PURELY COMMENTARY

Pidyon Shevuyim: Salvaging Our Conscience

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor Emeritus

R

escuing enslaved
Jews, ransoming cap-
tives, providing rescue
for the oppressed is command-
ed as the most sacred Jewish
obligation. It is commanded
as more obligatory than even
providing food for the hungry.
It is recorded under the
obligation known as Pidyon
Shevuyim. It was not talked
about when the captured in
Romania needed to be saved
from the degradations and
provided with havens in
Israel. Their rescue was at-
tained at a price-per-head.
The action was our Pidyon
Shevuyim, although it was
not constantly mentioned as
such while 400,000 of our
fellow Jews were welcomed
into the Jewish homeland.
This could also be called the
means resorted to in resettl-
ing Russian Jews, as it was
the way of ending the
homelessness of the victims of
Hitlerism.

Our editor, Gary Rosen-
blatt, revives interest in Pi-
dyon Shevuyim in considera-
tion of the present immense
duty to provide massive
rescue means to settle tens of
thousands of Russian Jews in
Israel. In a very important
analysis of the current condi-
tions in the emerging obliga-
tions, in his article in our Jan.
5 issue under the heading
"Major Story of 90s is
Already Here," he called for

total commitment to the most
serious challenge under the
age old Jewish title of Pidyon
Shevuyim in this summation
of his article:
All of us need to be
reminded of the para-
mount importance within
Judaism of the concept of
Pidyon Shevuyim, or the
rescue of captives. When
priorities are established,
that responsibility comes
first. And when we think of
our brethren in the USSR,
we must think of them in
terms of captives who must
be rescued.
If we succeed, we will
look back on this period
with great pride. If we fail,
God forbid, and the
darkness of repression
returns to the USSR before
we have completed our
mission, we will never be
able to forgive ourselves.
This brief call for a
mobilization of all Jewish ef-
forts to life is the most
obligatory challenge of the
current era and should be
welcomed with deep apprecia-
tion. It is not only a demand
for a realization of the need to
treat the duty in the Russian
rescue tasks with the deepest
respect. It calls for a realiza-
tion of the importance and
meaning of ransoming the
captives. Scores of explana-
tions of Pidyon Shevuyim are
in our records. Perhaps this
brief definition from the new
Encyclopedia of Judaism will
lead toward understanding

and fulfillment of the sacred
duties.
Ransoming of Captives is
a religious obligation to
which Jews have given the
highest priority since
biblical times, in accor-
dance with their inter-
pretation of the command-
ment: "You shall not stand
idly by the blood of your
neighbor?' The rabbis con-
sidered the ransoming of

There is a price on
the heads of the
Soviet Jews.

captives to be one of
Judaism's fundamental
duties for both
Maimonides and the
Shulchan Aruch, failure to
act promptly in securing a
captive's release is tanta-
mount to shedding his
blood.
Even a Scroll of the Law
could be sold to raise
money to ransom captives.
At the same time, however,
talmudic sages opposed
giving way to extortion by
paying inflated ransoms.
This is the position taken
by Maimonides and most
later authorities, such as
David ibn Zimra (Radbaz),
who wrote that even where
lives may be at stake, a cap-
tives' release is not to be
secured today if it will en-
danger another person's
security tomorrow.
Meir (Maharam) of Roth-

enburg when imprisoned
in 1286 by the Holy Roman
emperor, Rudolf I of
Hapsburg, created a prece-
dent by refusing to allow
fellow Jews to obtain his
release in exchange for a
vast sum. He chose to
spend the remaining seven
years of his life in jail,
rather than yield to the im-
perial extortioner and
thereby encourage other
despots to kidnap Jewish
scholars. Nevertheless,
every effort was generally
made to liberate Jews sold
into slavery or held to
ransom.
This obligation to redeem
captives was usually
discharged through a com-
munal fund that gave prac-
tical expression to the
talmudic dictum: "All Jews
are responsible for one
another?'
Present-day realities, in
the form of hijacks and
kidnapping, have made the
ransoming of hostages a
live issue, the price
demanded being some-
times political (the freeing
of terrorists) and some-
times financial (the pay-
ment of a ransom).
Authorities have suggested
that the thrust of Jewish
thinking is to resist the
demands of hijackers, even
if this runs counter to
natural feelings of
compassion.
If giving way to extortion
will place other lives in
jeopardy, no exchange is

permissible. On the other
hand, where the release of
hostages in exchange for
political prisoners or con-
victs (or even, as had been
the case with Israel, in ex-
change for the bodies of
Israelis held by their
enemies) is not likely to en-
danger public security,
every effort should be
made to redeem those in
captivity.
Whichever way we judge
the conditions into which
Jews have been forced op-
pressively, the Russian Jews
have been held in a state of
captivity. There is need for
redemption and rescue as the
ethical synonym for
ransoming.
The increased anti-
Semitism in Russia, even
under the Gorbachev
liberalism, multiplies the pre-
judices and places for whoever
is unable to acquire freedom
in a state of serfdom.
Gary Rosenblatt merits ap-
preciation for his call to duty
in the situation demanding
action for freedom for our
fellow Jews in the USSR.
The definition of the
established tradition which is
our sacred duty calls for em-
phasis. The seriousness of the
obligations is an inerasable
duty not to be shirked. Let us
erase whatever doubts may
arise that the obligations are
too difficult to fulfill. That
would be a degradation of
every human and ethical code
that marks the sanctity of our
eternity.

❑

The Legacies Of Landsmanshaften In Ransoming

C

urrent concerns —
worries and doubts —
may grow in securing
funds for the rescuing of Rus-
sian Jews for settlement in
Israel. There are encouraging
memories of the earliest years
of this century when the mass
movements of Jews from
Eastern Europe came here,

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Vol. XCVI No. 22 January 26, 1990

2

FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 1990

their numbers growing into
millions enabling efforts
never to abandon hope.
Then there was the family
basis, when individuals pro-
vided for relatives to im-
migrate to the U.S. and
gradually to establish com-
munities with a dependence
on self-help.
It all began as self-help
when families scraped up
funds to buy shifskarten —
boat tickets for at least one of
them to get to this country, to
do enough saving to come
here. That's how families
were reunited as personal
responsibilities. That's how
communities emerged. It was
rescue dependent on personal
commitments.
It is different now. The tens
of thousands need the
worldwide communities to
help them. It is the mass
movement with a duty for the
entire Jewish people.
The lessons of the past

nevertheless serve as an en-
couragement to Jewry when
an entire people's duties, the
global community, must learn
from individuals. From the
last decade of the last cen-
tury, Jews were rescued by
fellow Jews on a family basis
and their numbers grew into
the present millions. Now the
benefits of the early escapes
from oppressions must
mobilize the most serious of
all such tasks as a world
Jewish movement, the basic
inspiration for it to be provid-
ed by American Jewry.
This is where the lessons of
the Landsmanshaftan have
become an inspiration from
the family unit to the world
community.
The process, mainly of self-
rescue on the road to the
American freedom, created
the continuity that had led to
the establishment of a proud
American Jewry.
The encouragement for

such continuity came from
what had become for nearly
seven decades a great social
and communal phenomenon
that functioned as Lands-
manshaften. There is little
left of it. Of the many hun-
dreds, perhaps mny more
than a thousand in New York
alone, it's a miracle that a
dozen still function.
There were more than 70
such Landsmenshaften that
were established here to re-
tain the names of the areas
whence the migrants attain-
ed rescue from degredation.
They are now mere memories.
How do we judge Lands-
manshaften and connect the
triumphs during their ex-
istence with the present
movement of rescue which
can no longer be accomplish-
ed by family units because of
the massiveness of the com-
munal duty to end the oppres-
sions of the sufferers of our
time?

In the Landsmanshaften
search for the libertarian
principles that commence
with the establishment of
homes resulting from an end
to homelessness that was
threatened during the cen-
turies of persecutions, there
was embodied the noblest of
commitments. It was rooted
in the desire to resort to self-
help. It was best expressed by
one of the brilliant men in the
ranks of the precursors of
modern political Zionism, Dr.
Leon Pinsker.
In the decades of pogroms,
degradations and virtual
enslavement, Dr. Pinsker
issued a call for action, for the
redemption of Eretz Israel, for
migration to Palestine to
regain respect as a people in
freedom. His message to the
Jewish People was under the
title of "Auto-Emancipation,"
and its advocacy of self-help.
This was a decade before
Continued on Page 40

