“Redeeming Captives”
“Redeeming Captives”, Written by Dr. Avital Davidovich-Eshed, Tel Aviv University; Prof. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Tel Aviv University; Prof. Youval Rotman, Tel Aviv University; Prof. Haim Weiss, Ben-Gurion University.
Redeeming Captives
Written by
Dr. Avital Davidovich-Eshed, Tel Aviv University; Prof. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Tel Aviv University; Prof. Youval Rotman, Tel Aviv University; Prof. Haim Weiss, Ben-Gurion University
The Forum of Jewish Scholarship
The historical circumstances in which Jews lived throughout most of history as a cultural and political minority group, meant that the question of captivity and the communal concern for captives – women, men and children – were consistently relevant and acute. The extensive Jewish literature that describes captivity does not only deal with technical questions as to how to ransom captives, but also frames these questions in terms of religious law. The literature also reveals tremendous sensitivity to the corporeal suffering and psychological injury caused to the captives, their families and community. It reveals the story of communities who refuse to stand by and insist on doing everything in their power to rescue their loved ones from captivity.
The creation of the State of Israel has strengthened and deepened the obligation to ransom captives and prisoners of war by anchoring the religious commandment in a new national ethos of the State, and has turned the responsibility to ransom captives and war prisoners, even at a great cost, into one of the markers of Israeli solidarity and a basic element of the unwritten contract between the State of Israel and its citizens. At this fateful hour when many Israelis – children, babies, elders, women and men – are experiencing the horror of captivity, and their families are facing endless anxiety with regard to the fate of their beloved ones, the questions concerning their fate, the moral and historical aspects of these questions, become ever more urgent.
This short text is not a policy document, but seeks to establish the historical and moral context of the Jewish precept of ransoming captives (Hebrew: mitzvat pidyon shvuïm) in the Jewish tradition and thought, with a brief comparison to Christianity and Islam.
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The state of captivity reveals the tension between the interests of the individual (the captives and their families) and the broad interests of society. Thus, the cultural discourse dealing with captivity – whether it is the halachic-historical discourse or the contemporary discussion – acts always in the framework of social cohesion and solidarity. It is a complex discourse about identity, and the definition of society, its limits and whom it comprises (think, for example, about the case of Avra Mengistu, an Israeli of Ethiopian origin, held in Gaza since 2014, and the level of interest in Israel regarding his captivity).
Another aspect of the Jewish discourse about captivity throughout the ages is gender. The halachic discussion clearly distinguishes between female and male experiences of captivity, and between the way in which ransomed women and ransomed men are treated and reintegrated into society. Beyond the extreme uncertainty and terror of death that the captives experience, captivity for women often involves sexual abuse and rape. Although male captives may be subject to sexual abuse as well, in relation to women, sexual violence is, to the horror of it, an inherent part of captivity.
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The historical roots of the responsibility towards the captive are connected to the development in the importance of the religious factor that began to play a central role in the political scene in the first centuries of the first millennium, and led to the creation of a new, unprecedented type of social solidarity. In this period and later throughout the Middle Ages, Jews lived under foreign rule. The lack of political independence, the various rebellions against Roman rule, as well as acts of kidnapping for political and economic purposes, all turned the state of captivity and the way of dealing with it into a test for resistance and mutual guarantee (Hebrew:
‘arvout hadadit’) of the community.
A touchstone for the discussion is the following citation from the Babylonian Talmud (Baba Batra, p. 8b): “Ransoming captives is a great precept (Hebrew: mitzvah rabbah)… for it is written ‘And it came to pass that they will say to you: Where shall we go? And you will say to them: Thus says the Lord, what is for death – is for death, and what is for the sword – is for the sword, and what is for hunger – is for the hunger, and what is for captivity – is for captivity’ (Jeremiah 15:2).” Rabbi Yohanan expresses both psychological and political sensitivity when he addes “Whichever comes later in this verse is harder: A sword is harder than death, … hunger is harder than the sword, and captivity is harder than them all”.
Together with the acknowledgement of the tremendous suffering of captives, a halachic discourse that deals with the limits of the precept of ransoming was also developed. The Mishnah, a legal treatise of the beginning of the 3rd century CE, states in the tractate of Gittin: “The captives are not to be ransomed for more than their blood money”. This statement is used today as the main anchor for those who oppose captive ransoming. But the halachic discourse is much more complex. Firstly, the Mishnah seeks to balance the needs of the present and the future and to indicate that there is a hierarchy in the ransoming of captives. Rulings like “women precede men to be sustained and ransomed from captivity”, consider the obligation to ransom captives to be self-evident.
Secondly, the Mishnah does not define the amount beyond which it is “more than their blood money”, and instead leaves the matter to the circumstances. Yet, the main issue that must be
emphasized here is that this was regulated by the rabbis when no Jewish political authority existed, and the burden of the ransom was placed on members of the community. Indeed, the Mishnah do not sharply distinguish between the responsibility of the community and the responsibility of individuals to ransom captives. A state possesses numerous and various means that are not available to individuals, and this is how the regulation of the Mishnah needs to be understood. Whoever automatically opposes acts of ransoming on the basis of this regulation is not only cruel but also fails to understand its meaning in context. Furthermore, the history of the halakha shows the attempts to bypass the Mishnaic limitation. Already the Tosafists ad loc (b. Gittin 45a; 58a) argue that the limitation does not hold when the captives are in a life threatening condition or in a state of war, and many similar exceptions appear in the halakhic tradition. Today, Halakhists used this tradition to justify exchange of captives by the Israeli State, even at a very high price (see e.g.
Harav Ovadia Yosef, Yabia Omer part 10, Hoshen Mishpat 6).
The transition from the Mishnah period to the Talmud period (3rd-6th centuries CE) is characterized by an increasing concern for the captives. Unlike the Mishnah, which refers to the matter in legal and dry language, the Sages of the Talmud and later Midrash offer abundant descriptions, many of them chilling, about the fate of captives. This is how the Babylonian Talmud (Gittin, p. 58a) describes the bitter fate of a woman named Tzafnath the daughter of Paniel, who was abused by her captors. Desperate, she accuses God for sparing neither her honor nor His. Also famous is the story about a minor captive, beautiful and wise, whom Rabbi Yehoshua‘ ben Hananiah swears to ransom – in contrary to the Mishnah’s instruction – “for any sum that his captors demand”.
During the Middle Ages, the ethos of ransoming captives developed in practice from a communal to an inter-communal custom. Among the documents found in the Cairo Genizah are letters sent to the heads of the Jewish community of Old Cairo requesting financial help to pay the ransom for Jewish captives. These letters reveal a reality in which Jews are kidnapped by a military fleet or bandits and are led to enemy lands where they are sold into slavery. The local Jewish community takes the responsibility to collect the required sum in order to ransom them and to send them back to their community. This custom of ransoming captives among the Jewish communities resembles the custom of exchange of captives which developed in the same period in Byzantium and the Caliphate. The Jewish communities in the Middle Ages established a network that operated out of concern and obligation to ransom members of the various Jewish communities who were captured. This inter-community Jewish network functioned in a similar way to that of the Christian and Muslim states. Yet while the Christian and Muslim relied on captive exchanges, the Jewish network used payment in money, even a great deal of money, to ransom its members.
In the late Middle Ages as well, Jews did not follow in practice the restriction that the Mishnah put over acts of ransoming, as Rabbi David ben Zimra says: “We see that they are ransomed for more than the blood money of other captives, and they do it every day indeed, and the best is to exert this precept as often as possible.
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Without an organized state and economic mechanisms, the Jewish communities attributed a cardinal value to the precept of ransoming captives, and did everything in their power to protect their fellow believers, women and men, whom they did not know beforehand, and committed themselves to ransom them even at heavy and difficult prices when needed. An unequivocal expression of this commitment can be found in Maimonides’ halachic work Mishnah Torah:
“Ransoming captives precedes sustaining the poor and their clothing, and you do not find a greater percept as ransoming captives since the captive is in general the hungry and the thirsty and the
naked and is in mortal danger…. and whoever ignores ransoming a captive is guilty of transgressing the commandments ‘Thou shall not harden thy heart and thou shalt not flinch thy hand’
(Deuteronomy 15:7); ‘Thou shalt not stand on thy neighbor’s blood’ (Leviticus 19:16); and ‘Thou shall love your neighbor as thyself’ (Leviticus 19:18) … and you do not have a greater percept than the precept of ransoming captives”.
The development in the ethos of ransoming captives in Jewish tradition is mirrored in the development of a Christian ethos of the same period. The Church Fathers emphasize the bishop’s responsibility for the ransoming of Christians captured by the enemy. In the 4th century Ambrose states that the bishop must use the church’s funds, and must even melt down gold vessels, in order to ransom fellow believers from captivity. This approach bears striking resemblance to that of the Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra, 3b) according to which, in order to ransom captives, funds collected for the construction of a synagogue, and even materials already bought for it, should be used. With the adoption of Christianity as the state religion in the Roman-Byzantine Empire in the 4th century, the state recognized the religious responsibility to ransom Christian believers from the enemy. It delegated the responsibility to organize such acts to the bishops. When Byzantium’s political rival became also its religious rival, diplomatic acts of exchanging captives organized by the state started to appear.
The approach to ransoming captives as a public political act appears at the foundation of Islam as a political entity. One of the documents that compose the Constitution of Medinah, the foundation document of the ummah, the Muslim society of believers, states that whoever falls in captivity from the nine tribes that compose the ummah: “The blood money for their ransom will be paid by each tribe in accordance with the practice, with the participation of all Muslims”. The
notion of a Muslim society includes therefore its inception, a collective responsibility towards the captives and their ransoming. Perceiving the individual believer as a member in the society of believers establishes a public mutuality expressed in the obligation towards ransoming any of its members from captivity.
The transformation that turned the marker of political identity into a religious one during the wars between Byzantium and the Caliphate, meant that the religious responsibility towards the captive became a political responsibility, and resulted in the first exchange of captives between the two empires in 769. Over twenty exchanges of captives between the two empires are recorded between the 8th-10th centuries. The number of captives exchanged ranged from a few hundreds to a few thousands, soldiers and civilians alike.
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In conclusion: Contrary to the Roman rationale according to which captives, whether soldiers or civilians, automatically lose their status as free persons also in their own state with no responsibility of the state to ransom them, in all Abrahamic religions a collective responsibility has developed towards the believers in captivity. The development of the custom of ransoming captives in the first millennium indicates the emergence of common definitions in the three religions. The community of believers is seen as one religious society that provides a mutual guarantee to all its individual members. On this basis we find the religious belief that connects the captives to their religious society. The individual captives remain part of their society of believers even though they are separated from it in body. The act of ransoming guards the identity of the individual as part of society, and equally guards the identity of the society vis-à-vis its opponents.
We can summarize in the words of Rabbi Yosef Caro in the Shulhan ‘aruch (Yoreh De‘ah 252:3): “Whoever turns his sight away from ransoming captives transgresses ‘Thou shalt not harden thy heart’ and ‘Thou shalt not flinch thy hand’ and ‘Thou shalt not stand on thy neighbor’s blood’… and transgresses the percept ‘Open thy hand to him’ and the precept ‘And thy brother shall live with thee’, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ and save the ones led towards death… delaying ransoming of captives when hasting is possible, is as shedding blood”.
The Forum of Jewish Scholars
Summary
This paper was collectively written by the forum of Jewish Scholars, a group of leading Jewish studies scholars from a broad range of Universities in Israel who gathered in 2022 to form a response to events occurring in the Israeli public arena. The forum initiated public activities highlighting the place of Jewish thought in addressing Israel’s current struggles.
In this paper, published during the war in Gaza following the October 7th massacre, a group of scholars explore the mitzvah of redeeming captives in Jewish tradition, comparing it to similar concepts in other Abrahamic religions, and focusing on its historical development and the impact of captivity on religious communities.
Throughout history, Jews lived as a cultural and political minority, which created an ongoing need for the community to care to bail them out of captivity. Jewish literature has long portrayed captivity not only as a logistical issue of ransom but also as a profound moral and psychological dilemma, addressing the suffering of captives and the bond between the individual and the community.
The establishment of the State of Israel altered the nature of public commitment to redeeming captives, transforming it into a symbol of national solidarity, even at great cost. This issue remains highly relevant today, as many Israeli families and communities face the fear and reality of captivity.
The historical and halakhic discussions on redeeming captives are rooted in ideas of mutual responsibility, which were also central to Jewish communities in the Middle Ages. Under foreign rule, these communities organized collectively to redeem captives, often raising funds from the community. Similarly, both Christianity and Islam developed concepts of collective responsibility for redeeming captives, sometimes using public funds or religious resources.
In Jewish law, as well as in Christianity and Islam, redeeming captives is viewed as a crucial mitzvah and an essential component of social solidarity and care for the community’s well-being. As the “Shulchan Aruch” notes, any delay in redeeming captives is almost equivalent to spilling blood.
Across these traditions, captivity does not erase the captive’s religious or communal identity. The act of redemption preserves both the individual’s connection to the community and the community’s integrity, reinforcing the mutual responsibility that binds them together.
