Op-Ed: If I Forget Thee… Tears in North Carolina (Visiting Jonathan Pollard)
Posted before Shabbat
(Chaskel Bennett - YWN) Last week I was invited to join a delegation led by Rabbi Pesach Lerner, the Executive Vice President of the National Council of Young Israel, and Rav Yaakov Shapiro Shlita, the Rosh Yeshiva of Mercaz HaRav Kook in Yerushalayim, to visit Jonathan Pollard in the Butner Correctional facility located in rural North Carolina. I accepted the invitation, glad to have the opportunity to encourage Jonathan with the knowledge that many of his fellow Jews think about him often. I did not anticipate that it would be Jonathan who would teach me what it really means to care about our brethren. I had never met him previously and found him to be surprisingly personable and engaging. Jonathan is understandably distressed by the betrayal he feels from most members of successive Israeli governments and the United States legal system. But, after spending over two hours with him, it is obvious that his ahavas yisroel and love for Eretz Yisroel is firmly intact.
With the Rosh Yeshiva from Merkaz Harav guiding the conversation, Jonathan painfully expressed that some of his most difficult and deeply emotional moments over the past several years in prison, had taken place during the Gaza disengagement and the Merkaz Harav massacres. I looked at Jonathan in astonishment. Before me was a man who by any standard has personally suffered far more than most, yet he was in turmoil over the difficulties and challenges facing his fellow Jew. That he has spent thousands of hours in solitary confinement and has been subjected to horrendous conditions over the course of his twenty five years in various prisons seemed not to be his main concern. Is it possible that despite a quarter century of mental and physical deprivation, Jonathan gets what is truly important and we don’t?
In our visit, we witnessed Jonathan teach by example, how to conquer personal torments and burdens and immerse oneself in the sugya (lesson) of noseh b’ol im chaveiro (which loosely translates to “sharing the burden of a fellow Jew”). Jonathan is overwhelmed with concern for the former members of Gush Katif, and fears for the soldiers who may be ordered to remove their parents and families from their homes in Yehuda and Shomron. The plight of the “Hesder boys,” not the plight of “Jonathan Pollard,” seems to consume him.
(Read full article)
(Chaskel Bennett - YWN) Last week I was invited to join a delegation led by Rabbi Pesach Lerner, the Executive Vice President of the National Council of Young Israel, and Rav Yaakov Shapiro Shlita, the Rosh Yeshiva of Mercaz HaRav Kook in Yerushalayim, to visit Jonathan Pollard in the Butner Correctional facility located in rural North Carolina. I accepted the invitation, glad to have the opportunity to encourage Jonathan with the knowledge that many of his fellow Jews think about him often. I did not anticipate that it would be Jonathan who would teach me what it really means to care about our brethren. I had never met him previously and found him to be surprisingly personable and engaging. Jonathan is understandably distressed by the betrayal he feels from most members of successive Israeli governments and the United States legal system. But, after spending over two hours with him, it is obvious that his ahavas yisroel and love for Eretz Yisroel is firmly intact.
With the Rosh Yeshiva from Merkaz Harav guiding the conversation, Jonathan painfully expressed that some of his most difficult and deeply emotional moments over the past several years in prison, had taken place during the Gaza disengagement and the Merkaz Harav massacres. I looked at Jonathan in astonishment. Before me was a man who by any standard has personally suffered far more than most, yet he was in turmoil over the difficulties and challenges facing his fellow Jew. That he has spent thousands of hours in solitary confinement and has been subjected to horrendous conditions over the course of his twenty five years in various prisons seemed not to be his main concern. Is it possible that despite a quarter century of mental and physical deprivation, Jonathan gets what is truly important and we don’t?
In our visit, we witnessed Jonathan teach by example, how to conquer personal torments and burdens and immerse oneself in the sugya (lesson) of noseh b’ol im chaveiro (which loosely translates to “sharing the burden of a fellow Jew”). Jonathan is overwhelmed with concern for the former members of Gush Katif, and fears for the soldiers who may be ordered to remove their parents and families from their homes in Yehuda and Shomron. The plight of the “Hesder boys,” not the plight of “Jonathan Pollard,” seems to consume him.
(Read full article)
Love of the Land: Op-Ed: If I Forget Thee… Tears in North Carolina (Visiting Jonathan Pollard)
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