The Turtle Prisoner

Is the frum prisoner in Madagascar a martyr?

The other day an official from Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority contacted me regarding smuggled reptiles. Normally, such communications are to request that the Biblical Museum of Natural History provide a home for illegal reptiles that the Nature Authority has confiscated from smugglers. We have many such reptiles at the museum; these are generally species that are illegal to import either because they are endangered, or because they are at risk of becoming invasive and harming Israel’s small and fragile ecosystem. We’ve received a monstrous snapping turtle, a bizarre matamata turtle pictured here, several smaller species of turtle, giant African bullfrogs, newts, axolotls, and other species. (We were due to get an anaconda and some giant reticulated pythons from the Nature Authority the other week, but apparently they disappeared from the home of the person who was illegally keeping them.) We’ve also occasionally received other animals that were illegally taken from the wild in Israel, such as falcons and hedgehogs.

But this time, the request was different, and was a non-formal inquiry. The official was curious if I could tell him what the charedi community has to say about the man from Bnei Brak (or, according to some reports, Beitar) who was arrested in Madagascar for turtle trafficking. The prosecution in Madagascar sought a sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $100,000. I was asked whether he would be condemned in the charedi community.

Well, one way to gauge the response is to look at the “pidyon shevuyim” campaign. According to the campaign, the man’s “treatment by the authorities is beyond appalling and evokes dark periods in the history of the Jewish people.” In other words, it’s reminiscent of antisemitic persecution. In addition, the campaign points out, “It's important to note that this does not involve drug trafficking or, God forbid, murder, but rather an individual who, with a pure heart, took along several turtles to delight his children.”

“Several turtles”?! He had fifty-nine!!!

And he wasn’t taking them “with a pure heart to delight his children.” He took them because they are rare turtles worth several thousand dollars each on the black market!

These were not common species that he bought in a pet store and that were bred in captivity. They were radiated tortoises and spider tortoises, taken from the wild. Their natural population has declined by 80% due to people taking them for food and for the illegal pet trade. Madagascar is an island with unique wildlife, much of it highly endangered. The situation has gotten so out of control that the government has decided to take very strict steps with smugglers that are caught, in order to dissuade others.

Still, ten years is an extreme punishment (fortunately, in the end it was reduced to two). And I’m sure that a Madagascan prison is a terrible place to be, much worse than prisons in Israel or the US. I can certainly understand a campaign to try to help him.

But the messaging of the campaign is problematic. No, this isn’t some antisemitic act of evil against some pure-hearted person innocently engaged in a harmless act of kindness for his children. He was out to make a lot of money for himself, doing something that he surely would or should have known was illegal, even if he didn’t realize the seriousness of it. Making martyrs and heroes out of criminals does not do our society any favors. And the charedi/yeshivish frum community will continue to have a disappointing number of representatives in prison as long as there is no strong social stigma against breaking secular law.

And it wouldn’t hurt to also teach that it’s not in the spirit of Judaism to pillage and destroy the natural world. This isn’t some leftist secularist anti-Torah thing. According to Ramban and Sefer HaChinnuch, that’s one of the messages of shiluach ha-kein in yesterday’s parasha - taking both mother and young would show a callous disregard for the perpetuation of the species. I’ll conclude with a Midrash:

“ ‘Look at the work of God, for who can rectify that which he has damaged’ (Kohelet 7:13) – At the time when God created Adam, He took him around the trees of the Garden of Eden, and He said to him, Look at My works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are! Everything that I created, I created for you; take care that you do not damage and destroy My world, for if you damage it, there is no one to repair it afterwards!” (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 7:19)