יהונתן פולארד בריאיון מיוחד: "הסוהר אמר לי 'אתה תצא מפה רק בשק'"

so when I arrived the warden looked at me and said look at the sky breathe the air look at the grass he said the next time you come out you'll be an old man in a bag so I looked at him and I said I don't think so I said God Hashem runs the world not you so he said we'll see foreign Vietnam call Vietnam keeping your mind in prison is a very difficult thing most people that I know had very long sentences like me they were death sentences basically and most of those men lived on hate and you can live a long time on hate but it leaves you empty at the end of the day and it leaves you without hope

and without a reason to live so in prison you usually end up dying in that case either spiritually and then first spiritually and then physically with me I lived on two things love and uh love was a love of esterio my wife Shalom and love of eres Israel and it was Kubota who pointed out to me that both of them Israel and Esther yoheva had the first initials that they were the same so loving one allowed me to love the other as far as was concerned this is where I first learned it and it was Esther who taught me this she said there's only one way to live to live in prison and that's if you fear

only God you don't fear anything else a big guy with a knife no a disease that sweeps through the prison no no food for a week no you fear only God and when you do that she said you'll have a much better life and so she gave me her love and she actually gave me her strength to survive the 30 years in prison is the first prison I went to was about 150 meters Underground no windows and it was a special prison that I was the 32nd prisoner there were 31 others I don't know who they were except most of them like me were not cooperating they weren't talking some were Mafia some were drug people

some were domestic terrorists some were International terrorists but all of us had one thing in common oh we weren't talking so when I didn't even know this prison existed so when I arrived the warden looked at me and said look at the sky breathe the air look at the grass he said the next time you come out you'll be an old man in a bag so I looked at him and I said I don't think so and I don't know why I said it it was like a bat call they came through my mouth I said God Hashem runs the world not you so he said we'll see so in this prison um the light was kept the cell was two meters by two

meters by two meters and the light was kept on the whole time the toilet was flushed maybe three times a week they fed us three times a day I don't know what it was I hope it was dog food at least then it would be sterile I don't know though and nothing to read nothing to write no phone calls no visits it was it was pretty bad and the warden later told me there are two ways to leave this prison you can talk or you can use the bar over the door to hang yourself one or the other so I sat down and um I didn't want to die but I couldn't sit talk so what did I do I finally had to make the I I

became reacquainted with because I said to him I can't do this on my own uh it's beyond me I need help so at that point I negotiated with Hashem like avra mavino I negotiated with Hashem and I said I will do this this this and this if you save me and those promises I keep to this day so at the end of um seven years I walked out and I as I was leaving I I asked one of the guards why is it that all the lights are off he said you're the only one living I was the only one that walked out alive so I said so when I got up to the top out into the day the warden the same Warden was there and I have a

problem sometimes with keeping my mouth shut you know time and place it doesn't mean anything to me so I looked at him and I said you see God runs the world I lost a tooth but that was okay he punched me but that was the nicest pain I ever experienced in my life al-qadduce yourself it was fine so in a real sense uh Hashem saved me during that time I had no sidor I had no Tanakh I had nothing so the most important thing is to give yourself up to him and to understand that um you know he will carry you through but you have to follow rules which I tried to do and even when I went to the next

prison I followed those rules and even to this day I keep those promises he saved my life so I owe him I I owe him my life so it's easy for me to um to do what I'm supposed to do as an observant Jew ish so after she died I didn't know what to do I was in a very kind of dark place and I thought okay what do we do I can't live like this well she did two things for me number one she did the with rivka and uh when I asked her why are you doing this she said I want you to be happy who does this so she protected me that way and uh if we have children I've already been told by Rifkin A girl at least

will be called Lester as far as the bigger picture is concerned I just decided okay um I've gone a lot of that had to do with her philosophy on Jewish Education and Jewish identity Esther kept she was a student if you will of rough a coin cook see if it said so her philosophy was completely centered on the need for a clear well-developed well-informed Jewish identity for children so I thought about that and I've talked to a lot of people whose children are in school systems and a lot of people are very disappointed we're one way or the other with the kind of education they're getting so I

thought okay I'll try to I'll try to act on her philosophy and she felt that um you have to get children at the earliest age so a gun and it was amazing when I went to see This Gun For the First Time In the temporary facilities there were I've been in the gagan before it's like it is a balagan you know when you go in and here it was very controlled it was disciplined and these little kids were sitting at a table for lunch saying before they ate wow this is what she was about so if you look at where I came from and where I eventually ended up this is how I explained it when I got here

everybody was thanking me and I feel very uncomfortable with that because I'm not somebody that needs thanks and I talked to Esther Allah Shalom about this and I said I'm uncomfortable and she said why are you uncomfortable and I thought about it and thought about it and I finally figured out why I'm not supposed to receive thanks I'm supposed to thank you why because if it weren't for all of you here I wouldn't have had the privilege they should to spend 30 years in gehind them learning how to be a Jew so that I could come home so I should receive thanks I should be thanking people for that

and so I looked at her Esther and I told her that and she said Hashem you're finally thinking like a Jew so that's how I survived as as Esther said to me when she died you serve the land and people of Israel that's it nothing else I don't serve a political party look I don't follow orders very well so when the party leader says jump off the cliff with me my answer to that is you go first foreign