In the days of the Talmud, and in our own day, an ordinary instance of theft is assumed to generally result in the ye-ush or despair of the owner or victim ever being in a position to redeem the stolen item, barring certain circumstances. The Talmud suggests at one point that if for whatever good reason the owner did not yet despair at the time the thief stole and then sold the animal, the sale was invalid (Baba Kama 68).
The Torah, of course, takes it a step further. The eighth commandment in the Bible, not to “steal” (Ex. 20:13) has actually been interpreted to mean not to kidnap—and, presumably, in today’s world, not to take hostages. The Torah states “and he who steals a man and sells him, and he is found in his hand (or in his power), he shall be put to death (Ex 21:16) (Sanhedrin 86a). In this case there is no owner’s despair (Baba Kama 68) since it has been noted that no one ever despairs of his own freedom (Rashi). It has been said that “where there is life, there is hope,” and Jewish law is full of examples of doing whatever can be done to preserve life in the hope of a better tomorrow. It usually applies to health, but in this case, every Israeli hostage hopes for freedom, and virtually every Jew joins in this hope. Many, of course, join not just in this hope, but join the army and the reserves in helping to turn this hope into reality, or try to help in any other way possible.
The laws of modern Israel are more “liberal” than the laws of the Bible. The codifiers of the Israeli legal system created Article 369 of the Criminal Code, condemning kidnappers to just 10 years. But note that even the relatively liberal Israeli laws were created to double the punishment to 20 years (Article 373) for kidnapping a minor or an insane person. The laws are liberal from the point of view of the kidnappers, of course; not so liberal from the point of view of the people who are kidnapped, especially those who end up being murdered in the process, but there is still no doubt that Israel’s laws of kidnapping did not envision the kind of terror, barbarism, fear and famine that accompanied the kidnappings of this past Simchat Torah in Israel. The kidnappers and murderers of October 7 made no distinction between adults and minors, women and children, the sane and the insane, and soldiers and civilians (except when it came to releasing them during pauses).
Some college presidents in Congressional hearings notoriously condoned supporters of the kidnappers and the murderers of October 7, and then there were some soft steps of testifiers trying to walk back their rationalizations with other rationalizations. It should be noted that people who testify and then attempt to change the substance of their testimony upon being criticized make a mockery of the concept of perjury. There would be much less perjury in the world if people could just change their testimony at will, and not just to correct the record but to alter it.
Kidnapping civilians of all ages in peacetime, compounded by what else happened on and after October 7 in Israel, was obviously heinous, but making Jews and others on, and off, college campuses and communities throughout the rest of the world feel unsafe in their normal places of study, work, domicile, recreation and transportation—because of abuse of the legislative system and misinformation, distortions and double standards—can lead to the creation of technically unrestricted pseudo-hostages. The ability of those to come, go and speak as they please without fear of bodily or economic harm (even if not imminent) is limited in scenarios that should also be unacceptable in a civilized world—even if the Jews outside of Israel are not nearly as endangered as the real hostages in a world that seems to be increasingly unreal.
Rabbi Reichel is an attorney and administrator whose opinions and means of expressing them do not necessarily reflect the views of any organizations with which he is affiliated.
