Chief Rabbis Call for Special Prayers for Pollard this Shabbat

Chief Rabbis: Pray for Jonathan Pollard's Health & Release

Gil Ronen - Arutz7 - December 30, 2010

Hundreds of thousands of Jews in the nation's synagogues will pray on Saturday for the health and speedy redemption of Jonathan Pollard. Rabbi Yonah Metzger, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi, has composed a special prayer for Pollard and is asking the public to pray for him.

According to Jewish tradition, when praying for a person's one's health, his name and that of his mother is uttered. In Pollard's case, the prayers are for Yehonatan, son of Malka.

Rabbi Metzger and his Sephardic counterpart, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, met with Pollard's wife, Esther, who updated them on her husband's deteriorating medical condition. Contact with Jonathan was cut off for two days last week. It subsequently turned out he had been hospitalized and underwent an unplanned operation.

Last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decided to honor Pollard's personal request and to publicly petition US President Barack Obama to release him.

During his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu recognized Pollard as an Israeli agent and gave him Israeli citizenship. He later visited him in his jail cell.