A Torah Giant Held Hostage: The Story of Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner

In Elul 5730 (September 1970), Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner boarded a TWA flight from the United States to Israel. Traveling with him were his wife, his daughter Rebbetzin Bruria, his son-in-law Rabbi Yonatan David, and several of his students.

In the middle of the flight, terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked the plane and forcibly diverted it to Jordan.

News that Rabbi Hutner was among the hostages sent shock waves through the Torah world. One of the era’s foremost Torah scholars and Jewish thinkers was now being held captive by a terrorist organization, and Jewish communities around the world began praying for his safe return.

One of the Torah World’s Great Thinkers

Rabbi Hutner was born in Warsaw in 1906, and was recognized as an extraordinary prodigy from a young age. He studied at the famed Slabodka Yeshiva, whose educational philosophy placed the development and greatness of the Torah personality at its center.

Later, he moved to the Land of Israel with students of the yeshiva and studied at Hebron Yeshiva. During his years in Israel, he became close to Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, of blessed memory, a relationship that influenced his thought.

Rabbi Hutner’s Torah combined the intellectual tradition of the Lithuanian yeshiva world with a broader philosophical vision. His teachings offered profound frameworks for understanding faith, Jewish holidays, redemption, and the essence of the human soul.

In 1934, Rabbi Hutner moved to the United States and was appointed head of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn. There, he educated thousands of students.

His lectures and essays were constructed as complete systems of thought. A biblical verse, a Midrash, the Maharal, the Gemara, the language of the sages, and a psychological insight could all come together to reveal a single larger idea.

His teachings were documented in the Pachad Yitzchak series, written in part by his daughter, Rebbetzin Bruria David, a learned woman whose name recalled Bruria, the wife of Rabbi Meir.

Later, Rabbi Hutner founded the Pachad Yitzchak Yeshiva in Jerusalem and also served as president of the Jerusalem Institute. Then, in the midst of this renewed work in the Land of Israel, Rabbi Hutner and his family were abducted, and the Torah world held its breath.

Held Hostage During Black September

For days, the passengers were held under brutal conditions in the Jordanian desert, first inside the aircraft and later divided among different hiding places.

Rabbi Hutner spent the first week inside the plane. He was then taken to an isolated house under terrorist guard and was later held with other hostages as battles raged around them between the Jordanian army and the terrorists.

At the same time, the events that became known as Black September were unfolding. King Hussein of Jordan was attempting to restore control over his kingdom amid a violent struggle between the Jordanian army and Palestinian terrorist organizations.

As the crisis continued, study halls filled with prayer. Public notices called on Jews to recite Tehillim, and leading Torah sages treated Rabbi Hutner’s captivity as a crisis affecting the entire community.

It is told that Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz urged the public not to stop praying. The Lubavitcher Rebbe invoked the merit of the Maharal, whose teachings Rabbi Hutner had studied extensively, and blessed him with salvation. Thousands of Torah-observant Jews joined together in prayer for Rabbi Hutner, his family, and the other captives.

The hijackers demanded the release of terrorists from Israeli prisons in exchange for the hostages. The demand raised a difficult halachic question: Was it permitted, or appropriate, to meet their demands when doing so could strengthen terrorist organizations and endanger lives in the future?

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein wrote at the time to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that when lives were at stake and there was no alternative, rescuing the captives took priority. On the other hand, the view of Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky was cited as indicating that the matter was not so unequivocal.

Rabbi Hutner Is Finally Freed

After roughly three weeks in captivity, Rabbi Hutner and other hostages were released. Their freedom came amid the chaos of the fighting in Jordan as the terrorist organizations began losing their confidence and control.

The freed hostages were transferred to Cyprus, then to Rome, and eventually returned to the United States.

There was immense joy throughout the yeshiva world. Rabbi Hutner’s students wanted to welcome their teacher home with singing and an orchestra. However, it is told that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein instructed them to stop the music because other hostages had still not been freed.

Alongside the joy of surviving the ordeal, Rabbi Hutner suffered a painful personal loss. The terrorists had confiscated his manuscripts, including works over which he had labored for years.

The loss caused him tremendous anguish. His students and family subsequently worked to reconstruct much of the missing material using recordings and notes taken by students.

The Profound Lesson Rabbi Hutner Took From His Captivity

For Rabbi Hutner, the ordeal eventually took on a deeper meaning connected to the Land of Israel.

He wrote that the Land of Israel is acquired through suffering. If he had been in the land without suffering, he reflected, perhaps he had not yet truly acquired it.

After his release, during Rosh Hashanah and the Ten Days of Repentance, Rabbi Hutner spoke about sufferings of love and the kind of suffering that purifies a person.

At the same time, he expressed immense gratitude to the Jewish people as a whole: to everyone who had prayed for him, everyone who had taken part in efforts on behalf of the captives, and everyone who had carried their anguish in their hearts.

On that occasion, Rabbi Hutner taught a profound lesson about the Hebrew word hoda’ah.

Hoda’ah carries two meanings: giving thanks and acknowledging the truth.

When a person says thank you, Rabbi Hutner explained, they are doing more than expressing gratitude. They are acknowledging a fundamental truth: that they do not stand alone, that they have received something from another, and that they depend on the goodness that has been given to them.

After an ordeal in which thousands of Jews had prayed for his survival and freedom, that understanding of gratitude carried an especially powerful meaning.