I recently met with Jacob Ostreicher, the Orthodox Jewish businessman who was falsely accused of drug trafficking and left for dead in a Bolivian hell-hole. He was saved by actor Sean Penn, who traveled to Bolivia, intervened with President Eva Morales and whisked Ostreicher out of prison in circumstances that remain mysterious.
In recognition of his heroism, our organization, This World: The Values Network, is honoring Sean, along with my former Oxford students Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, as well as anti-genocide campaigner John Prendergast, as this year’s Champions of Jewish Values at our annual gala dinner in New York City on May 18.
Some were curious. Sean Penn? Champion of Jewish values? But what did all these complainers do to save Ostreicher? Penn risked his own safety to save a complete stranger, and one of Judaism’s greatest mitzvot is releasing those held unjustly. And this is aside from the tens of thousands of lives that Sean has saved in Haiti.
The Jewish community is typically embarrassed by our prison population. We want Jewish names displayed on buildings at Harvard, not on wanted posters. Only a few humanitarian organizations, like Chabad’s Aleph Institute, give a damn about Jews who are incarcerated.
And here you have the reason why inmates like Jonathan Pollard and Sholom Rubashkin, amid their inexcusable crimes, can be given highly prejudicial and outrageously lengthy sentences. The Jewish community, embarrassed at Jewish wrongdoing, rarely raises its voice in unified protest against punishments which, in both cases, are widely viewed by legal experts as discriminatory and excessive.
-Rabbi Schmuley
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/No-holds-barred-Why-Pollard-and-Rubashkin-are-rotting-in-jail-347076