In an exclusive to Mishpacha, Jonathan and Esther Pollard talk about being married in the face of life imprisonment, about marital harmony and commitment, about justice, and about unconditional love
When Esther married the world’s most famous spy in a secret halachic ceremony in Butner Prison in 1993, she never imagined that fourteen years later, she’d still be waiting to build a home with him in Israel and live as husband and wife.
“Every day that he is not yet free, every morning that I wake up and he’s still not here, I’m shocked. Yet it is his strength that keeps me going,” she says.
Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst who worked for the U.S. Navy in the 1980s, was convicted of one count of passing classified information to an ally – Israel – without intent to harm the United States. The median sentence for such a crime is two to four years in prison. Pollard never stood trial. Instead, at the request of both the US and Israel, he entered a plea bargain, which spared both countries from a long, expensive, and potentially embarrassing trial. Pollard fulfilled his end of the plea agreement, and even signed a confession detailing the spying activities he carried out on behalf of Israel. Yet in violation of the plea bargain, Pollard was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he never be paroled.
Esther Pollard, nee Zeitz, a special education teacher originally from Montreal, actually met Jonathan in 1971 when they were both teenagers on Israeli youth programs. They would sit and have discussions about their mutual love for the land and people of Israel, but each returned to home – he to South Bend, Indiana and she to Montreal, and they forgot about each other.
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