In dark times such as these, many of us find ourselves looking back to precedents from our tear-stained history for guidance and insight. What we find is not always clear and unambiguous, but even then it can provide a measure of perspective and comfort to know that our desperate struggles and moral quandaries are similar to those which our ancestors have faced over the millennia.
Talmud Reclaimed brings the example of redeeming hostages as one of a series of cases which demonstrate different methodologies through which Rambam and the Tosafists identify rulings from the Talmud. The primary Talmudic passage in (Gittin 45a) presents a clear rabbinic decree prohibiting the redemption of hostages “for more than their value” since this will encourage kidnappers to abduct more Jews and demand ever increasing ransoms. Rambam, in keeping with his usual practice, records this ruling without exception in his legal code (Matnat Aniyim 8:12).
Yet this is far from the end of the story.
The Ba’alei Tosafot (Gittin 58a), consistent with their own Talmudic approach, identified several exceptions to this Talmudic ruling – for example if the hostage’s life is in danger or if a Torah scholar is abducted. Was the Mishnah’s ruling simply too strict and uncompromising to be imposed unconditionally on the nation?
Fascinatingly, when one of the most prominent Tosafists, Maharam MiRottenburg, was kidnapped for a heavy ransom, he refused to allow his community to collect money to redeem him out of fear that this would merely encourage the gentiles to abduct more rabbinic leaders.
This painful moral conundrum has become magnified to an unimaginably horrifying extent in the current nightmare which our nation has been living for the last year.
On the one hand, there is the cold, rational voice of the Mishnah hanging over us. By agreeing to redeem hostages “for any price” we have undoubtedly encouraged our enemies to utilise hostage-taking as a preferred strategy against us. The 1000+ terrorists released as part of the Shalit deal in 2015 have been directly responsible for several Israeli deaths (and arguably indirectly for many more).
On the other hand, what are the consequences of not agreeing a deal to bring our tortured brothers and sisters back home? Will seeing our hostages – their devastated families and friends – pleading for their lives yet us turning a blind eye to their pain irreversibly change us as a nation? Is our willingness to do anything to bring our people home, a willingness that our enemies identify as a weak spot, really a source of national strength, pride and unity? Perhaps a refusal to proceed with a deal will bring a pyrrhic victory – militarily degrading Hamas to a point of no return but morally and socially degrading Israel in the process. Will we be the same people afterwards?
It is an impossible question which we are faced with. How can we, as human beings and as Jews, face our hostage families and tell them that their loved ones are not worth the price of military compromise. At the same time how can we ignore that cold rational truth in our heads which predicts the numerous likely Israeli deaths in the years to come from agreeing such a deal – and the knowledge that we are playing along to Hamas’s strategy.
However there is another part of Hamas’s strategy we can and must do more to mitigate. We must keep at the forefront of our minds that our true enemies are not our fellow Jews who balance up these concerns differently to ourselves but the bloodthirsty terrorists who knowingly calculated to put us into this awful moral conundrum in order to tear us apart. None of us are traitors. We all want the hostages home and well as soon as possible and Hamas weakened and degraded to the greatest extent possible. We cannot afford to permit Hamas to turn us against each other with poisonous rhetoric and actions.
May this month, as we prayed this morning, be one of salvation and comforting, life and peace.
Unified we will be victorious. Am Yisrael Chai.
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