commandment than the redemption of captives, for the captive is to be classified among those who hunger as well as those who thirst, those who are naked and those who stand on the brink of death.”

 (Hilchot Matnot Aniyim, 8:10-11)

“Jew! Have you fulfilled your duty to save prisoners […] Raise up your donation quickly to redeem the hostages”, a pashkevil poster from the National Library’s Pashkevil Collection

According to Jewish law, redemption of captives comes prior to many other things, including even taking care of the non-captive poor. It is even permissible to sell a Torah scroll to redeem a captive with the proceeds.

When a man marries a woman, he makes ten commitments to her, one of which is an obligation to redeem her if she is taken captive.

We are told of how King David himself fulfilled such an obligation. While David was busy with a certain Philistine mess in another part of the country, two of his wives – Achinoam and Avigail – were staying in the city of Tziklag. The Amalekites living in the area exploited the absence of King David and his army to attack the city, burn it to the ground, and take all the women and children captive.

When King David returned to a burned and empty city, he made the decision to pursue the Amalekites, even though he could only take some 400 men with him for the purpose, of whom 200 soon deserted. Fortunately, they caught an Egyptian youth along the way, the slave of one of the captors. He directed them to the Amalekite camp, where David and his men found their enemies “drinking and reveling because of the great amount of plunder they had taken” (the women, we can reasonably assume, were considered part of this “plunder” – 1 Samuel 30:16).

David and his men had the advantage of surprise, and they slaughtered many looters and drove the rest to flight, leaving the property almost entirely intact and many women shaken, but still alive.

Slave market in Constantinople, 19th century. William Allen

But superhero style rescue missions, even if told of our fathers and kings, have not been the main method the Jewish people have used to redeem their captives over the centuries.

During the long years of exile from the Land of Israel, all the leaders of Jewish communities could do was collect money – ransom – to free captives from bondage, or convince other, richer communities to help them out.

The Cairo Genizah, for instance, contains correspondence between Maimonides and various Jewish communities dealing with the redemption of captives – how many and where, and how much it would cost to free them. Among the letters is a receipt signed by Maimonides’ hand, relating to a sum donated for the redemption of captives. The text of the receipt explains that the donation came from the donor’s sale of his property.

Receipt signed by Maimonides. Cambridge University, TSNS309.12

The captives redeemed by the communities in Egypt weren’t friends or relatives of the donors, they were Jews who usually came from distant lands such as Mesopotamia and Southern Europe. They were typically were taken captive by pirates or highway robbers and were brought to cities in North Africa to be sold into slavery.

The concept of being taken captive and the difficult experiences entailed were not foreign to the members of Jewish communities, no matter where they were based. Even if they didn’t experience it personally, these people had been raised on stories of exile – in Egypt, Babylon, and later the exiles of the Second Temple period and the horror stories of the captives taken to Rome.

The Jewish captives were their brothers, and it was a great mitzvah to redeem them, even at great expense. Even if they didn’t know them from Adam.

There were cases where the effort to redeem captives failed – where they died due to sickness or abuse. There were also times when freeing captives helped to create new communities or strengthen existing ones.

“Redemption of Captives” – Generations raised on the importance of the commandment to redeem captives have resulted in extensive literature on the topic

Such was the case with the legendary “Four Captives.” According to the story, these were four sages who left Babylon, or the city of Bari in Italy, depending on who you ask. Their ship was ambushed by pirates on the Mediterranean, and they were taken captive. In that time, the late 10th century, about 150 years before Maimonides was born, Babylon was the spiritual center of the Jewish People. Jews in communities in North Africa, Italy, and Spain were almost entirely religiously dependent on the sages in Babylon and their religious rulings, which could only reach them after months of travel, in the best-case scenarios.

The pirates did not offload all the captives at once, instead offering their human cargo at the various ports they visited on their voyage. Thus were the four sages spread out across a very broad geographic expanse – from Egypt in the east through Morocco to Spain in the west. At each of the locations where one of the sages was redeemed, that sage eventually helped to establish a new independent spiritual Jewish center.

Rabbi Moses Ben Hanoch and his son, also called Hanoch, reached Spain. They were redeemed with a princely sum by the community of Cordoba, which was then a small, developing community. No-one in the community knew the ragged individuals they saved, yet they did not hesitate to pay more than the community could afford to rescue them. Their adherence to the commandment of redeeming captives paid off in spades: They eventually understood who Rabbi Moses was, and he was appointed as head of the city’s Jewish school. Over time, Cordoba became an important and significant Torah center, and its flourishing alongside other communities helped form the basis of Spanish Jewry’s Golden Age.

Letter from the Rabbis of Sefrou to the Rabbis of Meknes (both cities in Morocco) regarding the redemption of Jewish captives in the hands of Berber tribes

But things weren’t always so simple. Jewish efforts to free their captives at any price created a problem, and it was clear to the sages that this might actually encourage the kidnapping of Jews specifically. This is why the sages of the Mishna enacted the following regulation:

“We do not redeem the captives for more than their worth, because of Tikkun Olam (repair of the world).”

This regulation, which decrees that captives should not be redeemed for more than their market value, required people to put their feelings aside, and prefer the rational strategy that considered the long term good of the nation over the desire to ease the pain of a suffering mother or daughter.

But this regulation was not always strictly adhered to. The Gemara tells of Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Hananiah, who redeemed a child from the Romans (the Gemara does not tell us if the child was captured alone or with his family). When the effort to redeem the child ran into trouble, he said “I will not move from here until I have ransomed this boy for whatever money may be asked.” And indeed, the Gemara says that he paid a very large sum of money for the child, much more than he was worth. Was it because of mortal danger that he ignored the regulation, or because he knew this child could become a great leader? It is not clear. In any event, per the story, the freed child grew to become the famous Rabbi Ishmael.

One leader who did demand that the regulation be applied – to himself – was Meir of Rothenburg, “The Maharam”, who was born Meir Ben Baruch in 1220 CE in the city of Worms, Germany. Worms is a beautiful town with a rich Jewish history. A number of great Torah sages emerged from Worms whose teachings formed a solid foundation for Ashkenazic Jewry for generations, but the city was also the sight of a terrible massacre of Jews, and the Jewish quarter itself was destroyed a century after the Maharam’s death.

In his youth, the Maharam studied with the great sages of France. Upon returning to Germany, he very quickly became the main Rabbinic authority of Ashkenazic Jewry. Towards the end of his life, the Jews of Germany were increasingly persecuted and he, who believed every Jew must do everything they can to reach the Land of Israel – set out on the difficult journey. But the law of that time forbade the Jews from leaving Germany’s borders. He was caught in Italy and handed over to the German authorities.

The Maharam of Rothenburg was imprisoned in a fortress in the city of Ensisheim, to the dismay of his students and family. The community obviously wanted to redeem him – he was their undisputed leader – and apparently, they even began to collect the necessary funds. But the German ruler demanded an exorbitant sum, and the Maharam – perhaps with the hope of being freed for a more reasonable sum later on – commanded them not to pay the ransom. He died a few years later in prison, leaving behind the commentaries he wrote in his cell, after being provided, reluctantly, with a parchment and quill to write with.

Even after his death, the German authorities would not release his body to be buried. It was only 14 years later that a rich Jew named Alexander Ziskind Wimpen came forward and paid a fortune for the body’s release. He himself was buried alongside the Maharam in the Worms cemetery, where the adjacent graves of the two can still be found, with the gravestones telling part of this story.

Gravesites of the Maharam of Rothenburg and Alexander Ziskin Wimpen at the Worms cemetery

The story of the Maharam of Rothenburg is but one of many. In Christian Europe, Jews were perhaps not sold into slavery or used as props in cruel gladiator fights, but they continued to be taken captive and imprisoned in terrifying fortresses and prisons, oftentimes without a fair trial or even a trial at all.

Jewish community pinkasim (ledgers) from all over Europe are filled with side notes on diplomatic efforts to redeem captives, documentation of prayers to free prisoners, or lines in the accounts mentioning sums allocated for such purposes. Success in this field, so it seems, was hard to come by.

Many years later, during the era of the British Mandate in the Land of Israel, redemption of captives took a sharp turn. No longer a question of paying ransom (or bribes to Ottoman officials), the prisoners in British jails now often had a military background – these were members of the underground forces seeking to liberate the country. Alongside (largely failed) diplomatic efforts, the members of the Jewish community or Yishuv and the underground fighters returned to the ways of their forefathers from the Bible – the way of armed struggle.

On May 4, 1947, the Irgun (Etzel) raided Acre Prison to free the underground prisoners held there. This was a complex operation which included coordination among a number of teams, including the prisoners themselves. The Irgun members disguised themselves as members of a British engineering unit and maintenance crew, and a firefight broke out with a British paratrooper force guarding the jail.

The Jewish Yishuv was in tumult. Forty-one Jewish prisoners managed to escape, six of whom were killed and another eight recaptured. Three members of the attacking force were also killed and another three were captured and later executed. In addition, more than 180 Arab prisoners also broke out of jail that day. Most of them were caught, but some – including dangerous criminals with significant potential for killing Jews later on – managed to stay on the outside.

Was this a heroic action redeeming captives, or a needless suicide mission that endangered the Yishuv? In a speech that Menachem Begin, the head of the Irgun, gave on the radio three days later, he said the following:

“Once again, our blood has been spilled and has saturated the hills of Galilee. But it is not the blood of the butchered, but rather the blood of fighters and heroes, giving birth to new heroes, cultivating a new heroism, bringing freedom to the homeland and a life of honor to the people.”

In his eyes, at least, this was a glorious return to the days when the Jewish People could defend itself, even at the cost of blood.

Since the State of Israel was established and to this day, we have been dealing with different and complex aspects of redeeming captives – from soldiers taken in battle to citizens taken as hostages by murderous terrorist organizations.

May it be that all those who have not yet returned from captivity merit us the chance to fulfill the commandment of redemption of captives, and may they return home, all of them.