He who kidnaps a man – whether he has sold him or is still holding him – shall be put to death. Sh’mot/Exodus 21:16
A kidnapper is liable for capital punishment if he kidnaps a Jewish person, brings him into the kidnapper’s own domain, makes use of him, and then sells him to others, as Deuteronomy, 24:7 states: “And he makes use of him, and sells him.” Even if the service is for a minor matter, not worth a p’rutah – for example, he leaned on him or used him as a shield… (1)
Rambam/Maimonides: Mishneh Torah, Laws of Theft, Chapter 9, Halacha 2
This passage from this week’s Torah portion and the rabbinic expansion of it are especially haunting as the Jewish world grieves with the Bibas and Lifshitz families as they endure the now confirmed loss of Oded, Kfir, and Ariel.
The return of their bodies, held hostage by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad for 503 days, has shown all facets of these verses; kidnapped in terror, held captive in the dark, brutally murdered, used as human shields playing off the hope in Israel that they were still alive and used as media props in an horrific testimony to the cruelty of Hamas and all the terror factions in Gaza.
Just when we thought some semblance of peace would come to Shiri, Ariel and Kfir, and to their family, Israeli forensic scientists, working diligently to identify the bodies, bodies in locked caskets that the keys presented did not open, discovered that the final casket did not contained Shiri’s remains but those of an unknown person whose DNA did not match a single hostage; another use of their victim to psychologically torture her family and her people.
As we enter Shabbat the echoing question is, “Where is Shiri?” The justice demanded by the Torah cannot be attained until the world wakes up to the horrors that Israel faces every day. There can be no justice until people, Jews and non-Jews, stand up to terrorists and those who have sided with these butchers. There can be no justice until every single hostage, living and deceased, is home. May we soon enter a Shabbat when justice is done.
Shabbat Shalom –
Rabbi David M. Eligberg
1) Rambam follows the Talmud in reading these verses as being a cumulative set of conditions necessary for capital punishment to apply. This results in a more limited applicability of the death penalty and is consistent with the predisposition of the sages who were reluctant to apply ultimate sanctions.
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