These days, the news from Israel leaves us constantly reeling: the lost joy of seeing loved ones who have been in the depths of terror and Hamas dungeons for 500 days; the devastating reality of the innocents we feel connected to, such as the Bibas family, lives torn asunder and murdered.
On Tuesday night, Feb. 18, the Washington, DC, Jewish community gathered to pray, mourn and hope. To hear from freed hostages Noa Argamani and Ilana Gritzewsky, as well as Ambassador Yechiel Leiter. The former hostages told of the terror they experienced and the hopes that their loved ones, who are still being held by Hamas, will be freed soon. Ambassador Leiter spoke about his son, a father of six children who died fighting in Gaza, and he referenced the Ten Commandments which we read about in last week’s parsha, in which the Torah writes, “You shall not steal.” The Talmud (Sanhedrin 86a) tells us that in fact the phrase “do not steal” in the Ten Commandments does not refer to stealing money or objects, which is covered in a verse in Vayikra. The commandment not to steal in last week’s parsha refers to taking people hostage, or “theft of souls,” as the Talmud puts it. The Talmud explains that just as the commandments against killing and sexual immorality, the two commandments preceding the one about theft, are both punished with the death penalty, so too must the commandment against theft refer to some type which deserves the death penalty—namely, stealing a person.
When the Mishnah and Talmud discuss this law, it takes on a bit of complexity. One would think the act of taking someone itself is enough to warrant the death penalty, but strangely, the Mishnah, based on a Biblical verse in our parsha, says:
“One who abducts a person is not liable to be executed unless he brings the abductee into his domain. Rabbi Yehuda says: He is not liable to be executed unless he brings him into his domain and exploits him, as it is stated: ‘If a man shall be found abducting a person of his brethren from the children of Israel, and he exploited him and sold him, then that abductor shall die.’”
The Talmud in explaining the Mishnah posits that any amount of use or exploitation of the abductee by the abductor, even minute, will incur the death penalty, even leaning on the person or using them to shield oneself from the wind.
Why is it that using the person, exploiting them in some way, is the thing that triggers the death penalty? Shouldn’t abduction itself be enough? Perhaps this detail of the halacha can help us to understand philosophically why kidnapping deserves the death penalty. One who takes someone and uses them in some way, exploits them for their own use even in an inconsequential way, has rendered the person an object—used them as one would a thing. Their “thou” has been rendered an “it.” To do such a thing is to ignore the ethical demand that others make upon us via their very being.
In the face of such human violence and devaluation in our world today, we must redouble our efforts to retain humanity and sensitivity for other humans who are infinitely valuable and made in God’s image. We must battle all the cruelty and objectification with its opposite, kindness and focusing on the needs and feelings of others. To look another in the face and see their Godliness, to ask how they are, what they need. We can do this on the street, in our community, even with those we know well but whose presence we might unintentionally take for granted. May God have mercy upon the remaining hostages, upon our people and our world.