JERUSALEM— A standing–room only crowd of 500 packed the Heichal Ya’acov synagogue in Jerusalem on Feb. 6 at the end of Judaism’s seven-day “shiva” mourning period to pay final respects to Esther Pollard, the wife of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Jay Pollard.

Esther Pollard, 68, died on Jan. 31 of septic shock complicated by COVID-19. She was also battling breast cancer.

The fiery Pollard was born Elaine Zeitz in Chomedey, Laval — a predominantly Jewish suburb of Montreal, Canada. She married and divorced young before spending the 1976-77 academic year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Settling in an apartment on Shelbourne Avenue in the heart of Toronto’s vibrant Jewish community, she worked as a teacher and volunteered as the chairman of the Canadian chapter of Citizens for Justice for Jonathan Pollard. For more than a third of a century, Zeitz —who adopted the Hebrew name Esther Yocheved as she became more religiously observant — campaigned tirelessly against the U.S. government, the international press and Jonathan Pollard’s fiercest critics to get the disgraced U.S. Navy intelligence analyst released from his sentence of 30 years in a federal prison and five years of parole under tight mobility restrictions. 

On Dec. 30, 2020, the couple fulfilled their dream of living in Jerusalem after former President Donald Trump opted not to extend the terms of Jonathan Pollard’s parole. During those next 13 months, they lived in Israel as celebrities, feted wherever they went.

Like all jailhouse romances, Esther’s relationship with Jonathan — her Galveston, Texas-born, South Bend, Indiana-raised second husband — was fraught with difficulties. This writer — who interviewed Zeitz while working at the Toronto-based Canadian Jewish News in 1990 — found Esther Pollard rude, uncommunicative and unwilling to discuss any security damage her husband’s espionage caused the United States.

Fern Allen, one of Pollard’s two roommates in Jerusalem during her year abroad in Israel and today a member of the editorial board of The Jerusalem Post, was more diplomatic: “Elaine had her opinions — and you had better be sure of yours if you dared to cross her.”

By coincidence, on Feb. 2, Israel’s KAN 11 TV broadcast the first part of a gripping documentary series about Jonathan Pollard, presenting him as a misguided chronic liar and drug user. Jerusalem Post reporter Greer Fay Cashman, who wrote the program, depicted Pollard as “an unhinged individual who lived in a bizarre fantasy world in which he invented stories and told lies he believes.”

Regardless of the year of the Pollard’s marriage, variously listed as either 1993 or 1994, Esther assumed leadership of the worldwide movement for Jonathan’s release. Putting her sharp tongue to good use, she was excoriating in her criticism of the U.S. Jewish and Israeli establishment for what she called the abandonment of her husband.

Pollard’s spy career

The details of Jonathan Pollard’s spy career may never be fully revealed. Similarly, it is unlikely the true extent of the tens of thousands of top secret documents he sold to the Israelis — or their value to the Jewish State — will ever be known. Nor is it likely that the affidavit in which former U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger condemned Pollard’s “perfidy” will ever be declassified.

Certainly, Pollard received a much harsher sentence than other Americans convicted of similarly espionage crimes, and the affair strained the relations between the two allies for decades. For some, Pollard was a bellwether for antisemitism. Among ambivalent American Jews, many regarded him as a traitor who exposed the community to the charge of dual allegiance.

But in Israel, Pollard became a hero to right-wing nationalists. In 2004, a seven-story apartment building in east Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan — lived in by Jewish families — was named “Beit Yonatan” (Jonathan House) in his honor. Daniel Luria, the director of Ateret Cohanim — which settles Jews in Arab parts of the Jerusalem — told ReligionUnplugged.com that Pollard was allowed to display two photos in his jail cell: One was of Esther and the other Beit Yonatan. One of the first places the couple visited after immigrating to Israel was Beit Yonatan, he added.

In 1985, as the FBI became suspicious of Pollard, his Israeli intelligence handler, Rafi Eitan — who worked for the little-known Scientific Liaison Bureau that stole nuclear and intelligence secrets — urged him to flee the United States. But Pollard and his first wife, Anne Henderson-Pollard, dawdled for three days. On Nov. 21, 1985, under orders from then-foreign minister Yitzhak Shamir, armed guards at the Israeli Embassy in Washington forced the spy and his accomplice to exit the embassy grounds — where they had sought diplomatic asylum. They were immediately arrested by FBI agents waiting outside the gates.

Henderson-Pollard received a 5-year term and was released after 42 months. Pollard himself wasn’t so fortunate. His plea bargain deal was rejected by Judge Aubrey Robinson Jr. He divorced his first wife in prison.

But no one at the recent tribute to Esther Pollard was interested in these details. Speaker after speaker, all senior rabbis in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Haredi establishment, hailed Esther as a heroine. Among them was Yona Metzger, the former chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel who himself served prison time after pleading guilty to several corruption charges

His cry in English, “The Jewish People love you, Esther”, was met with a standing ovation.

Gil Zohar was born in Toronto, Canada and moved to Jerusalem, Israel in 1982. He is a journalist writing for The Jerusalem Post, Segula magazine, and other publications. He’s also a professional tour guide who likes to weave together the Holy Land’s multiple narratives.