Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim and rabbi of Beit El, will mark Jonathan Pollard's 48th birthday - and his 17th consecutive one in prison - with a special lecture on the topic of Redeeming Captives. The class will be given at 10 PM in Beit El; bullet-proof bus transportation from Jerusalem will be provided.
The class is the 7th in a series of Torah lectures sponsored by the Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home (phone in Israel: 055-665-037), which has also initiated an international Pollard Shabbat, Knesset activities, and newspaper and radio ads to "raise consciousness about this critical issue."
Pollard has now spent more than 1/3 of his life in prison, though his life sentence - "a fundamental miscarriage of justice," according to Appeals Court Judge Steven Williams - was the result of deprivation of his constitutional rights to due process and effective assistance of counsel. An essay penned by Rabbi Aviner, also in honor of Pollard's birthday, begins as follows:
"Jonathan Pollard mourns in the pit. It is Erev Rosh Chodesh Elul and Jonathan's 48th birthday. He mourns silently, without tears. He mourns not for himself, but for Joseph HaTzaddik who was thrown into the pit, and for all the subsequent "Josephs" who were thrown into all kinds of pits. Jonathan is the current "Joseph" through which our nation is being tested. He is mourning for his brothers' still-unrectified sin of selling the original Joseph..."