The perceived Jewish communal apathy concerning the plight of Jonathan Pollard came to an abrupt end last month, when the revered senior rabbis of America’s Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, Council of Torah Sages, as well as the members of Agudath Israel’s rabbinic presidium and almost 100 signatories from its Conference of Synagogue Rabbis issued a declaration calling on "all caring Jews" to tell President George Bush that Mr. Pollard "has served long enough, and that the time has come to free him."

For 22 years, Jonathan Pollard’s supporters have complained that while many organizations and individuals—Jews and Gentiles—have urged clemency for the former US Naval intelligence analyst, few have embarked on any meaningful, sustained efforts geared towards his release. In 1987, Mr. Pollard was convicted of passing classified information to Israel and sentenced to life in prison. At the time of his sentencing, he had already served almost two years in prison.

After spending seven years at the maximum security facility in Marion, IL, most of them in solitary confinement, in 1993, Mr. Pollard was transferred to the Butner Federal Correctional Facility near Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, where he still remains.

Agudath Israel, which represents the non-chassidic American-hareidi community, has joined with several other Jewish organizations to ask Americans who support the cause of Mr. Pollard’s freedom to write to Mr. Bush or, even better, to telephone the White House daily between the hours of 11am and 2pm, requesting that the President grant Mr. Pollard clemency.

The campaign, which began in early February, is scheduled to continue until the beginning of Passover—unless the President acts to pardon Mr. Pollard before the holiday of freedom.

By the end of February, some Jews in New Jersey said they, their family members, and friends had been calling every day and that some of the White House operators were getting "friendly."

On one of her calls to the White House, Mr. Pollard’s wife, Esther, said she told the operator her message to Mr. Bush was: "Free Jonathan Pollard. He is the victim of a great injustice, and you have the great merit of being the one to right this terrible wrong. Set Jonathan Pollard free now, and both you and America will be blessed."

When she asked the operator if he had been able to take it all down, he replied, "Yes. I got ‘Free Jonathan Pollard’ and I added it to the list of all the people who are calling about the same thing."

"Only the President of the United States, by granting Mr. Pollard executive clemency, can save him from spending the rest of his life behind bars," said the declaration by Agudath Israel rabbis.

While the actions of the Agudath Israel rabbis made headlines, the credit for their very public involvement was given to Rabbi Pesach Lerner, executive vice president of the National Council of Young Israel (NCYI). Rabbi Lerner’s devotion to Mr. Pollard and his case for clemency is legendary.

As the behind-the-scenes organizer of the campaign to call the White House, Rabbi Lerner emphasized that the administration "counts and tallies all in-coming calls, so every single phone call makes a difference."

"Callers are reminded to expect the lines to be busy and to keep calling until they get through," he said.

Over the years, Mr. Pollard’s actions have been the subject of debate, criticism, and praise. His supporters in the Jewish community point out that financial considerations never played a part in his espionage activities. Rather, they say, he acted out of concern that Israel was not receiving important security intelligence from the US to which the Jewish state was legally entitled, according to a 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries.

Supporters insist that the information he gave Israel, which, they say, included Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan, and Iranian nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare capabilities being developed for use against Israel, was instrumental in preparing the Jewish state for the Iraqi scud attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem during the first Gulf War. His information forewarned Israel about the necessity of maintaining sealed rooms, say his supporters.

His detractors maintain that his actions created a gulf between the US and Israel that still has not been bridged in the intelligence community.

His supporters say his sentence, the conditions of his imprisonment, and the delay of a pardon point to an underlying antisemitic strain in the Justice Department. His detractors say that he and Mrs. Pollard have been their own worse enemies, alienating many former supporters and refusing to express real remorse. His supporters say he has expressed remorse; his detractors say his letters of remorse are filled with semantic twists, written to justify what he did.

According to David Luchins, a vice-president of the Orthodox Union, professor of political science at Touro College, and former Jewish liaison for the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Mr. Pollard’s one letter of real remorse, written in conjunction with the late Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik, was hand-delivered by Sen. Joseph Lieberman to Mr. Clinton shortly after Mr. Clinton took office as President.

According to Mr. Luchins, Mr. Clinton had been approached by Messrs Moynihan and Lieberman with a request for clemency for Mr. Pollard. The new President, who, at that time, had no ties to the intelligence community, allegedly agreed, saying all he needed was a letter of remorse.

The task of writing the letter and bringing it to Mr. Pollard to sign was given to Rabbi Soloveichik, who was not only a Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshiva University and the Brisk Yeshiva in Chicago, but also an attorney.

But that letter, which had Mr. Pollard describe his actions as "repugnant not only to American law, but also to G-d’s Torah," seemed too much for Mr. Pollard to bear. After the letter was already on Mr. Clinton’s desk, Mr. Pollard renounced its contents, putting an end to any efforts on his behalf by Mr. Clinton, Mr. Moynihan, or Mr. Lieberman.

Although the Orthodox Union as well as the Rabbinical Council of America were asked to join with Agudath Israel and NCYI, the OU and the RCA, both associated with the Modern Orthodox movement, declined.

The Agudath Israel rabbis, whose activism is usually carried on behind closed doors, said their call on the community to work for Mr. Pollard’s freedom was based on the commandment requiring Jews to exert efforts to free the captive, pidyon shevuyim. While sometimes thought to apply only to countries in which Jews were subject to the whims of rulers who could imprison individuals for antisemitic reasons or to extract a ransom from the Jewish community, contemporary rabbis have ruled that the mitzvah of pidyon shevuyim applies equally to those who are justly incarcerated in the US.

"The heart-wrenching plight of Jonathan Pollard…demands our urgent attention," wrote the rabbis, noting that his life sentence, "a penalty far more severe than that imposed upon others who committed similar or eve more serious crimes—is difficult to comprehend."

Most Pollard supporters point out that Mr. Pollard has already served a longer prison term than any other person in US history who spied for an ally. The average term of imprisonment for passing classified information has been between two and four years. Mr. Pollard received the same sentence that was meted out to Aldrich Ames, the chief of CIA counterintelligence in Eastern Europe, who passed critical defense secrets to the Soviet Union, an American enemy, during the Cold War.

In addition to the strong voices of the Agudath Israel rabbis, others, including former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross and former CIA Director James Woolsey also recently called for Mr. Pollard’s release.

In January, at a media conference with the UJA of Greater Toronto, Mr. Ross, now a Fox News foreign affairs analyst, announced that he had told the both Presidents Bush as well as Mr. Clinton that Mr. Pollard should be released. According to Mr. Ross, the present Bush administration shows no interest in taking the suggestion.

"The National Security Council and the CIA strongly opposed Pollard’s release. They maintain that Pollard knew facts that would jeopardize national security. But Pollard has been in jail for so long that whatever facts he might know would have little if any effect on national security today," said Mr. Ross.

Also in January, at Israel’s premier strategic Herzliya Conference, Mr. Woolsey agreed, telling reporters that Mr. Pollard, having already served more than 20 years, should be released.

"My view is that a 20 year sentence, I think, is enough and I think the close relationship between the US and Israel as fellow democracies is also a consideration so, at this point, I think Pollard has served a long enough sentence," said Mr. Woolsey.

Another official advocating clemency for Mr. Pollard is former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. A former federal prosecutor and current leading Republican candidate for President, he said, "Given comparative sentences, [Jonathan Pollard’s] sentence—this I happen to know because I have seen the documents—is way beyond the sentences served by other people who have been convicted of the same offense."

The separate statements by Messrs Ross, Woolsey, and Giuliani were welcomed by Mort Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, another organization that has long supported Mr. Pollard’s release. Mr. Klein called it "wrong" that, at the original sentencing, Mr. Pollard was shown no leniency despite his having pled guilty as a result of a plea bargain.

Like many Pollard supporters, Mr. Klein suggested that the harm to American security alleged to have been caused by Mr. Pollard’s actions, may actually have been the result of Mr. Ames’s espionage activities as well as those of Robert Hanssen, whose actions on behalf of the Soviet Union came to light only after Mr. Pollard was sentenced.

Kenneth Lasson, an attorney and professor of law at the University of Baltimore who has served as a pro bono advisor to Mr. Pollard for 20 years, acknowledged that very few of the prisoner’s supporters believe he was innocent. "But the sentence was an abomination," said Mr. Lasson.

Rabbi Lerner did not deny his role in working to secure pro-Pollard statements from people who might catch Mr. Bush’s ear.

"We at Young Israel have built ourselves a small group of people who care about Jonathan. A group of us decided it has to be now. Jonathan’s health is getting worse," said Rabbi Lerner.

Mr. Pollard, 52, is known to suffer from heart and intestinal problems as well as from high blood pressure.

According to Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, the rabbinic statement was prompted by a number of factors, first and foremost Mr. Pollard’s deteriorating health.

In fact, this is not the first time the hareidi organization has endorsed freedom for Mr. Pollard. In 2003, David Zwiebel, Agudath Israel’s chief legal counsel, wrote a detailed letter to Mr. Bush to renew the organization’s "longstanding humanitarian plea, which we have made to several Presidents over the years, that Pollard be granted executive clemency."

According to a report last month in The Jewish Observer by Rabbi Aryeh Zev Ginzberg, founding rav of Ohr Torah Institute in Hillcrest, NY and the current rav of the Chofetz Chaim Torah Center of Cedarhurst, Long Island, Mr. Pollard shared a close personal relationship with the late Rabbi Moshe Sherer, executive director of Agudath Israel. According to Rabbi Ginzberg, Rabbi Sherer asked Mr. Pollard to make three promises: to keep Shabbos, to eat only kosher food, and "never to grow to hate Hakadosh Baruch Hu, despite what happens to you."

In his report, which is largely a description of his visit with Mr. Pollard in the prison in Butner, Rabbi Ginzberg described how the prisoner managed to keep those promises. To avoid working on Shabbat or Jewish holidays, for example, he relinquished the opportunity to head the administration in the prison factory where many of the inmates work each day. That position, said Rabbi Ginzberg, although it is "the most respectable job in the institution," would force him to desecrate the Sabbath and holidays and "would also force him to interact with the fellow inmates on a regular basis."

Instead, he said, Mr. Pollard opted to clean latrines and toilets.

"This difficult, backbreaking job could sink any man’s spirits, especially someone of superior intelligence. Yet, to Pollard, it represents a victory, as it reduces the possibility of violating Shabbos, and allows him the solitude to daven (as he does every day), and carry on Jewish living to the best of his ability under those circumstances," wrote Rabbi Ginzberg.

"Subsisting on canned tuna and sardines for so many years has caused his body to have a dangerously high mercury level that has resulted in a severe blood pressure problem, a heart condition, and a host of other maladies that have brought his health to a very precarious state. Not only are there no complaints, but he also views this as another small victory against his detractors," said Rabbi Ginzberg.

Mr. Pollard told Rabbi Ginzberg he managed to maintain a love for G-d despite his suffering and the fact the fact that he feels "totally ignored by the country that he attempted to help."

"I promised myself at the beginning of this nightmare that I would come out the same way I came in. I love my land, Eretz Yisroel, and I love my wife more than my enemies hate me," he told Rabbi Ginzberg, concluding with the assessment that "I don’t represent myself. I represent all Jews. Our enemies are watching me to see if they can break me. For that alone, I must remain strong. I must stay strong in my emunah and bitachon to show the world what Klal Yisroel is all about."

Some observers have speculated that successive administrations have refused to pardon Mr. Pollard because there is concern that he will be greeted as a hero in the Jewish community and especially in Israel, where he could potentially follow the example of another "prisoner of Zion," Natan Sharansky, and run for office.

The ZOA’s Mr. Klein, who said he has spoken with Mr. Pollard more than 50 times over the years, characterized the prisoner as "one of the most brilliant people" he had ever met.

"In all these many conversations, he almost never spoke about his own plight or release, only about strong US-Israel relations and the survival of Israel. It would be a tragedy if his legacy is only his imprisonment. He has great talent which he could use to benefit society if only given the chance," he said.

In Israel, Moshe Feiglin, the leader of the nationalist Manhigut Yehudit faction of the Likud Party, said he and his faction "applaud all actions taken on behalf of this Jewish hero, Jonathan Pollard."

But according to Rabbi Avi Shafran, the spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, his organization does not regard Mr. Pollard as a hero. "He is a Jew in distress who needs our help. There’s absolutely no condoning of what he did," he said.

According to Rabbi Shafran, the rabbinic statement last month was issued in response to the US Supreme Court’s refusal to reconsider the circumstances of Mr. Pollard’s conviction. A lower court had already denied Mr. Pollard’s attorneys’ request to gain access to the sealed portion of his original sentence.

Once the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, Mr. Lasson said, "the legal remedies [to obtain Mr. Pollard’s release] were exhausted."

"The only course open is through publicity and the political avenue. It’s really a grassroots effort," he said.

Some of Mr. Pollard’s supporters and critics disagree with this assessment, saying the proper route for him would be to apply for parole.

According to one of Mr. Pollard’s former attorneys, Theodore B. Olsen, although Mr. Pollard was legally eligible for parole in 1995, he would have no hope of convincing a parole board to grant it.

"The law enforcement and intelligence agency officials who will be given the opportunity to express themselves on the subject have indicated that they will oppose parole," he said, recalling that immediately following sentencing, the US Attorney said Mr. Pollard would ‘never see the light of day."

"Parole is a virtual impossibility under these circumstances," he said.

Mr. Luchins disagreed, claiming that with the attendant publicity, any parole board hearing for Mr. Pollard would become "the trial he never had."

Mrs. Pollard has reacted to such suggestions with fury, insisting that "no outside presentations" are permitted at parole hearings.

"There are no star witnesses or outside legal eagles. Nor do letters or petitions have any standing if they are not part of the official file. As a rule, the parole officials examine the file well in advance of the hearing and their decision, based on the contents of the prisoner’s file, has already been made," she said.

But some local parole boards do consider letters on behalf of parole petitioners, as well as the assessments of prison authorities.

In 1995, Benson B. Weintraub, an attorney consulted by Mr. Pollard’s sister, Carol, agreed, at that time, a request for parole would be ill-advised.

Mr. Weintraub said he had reviewed the material concerning a possible parole with several "post-conviction attorneys" and they, he said, concurred that "it would be ill-advised to proceed to hearing at this time."

Mr. Weintraub suggested the Pollards not seek any Executive Branch consideration, including clemency, but rather "global and national political solutions."

Since that time, Mr. Pollard has become almost completely estranged from his own family. His sister, who at one time had been his chief supporter (and was frequently called "the sister you’d most want to have if you were ever in trouble"), has reportedly not seen him in years.

In December 2001, when Mr. Pollard’s mother, Molly, died in Indiana, Mr. Pollard reportedly unsuccessfully sought permission to attend her funeral. Consent from prison authorities was reportedly denied because he had been estranged from his family since 1996.

According to a 1997 report in Ha’aretz, the Pollard family blamed Esther Pollard, whom Jonathan Pollard never officially married, for convincing the prisoner to break off relations with his parents and sister. Esther Pollard, originally Eileen Zeitz, came into his life first as a visitor after his first wife, Anne, who was arrested with him, was released from prison. Without Anne Pollard’s requesting it, Mr. Pollard gave her a Jewish writ of divorce, and she reportedly relocated to Israel.

According to the Ha’aretz report, Mr. Pollard told his family that since they refused to follow the line of action Esther Pollard chose for him, he was unwilling to see or speak to them again.

"We are broken-hearted. We don’t blame him. He’s been in jail for so long that everything must be forgiven for him. But it’s such a pity that that wicked woman who calls herself Jonathan’s wife, made it her aim to disconnect our son from us," Molly Pollard told Ha’aretz.

When asked about this, Esther Pollard told reporters that Mr. Pollard would reconcile with his family once he was freed. Molly Pollard did not live to see it.

Nevertheless, at the end of February, Mr. Pollard’s father, Morris, who still resides in Notre Dame, Ind, and David Kirshenbaum, an attorney who was once active in the Pollard case, jointly wrote an op-ed, pointing out that American-Jewish, as well as Israeli, attention to the Pollard case has been episodic, at best.

The last prime ministers to visit Mr. Pollard were Yitzhak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu. "For nearly the past eight years, no Israeli prime minister—neither Ehud Barak nor Ariel Sharon nor Ehud Olmert—ever demonstrated any real interest in obtaining Jonathan’s freedom," said Morris Pollard.

Mr. Kirshenbaum raised the point that, in the US, after 1996, American Jewry’s efforts on Mr. Pollard’s behalf "began to fizzle out, eventually grinding to a virtual halt." He has no longer been an election issue at all.

Some legal authorities suggested that Mr. Pollard’s estrangement from his family might be one of the reasons a parole board would look unfavorably on any request. Other authorities said it would have no bearing. But the subject is probably moot, because Mr. Pollard is not seeking parole. The Pollards want clemency.

His current pro-bono attorneys, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, partners at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle in Manhattan, had hoped that they might win Mr. Pollard’s freedom if they could see the sealed portion of his original court documents, which consists primarily of a secret affidavit from then-Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger.

After he was arrested, Mr. Pollard, in a plea-bargain arrangement, agreed to cooperate with the prosecutors and forego a potentially embarrassing trial in exchange for leniency. He pled guilty, but, just before he was sentenced, Mr. Weinberger passed a memo to the presiding judge, Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr., who then imposed the stiffest sentence short of the death penalty: life with a recommendation against parole.

Mr. Pollard’s supporters maintain that the harshness of the sentence is proof that the government lied in its promise of leniency. Mr. Pollard may well have done better had he refused to cooperate and insisted on a trial, they say.

There has been no dearth of speculation concerning the contents of Mr. Weinberger’s memo, which, to date, remains sealed. Claiming that without seeing the document they cannot adequately defend their client, Messrs Lauer and Semmelman took their case to examine the document up to the Supreme Court, which, just recently, refused to review it.

In a letter to the late Justice Arthur Goldberg, dated January 1990, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who represented Mr. Pollard in the early 1990s, addressed Mr. Goldberg’s assertion that the Weinberger affidavit falsely accused Mr. Pollard of providing information to Israel regarding American satellite surveillance of Israeli-supplied missiles to South Africa. Mr. Dershowitz speculated that Mr. Weinberger might have been pandering to Judge Robinson, an African-American, who "could be expected to react strongly to any suggestion that Pollard was part of the Israeli-South African connection."

In fact, Mr. Pollard was never accused, formally or informally, of providing any such information to Israel.

"If the government did pander in this racially sensitive manner, it behaved outrageously, especially if the information it provided to Judge Robinson was not true," said Mr. Dershowitz.

In a 2003 interview with the Jerusalem Report, Mr. Lauer said he believed Mr. Pollard’s actions, rather than harming the US, had simply embarrassed Mr. Weinberger, who, at the time, had been promoting a campaign of befriending Iraq as a way of buttressing American policy against Iran.

"Pollard was concerned that the Reagan administration had cut Israel out of some key intelligence data on Arab troop movements, terrorist activities, and biochemical activities in Iraq. Pollard gave that information to Israel, and if you look at the public sentencing file, you will see that Weinberger’s and the government’s complaint against Pollard is that he was giving things to Israel that the government may not have wished to give Israel because it embarrassed America with the Arabs, that American was helping Israel too much vis-à-vis the Arabs," he said.

Mr. Pollard has maintained that when he asked his supervisors in the US Department of Naval Affairs to explain why information about poison gas in the hands of Israel’s enemies was not being shared with the Jewish state, they told him: "Jews are too sensitive about gas."

In 1999, Angelo Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University who served on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee between 1977 and 1985, maintained that Mr. Weinberger had presented the false memorandum to Judge Robinson because of the former defense secretary’s "embarrassment over a dumb, failed policy, and moreover a policy in which he had a personal interest."

"The policy was building up Iraq, a policy to which Weinberger and much of the rest of the US government sacrificed true American interests during the 1980s. Up until the very eve of the [first] Gulf War the US Government was still incredulous that Saddam Hussein would play anything other than the role which the best and the brightest of the Reagan and Bush administrations had assigned him," said Mr. Codevilla.

According to Mr. Codevilla, Mr. Pollard gave Israel US satellite pictures of factories in Iraq that were, according to US intelligence assessments, producing chemical weapons. According to Mr. Codevilla, the problem was, those factories had been built and financed by Bechtel, a company with close personal ties to Mr. Weinberger and then-Secretary of State George Schultz.

"The pictures and intelligence assessments contradicted what the US government was officially telling Israel. So the Israelis were coming to America, and in official meetings were calling people like Weinberger liars, which of course these officials did not appreciate," said Mr. Codevilla.

But some critics say the sheer amount of information taken by Mr. Pollard for Israel was astounding. In his book, Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice, Ronald J. Olive, the former Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agent who led the investigation against Mr. Pollard, maintains that "no other spy in the history of our country stole and sold to a foreign government the quantity and quality of secret, top secret, and sensitive compartmented information."

According to Mr. Olive, Mr. Pollard took "360 cubic feet" of material, "amounting to over one million pages of highly classified information in only 18 months."

Mr. Codevilla called that assessment "a lie, an untruth that is known to be an untruth."

"The intelligence people who say those things include all the documents in the bibliographies and tables of contents of the documents Pollard turned over," he said, explaining that if Mr. Pollard gave the Israelis a book with a bibliography containing 50 books, he was accused, unofficially at least, of giving them 51 books.

"If you add up all the books in all the bibliographies in all the documents he turned over, you might say they would fill a small room. But what he actually gave away was seven briefcases full, neither more or less. Seven briefcases do not a room fill, except in the imaginations of insincere people," said Mr. Codevilla.

According to Mr. Codevilla, Mr. Pollard "was sentenced not on the basis of the indictment, but on the basis of Weinberger's false information."

Attorney and columnist Jeff Ballabon, who has not been particularly pro-Pollard, nevertheless made the point last month that Mr. Pollard’s crimes pale when compared to the theft of intelligence carried out by President Clinton’s former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, "whose actions or inactions may have been linked directly to Al Qaeda’s success in executing the horrible tragedy of 9-11—perhaps even worse."

"The documents Berger stole and destroyed may have contained information which would help protect Americans in the future from terrorism. And he is serving no time at all," said Mr. Ballabon.

Mr. Berger allegedly repeatedly broke into the National Archives, taking confidential documents which may have proved embarrassing to the Clinton administration. According to most reports, he stuffed these documents in his clothing, including his socks, and then stashed them under a nearby construction trailer until he could return, retrieve them, and later destroy them.

When he was caught, he allegedly lied to investigators and tried to shift blame to Archive employees.

"He paid a fine and has to do community service. It is a travesty," said Mr. Ballabon, noting that if Mr. Pollard has to serve life in prison, Mr. Berger "should be in Gitmo undergoing interrogation."

Mr. Lauer said the Pollard team wanted access to the sealed file precisely to debunk the charges that it held proof that, in giving Israel information, Mr. Pollard had harmed the US. Mr. Lauer accused those who say there is such information in that file of "simply making it up."

In addition to efforts to view the sealed affidavit, Mr. Pollard’s attorneys tried to vacate his sentence on the grounds that it had been based on misconduct by the government (breach of the plea agreement by which Mr. Pollard would cooperate with the prosecution in exchange for leniency) and the fact that he had been denied his right to effective counsel (his original attorney did not file for an appeal, and when Mr. Pollard finally did appeal, the court said it was too late).

According to Mr. Lauer, he and Mr. Semmelman hoped that if the sentence were vacated, a new judge would look at the record and decide that the appropriate sentence would be "time served."

After the lower court rejected the application to appeal Mr. Pollard’s life sentence, Messrs Lauer and Semmelman turned to the Supreme Court. When the high court also denied the appeal, the rabbis of Agudath Israel decided to give Mr. Pollard’s case a higher profile in the Jewish community, chiefly because there seems to be no further judicial avenues for him to pursue.

The fact that this thrust for Mr. Pollard is coming after 22 years was significant to Dr. Joseph Geliebter, director of the Rabbi Leib Geliebter Memorial Foundation, a Holocaust remembrance organization that has endorsed the Agudath Israel call to action.

"In Jewish Biblical tradition, 22 years was the period that Joseph was separated from his father, Jacob; the Talmud also indicates that during the 22^nd year of an unresolved matter, there is Heavenly intervention," he said, citing the Gemara Tractate of Kesubos, 42b and the commentary by Rashi.

Even the very establishment Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations now seems supportive. For many years, Mr. Pollard’s advocates have accused the Conference of promising Washington that its members would not interfere on his behalf. But in a recent letter to President Bush, the conference’s executive vice-president, Malcolm Hoenlein, wrote: "While they represent a broad spectrum of views, the 54 member organizations unanimously authorized us to communicate this appeal that you grant clemency to Mr. Pollard…Mr. Pollard has paid for his crime.

In Israel and the US, some Jewish groups associated with the late right-wing activist Rabbi Meir Kahane have also decided to participate in the project to win Mr. Pollard’s release. But many of their activities have not been endorsed by Agudath Israel, National Council of Young Israel, or the Pollards.

In Israel, Yekutiel Ben Yaakov, director of Mishalot Yisrael, disregarded the pleas from the Pollards to eschew "any form of anti-social protest on his behalf." Instead Mr. Ben Yaakov "implored" Israelis "to risk minor arrest for Pollard’ by participating with him in Jerusalem’s Zion Square in an unauthorized "lie-down-in-the-streets" protest.

He justified his actions by insisting that "for obvious reasons, it is unlikely to expect Jonathan, from jail, to call for people to break the law on his behalf." Mr. Ben Yaakov cited the Talmudic passage which says that a prisoner does not free himself from prison.

"Basically, it is our task to free him. Inevitably, the prisoner is in no position to free himself due to the physical and psychological reasons of dependency on the mercy of others," he said, adding that "no struggle ever got anywhere without attention and civil disobedience or worse."

Clearly in the Pollard-is-a-hero-camp, Mr. Ben Yaakov said Israelis need to ask themselves "Where would we all be had Jonathan Pollard not passed over vital security information to Israel?"

His demonstration attracted a few dozen people who chanted "Free Pollard." According to Josh Shamsi of Arutz Sheva, it took about six policemen to arrest Mr. Ben Yaakov.

"At one point, an officer had Ben Yaakov in a choke hold and could be heard quietly urging him to ‘shshsh.’ After being released from the choke hold, Ben Yaakov continued to chant loudly. He was eventually, and with difficulty, dragged and shoved in a police cruiser," said Mr. Shamsi.

Others, he said, continued to "chant, sing, and demonstrate with posters."

Other demonstrations in Israel do have the support of the Pollards. The ORT Yeshiva High School in Tiberius announced it would plan a three-day march, entitled "From Bondage to Freedom," beginning on the first day of Nissin (March 20), to Jerusalem, to call attention to their desire for Mr. Pollard’s release.

The students will stop at various historic sites along the way, and hope to attract other high school students from around the country to join them on the 52-mile hike.

"You can imagine what an impact it can have if hundreds of youths waving Pollard banners and wearing Pollard shirts walk along the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway to the nation’s capital," said Rabbi Avichai Golan, projects director at the ORT Yeshiva High School.

Once in Jerusalem, the students plan to submit to the American Consulate on Agron Street a petition signed by thousands of young people calling for Mr. Pollard’s freedom.

At the same time, the prestigious Jerusalem Conference, scheduled for the Hyatt Hotel in the city, will present its "Lover of Zion" award to Mr. Pollard. Mrs. Pollard is scheduled to accept it on his behalf.

Last month, at Bar-Ilan University, the Torah and Land Institute honored Mr. Pollard, who also received honorary citizenships in Bat Yam, Beit El, Kiryat Arba, and other localities.

Over the years, the Pollards have been at least as—if not more—critical of the treatment they have received from the Israeli government than that which has come from the Americans. Until 1998, when he won Israeli citizenship and recognition from the government that he had actually officially been in Israel’s service, the Israelis officially denied that he had been an Israeli spy. Before 1998, most reports from Israel said he had been involved in a "rogue operation."

Although many of Mr. Pollard’s opponents in the US complain that he and his wife are being supported by the Israeli government, the Pollards complain that they are impoverished and have been all but abandoned by Jerusalem.

In the middle of February, when the phone-in campaign was well underway, the Pollards saw fit to become involved in an issue that, once again, placed them squarely at odds with the left-wing Israeli government and in sync with the Israeli right. Speaking against the suggestion that Israel might release some prisoners with "Jewish blood on their hands," Mr. Pollard said he would never want to be part of a prisoner-release deal involving terrorists.

While the Olmert government is clearly considering releasing some terrorists to the Palestinian Authority as well as to Jordan, there has been no public intimation that, in exchange, Israel would get Mr. Pollard.

Nevertheless, Mr. Pollard made public a letter he had written to the parents of Captain Yehuda Lifshitz, who, in November 1990, was killed when he led an IDF force against a terrorist group that had crossed the Jordan River and was on its way to carry out a massive terror attack in Jerusalem. In a battle shortly after dawn, Mr. Lifshitz was killed, leaving behind his parents and two brothers.

Now, Jordan is asking for the release of four of Mr. Lifshitz’s murderers. Citing the "special relationship" between Israel and Jordan, Mr. Olmert is reportedly considering granting the request on condition that they serve the rest of their sentence in Jordanian prisons. One of the four is the brother of a member of the Jordanian parliament.

In his letter to the Lifshitzes, Mr. Pollard wrote, "Israel’s dismal record since the signing of the Oslo Accords shows a clear pattern of favoring our enemies by releasing terrorists and murderers, always at the expense of their victims and the victims’ families. It is a blot on the honor of the Nation of Israel that the Government is far more concerned about appeasing the Americans (who demand these humiliating prisoner releases) and placating our enemies than it is about discharging its most basic responsibilities to those who serve the State. Olmert’s intention to free Yehuda’s murderers—without any moral or legal basis for doing so, proves that."

In a obvious dig at those in the Israeli government who have not helped his cause, Mr. Pollard said, "Israel is duty-bound to return home all those who have fallen into captivity while serving the state, but not through deals with the devil who promises to continue to spill Jewish blood."

He closed his letter by promising the Lifshitzes that he and Mrs. Pollard "shall not be silent" and "are prepared to speak out against this evil."

Asked to comment on Mr. Pollard’s letter, an official in the Prime Minister’s Office said, "We have no interest in responding to remarks which certainly sound as if they come from the heart, even though they are inaccurate."

In the US, another organization associated with Rabbi Kahane, Bnei Elim, also held a series of lie-in-the-street rallies timed to coincide with the ones in Israel. These were held on Broadway between 46^th and 47^th Streets in Manhattan, as well as at locations in Florida, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Taylorsville, Utah.

The Midrashah Tzionit, a Jewish educational center in Kiev, Ukraine, declared the month of Shvat a time of struggle for the release of Mr. Pollard. The group staged hunger strikes and sent petitions to the Israeli government, demanding "immediate and urgent steps" to secure Mr. Pollard’s release.

Demonstrations were also held in Odessa, Minsk, and Moscow.

While it is unclear how these demonstrations will affect Mr. Pollard’s future, many observers say an historic letter sent by Israel’s Torah sages may do more for Mr. Pollard in terms of prompting continued efforts by hareidim than all the protests put together.

According to Rabbi Ginzberg’s article in The Jewish Observer, when he conferred with the revered Israeli posek and Torah authority, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, on the issue of working publicly for Mr. Pollard’s release, the Israeli sage commented that although Mr. Pollard clearly committed a crime, his punishment was disproportional. According to Rabbi Ginzberg, it was clear to Rabbi Elyashiv that Mr. Pollard is being penalized because he is a Jew.

Rabbi Elyashiv’s verdict was that helping Mr. Pollard is a "chesed gadol me’od," an extremely great act of compassion.

To that end, Rabbi Ginzberg encouraged his readers not only to call the White House, but also to donate money to help Mr. Pollard purchase food from the prison canteen and pay for phone calls. Contributions can be sent to Young Israel Charities, 111 John Street, Ste 450, New York, NY 10038, Attention: Pollard.

Rabbi Elyashiv and another Torah sage, Rabbi Aron Leib Schteinman, of Bnei Brak, penned a letter to Mr. Bush asking for clemency for Mr. Pollard, appealing to the President as the leader "of the greatest power on Earth, the epitome of compassion and generosity."

The letter, written in Hebrew and English, was sent to Mr. Bush via Jeremy Katz who serves as special assistant to the President and liaison to the Jewish community. Copies of the letters were also sent to various Jewish communal leaders and activists, urging them to use their relationships to have the letters presented to Mr. Bush.

As was the case with the American rabbis of Agudath Israel, Rabbi Elyashiv’s involvement was a direct result of the efforts of Rabbi Lerner, who developed a personal and professional relationship with Rabbi Yosef Efrati, one of Rabbi Elyashiv’s confidants, and Rabbi Efrati’s associate, Rabbi Chaim Schor.

At a meeting of the four rabbis in Rabbi Elyashiv’s home, the Torah sage was briefed on Mr. Pollard’s history, health condition, and his self-sacrifices to keep mitzvoth in prison.

Rabbi Elyashiv then threw his support behind the effort to effect Mr. Pollard’s release. He urged Rabbi Lerner and the NCYI to "do everything possible" to further that goal.

"To our knowledge, the letter is historic. These sages have never written to an American President, and especially not under these circumstances, with such a request," said Rabbi Lerner, adding that he had been hoping for a unity letter of support for Mr. Pollard in order to arouse public concern.

"It was the gedolim who made the decision of how to write it, how to phrase it, and whom it should be addressed to," said Rabbi Lerner.

After the letter was sent, Mrs. Pollard, in a statement to IDF Radio, called on Mr. Olmert to follow the example of the Torah sages by making an immediate demand for Mr. Pollard’s release.

"Mr. Olmert does not have to free murderers or terrorists. He does not have to negotiate with our enemies. All he has to do is bring Jonathan home now and he will have blessing and the thanks of the Nation," she said.

She said the infusion of "new blood" into the fight for Mr. Pollard "can only add to the momentum" that has begun as a result of the statements by Messrs Woolsey and Ross and the new White House Call-In Campaign initiated by NCYI and Agudath Israel of America. In the wake of these initiatives, she said, "hundreds of Jewish organizations have been swept into action."

Those who wish to participate in the call-in to the White House campaign are asked to dial 1-202-456-1414 between the hours of 11am and 2pm Eastern Standard Time.

"Every phone call is important, and everyone is encouraged to call daily. You don’t have to be a citizen to call; just a mensch," said Rabbi Lerner, who can be reached at 212-929-1525.