For the source text click/tap here: Gittin 47
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If a person has been taken captive and is at risk of dying, s/he must be redeemed. The rabbis walk us through a number of circumstances where we might make this conditional.
Our Daf speaks of Reish Lakish who sold himself as a gladiator. He brought a rock in a bag with him. His captors asked him for his last wish, and he asked to hit them each one and a half times with the rock. They complied. The first captor was killed at once, but Reish Lakish pretended to converse with him so that the others would not flee. After Reish Lakish retired home, his daughter offered him a pillow to sleep on. Reish Lakish said that his stomach was his pillow. We learn later that Reish Lakish wished to leave this life with nothing, and he lamented that he still owned a kav of saffron when he died.
We explore negotiating with terrorists and the recent halachic arguments in and out of Israel by poskim.