I was very happy to see today the article on
VosIzNeis stating that the Japanese Justice Minister has signed the transfer order for the youngest of the yeshiva boys imprisoned in Japan, the only one to be tried and sentenced to date, to serve the rest of his time in Israeli prison. This is a huge victory in the struggle to get these boys into a less harsh prison deal and G-d willing the other two bochurim will also be allowed to be extradited to Israel.
As someone who has been following this story since the very beginning I have seen and heard many of the negative and positive arguments that have arisen from the stories unusual circumstance. Just open up any one of the reports regarding this story from the past year and you will see the gamut of all possible opinions one could concieve of. In that regard, I believe that the Mishpacha cover story from 6/24, which was a detailed interview with the three askanim who have been most involved with the case, as well as any other interview with these Rabbonim, should be required reading for anybody wishing to express an opinion about what is going on in Japan. Every event in our lives contains a lesson for us to learn, and there have been many lessons that we as a people have learned from the details that have emerged from this story, including the importance of not taking any packages containing contents we are not familiar with. We must also learn though not to make quick assumptions about others being guilty, or rather to hope that innocence will eventually be proven.
Most people can not conceive of a society where boys do not even know the word "drugs," as indicated by their initial examinations with a Hebrew translator. Japanese attorneys had to be brought to see Bnei Brak because they themselves couldn't believe such an insular society existed. Furthermore, all three boys were proven innocent of intentional illegal activity through the use of lie-detectors, and while a lie-detector is only 92% accurate, having three identical results usually indicates a common innocence. Their actions leading up to and following the events and are also indicators of innocent activity. I don't deny that there was an unprecedented amount of naivety that went into the suspicious operation of transporting those drugs into Japan, but is that the fault of the boys or the society that they live in, which did not give them a sufficient education about exploitation and drug trafficking? If the goal of punishments is to serve as a lesson to oneself and others, then the lesson in this case should be to increase the knowledge within the Charedi community, as well as for ourselves, about these issues, and not that three boys should sit in one of the toughest prisons in the world. I keep reading comments by people who have handed down harsher sentences on these boys than the courts themselves! Some people say that these boys should just rot or that we have no responsibility for them, challilah! How far from the truth. Kol Yisroel Areivim Ze Lazeh! We have an
achrayus for one another and we don't abandon any Jew, whether he is incarcerated or a free man.
To conclude, we all know that the dominant trait of the Jewish people is that we are
rachmanim bnei rachmanim, merciful people. There is a good quote from a story in this past weeks Mishpacha, which told the fascinating tale about Yaakov Nakashh who was born a Jew, raised in a monastery during and after the Holocaust, almost becoming a Priest, and than returned to his Jewish roots and moved to Israel. In describing life in the monastery, Yaakov says that "he was put in a room together with three cardinals from the Vatican. As the cardinals chatted to pass the time, much of the conversation involved uncomplimentary remarks about other religions. 'I insisted that it was not nice to say such things about other people, to which one of the cardinals immediately retorted, 'If you're defending other religions, you must be a Jew.'" Even the non-Jews known that we are a merciful nation! We are a nation whose essence is to be kind and compassionate towards others. It is one of Hashem's
middos and therefore it must be a
middah that we constantly strive for. No matter how you have come to view this issue, it remains a distressing story about diligent Yeshiva boys who are far from home, in a world unlike the one they had prior to then seldom left, and enduring conditions that are hard for any human to endure. Try to think with the benefit of the doubt and remember that how we judge others is how we too will be judged by the
beis din shel ma'alah.
