More than 50 yeshiva students from New York and St. Louis held a symbolic seder outside the federal penitentiary here Thursday to call attention to the plight of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, whom they charged the Jewish community was ignoring.
The students demanded that his case be reopened to full investigation as they munched matzah and drank grape juice in the shadows of the maximum security prison, which inmates have dubbed the “Alcatraz of the ’90s.”
About 25 students from Yeshiva University in New York flew to St. Louis, where they joined 30 others from Block Yeshiva High School on a four-hour bus ride to the federal prison.
They were accompanied by Rabbi Avraham Weiss, an activist from Riverdale, N.Y., who visits Pollard in prison every six weeks.
“We have come to raise the voice of moral conscience,” said Weiss, who calls himself Pollard’s “personal rabbi.”
Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst employed by the U.S. Navy, confessed in 1985 to spying for Israel. He is currently serving the fifth year of a life sentence.
His wife, Anne Henderson Pollard, has just completed two concurrent five-year sentences as a post-facto accomplice.
“The Jewish community has not responded to Jonathan Pollard’s plight,” said Joseph Bensmihcn of Montreal, who attends Yeshiva University and is Canadian affairs director of the Justice for the Pollards organization.
“We believe Jonathan Pollard’s unduly harsh punishment is a direct result of his religion, not of his crime,” Bensmihen added.
The students charged that Pollard has been kept in solitary confinement since his incarceration and is allowed only one hour of daylight a day.
That was confirmed by Jack Crosley, executive assistant at the prison.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
