Why the Mossad Hunted a Jewish Child

[00:00:00]In 1960, a young boy vanished in Israel.

[00:00:03]The police swept entire neighborhoods, raided homes, interrogated whole communities. But every lead came up empty. Because every time they got close, he was already gone, hidden, disguised as a girl, eventually smuggled across borders with a forged passport and a fake identity. Then Israel escalated, unleashing the Mossad on the case. The same agency that hunted Nazis across the world was now hunting a Jewish child. But to the woman hiding him, this was not a kidnapping. [music] It was a rescue. She was saving a Jewish boy from his secular parents. Soon, an entire nation became obsessed with one question. Where is Yosula Schumacher?

[00:00:48]What began as a family dispute spiraled into a global manhunt that spanned four countries and [music] three continents, drawing in the FBI and pushing the MSAD to its limit. So, how did a custody battle turn into a full-scale crisis that nearly tore [music] Israel apart?

[00:01:09]1958 Israel was young but booming.

[00:01:11]Immigrants streamed in from around the world and neighborhoods divided along religious lines. Ultra orthodox enclaves that emptied of cars on the Sabbath sprang up right next to secular neighborhoods where religion was a relic or a punchline. Among the newcomers were Nakman and Miriam Starks, religious Jews who had escaped the Soviet Union and long to practice their Judaism freely among those who shared their beliefs.

[00:01:35]They found exactly what they were looking for in the ultraorththodox neighborhood of Mearim. Their daughter, Ida Schumacher, followed them to Israel a few months later. But Ida and her family settled into a very different world, a secular neighborhood where religious observance was an alien concept. Life was not easy for the new immigrants, and the shoeers struggled to put food on the table. So, I'd asked her parents to look after her six-year-old son, Yos, until she and her husband could get on their feet. Her parents agreed, welcoming Yosula into their Jerusalem home and enrolling him in a yeshiva so that he could receive a traditional religious education. A few months later, with a stable job in a small apartment, Ida returned to her parents and asked for her son back. But the Starks refused to return him. They insisted that Yosa would stay with them.

[00:02:26]They would not hand over their precious grandson to be [music] raised non-religious with parents who desecrated the Sabbath, ate non-cooser food, and filled his head with secular nonsense. They simply could not [music] allow it. Ida was shocked. But this wasn't just a simple family disagreement. It ran much deeper. See, the Starks had joined an extreme [music] and fringed Jewish sect. The Nur Karta were anti-ionist, ultraorththodox, and fiercely opposed to all secular authority. As they saw it, a Jew who didn't abide by strict Jewish law had no right to tell them what to do. And since the state of Israel was secular, it was in their eyes completely illegitimate. So, they had no issue defying its laws at any cost. The Starks believed it was their religious duty to prevent Yos from reuniting with his secular parents. What if their daughter took Yos back to the Soviet Union where he would surely become an anti-religious communist? [music] What if they even, God forbid, converted him to another religion? They had to save Yos from that fate. [music] It was their duty. So, it didn't matter that Ida had no such plans, that she and her husband had no intention of ever returning to the USSR. And it didn't even matter that she and her husband had wanted to enroll Yosella in an Orthodox school. As far as the Starks were concerned, [music] Yosel was in grave and immediate danger. So when Ida came to Mayim to bring her son home, he was already gone. Nakman Starks had prepared for this. With the help of sympathetic relatives and friends, he quietly moved Yosella in and out of various ultraorththodox neighborhoods, [music] refusing to tell his daughter where to find her son. The situation had spun out of Ida's control. It was time to go to the police. But followed was a nationwide manhunt. Police swept through Israel's ultraorththodox neighborhoods, searched synagogues, [music] raided schools. But in neighborhood after neighborhood, the police were met with cold stairs, [music] frowns of suspicion. The message was clear.

[00:04:25]Outsiders were not welcome [music] here, and secrets would not be shared. It wasn't just about resistance. It was about conviction. The Starks even had the chief [music] rabbi of Jerusalem on their side. Before he passed away, he had issued a ruling. [music] It was a religious obligation to keep Yosesev from his secular parents. The rabbi had been misled, told that Yosesev was in danger of being returned to the USSR or even converted to another religion. But it didn't [music] matter. The lines had been drawn. In these tight-knit segments of the ultraorththodox world, [music] many chose to stand firmly behind their own. The police may have carried the authority of the state, [music] but those who resisted felt bound to a higher authority, to God. If anyone knew where the boy was, they weren't saying a word. Within weeks, the case had seized the entire [music] nation's attention.

[00:05:14]Day after day, the Schumacher's desperate voices poured out of Israel's radios, pleading with anyone with [music] information about their son's whereabouts to come forward. Yosa's face stared out from posters across every street corner. Religious school children [music] taunted the police, chanting, "Where is Yos?" to Yiddish tunes. From Tvat to Ben Barak [music] to Jerusalem, the police conducted over 270 raids. But the searches turned up empty. Yosh was nowhere to be found. [music] Desperate, Ida turned to Israel's legal system. In 1960, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered Nakman Starks to return Yos to his parents immediately under threat of arrest. But the rulings of secular judges meant nothing to Nakman Starks.

[00:05:59]He preferred to rot in jail rather than sacrifice his grandson. [music] He refused to give up the boy's location. Two years dragged by. Despite massive efforts, the police had failed to find Yosel. Even the Israeli military had joined the search, followed by Israel's internal security agency, the Shinbet. The Knesset, Israel's parliament, [music] passed a resolution declaring Yosa's kidnapping and concealment a criminal act and urging the public to help bring him home. But the boy was still gone. [music] What had began as a simple family dispute was now spinning into a national crisis. The Ntoria marched daily in the streets, shouting, "We do not believe in the government of heretics. We will not follow their laws." Inside the religious world, [music] boundaries blurred.

[00:06:47]Prominent rabbis who had once opposed the extreme to kartha now rallied around them, uniting against their common enemy, the secular state. One fame Torah scholar went so far as to recommend that Yosula undergo plastic surgery [music] to prevent identification and wrote a letter urging anyone who could to help hide the child. Long simmering tensions between secular and ultraorththodox Israelis boiled over. Secular Jews spat ephos where is at ultraorththodox Jews in the streets. Ultraorthodox boys threw stones and dirty diapers at cars driving on Shabbat. It didn't matter that the vast majority of ultraorththodox sects had opposed Yosula's kidnapping or that the more moderate leaders had tried to mediate to get Starks to return the boy.

[00:07:32]In the eyes of many secular Israelis, anyone with a keepa and sidelocks was guilty. While in the eyes of many ultra religious Israelis, anyone supporting the secular state was a threat. Every day that went by without finding Yos pushed the country further into chaos.

[00:07:48]Israel was just 12 years old, barely older than Yosha himself, and it was on the verge of splitting apart over one kidnapped boy. Then the crisis intensified. Is Har, the head of Israel's foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, had just returned from a work trip when he received an urgent message. The prime minister wants to speak with you. It wasn't out of the ordinary for Harel to be summoned to Davidid Benguron's office, but the prime minister's question was quite unusual and simple. Can you find the boy? There was no need to say anything [music] else. Hen knew exactly who Bengalon meant. The assignment was anything but typical. As Israel's intelligence and special operations agency, the Mossad focused on gathering intel, tracking down enemies of the state, and carrying out covert missions against terrorists abroad. Just two years earlier, MSAD operatives had captured Nazi Adolf I Ahikman in a groundbreaking operation.

[00:08:45]The MSAD's job was to neutralize threats from outside of Israel's borders, not to get wrapped up in domestic [music] disputes. They were supposed to protect Israel from external enemies, not to hunt down their own people. But the Yosa Schumacher affair was becoming an issue of national security. It was tearing at the seams of society and loosening the reigns of government control. It was, as Hal later described, a malignant disease that had spread over the national body, and it [music] threatened to devour Israel completely. This wasn't just about saving a boy from kidnapping. It was about saving the country from itself. Harel immediately got to work.

[00:09:22]He assembled a team of 40 of his top agents, disguised them with fake beards and black hats, sent them into religious neighborhoods around the country. These were Israel's elite operatives, men who had infiltrated Aishman's inner circle in Argentina without ever being exposed.

[00:09:39]But this was an entirely different challenge. They were stepping into a world they had passed [music] by their entire lives without ever entering. They may as well have been stepping into alien territory. One group of agents slipped into morning prayer services, pretending to mumble unfamiliar words.

[00:09:54]But as the service dragged on, their fake beard started [music] peeling off their faces. By the time someone noticed, it was already too late. Shouts broke out. Imposters as religious men in black hats chased them down the street.

[00:10:07]Another agent stopped an Orthodox woman on the street and asked her for food.

[00:10:11]She stared at him coldly. It was a fast day. Then there was the agent who followed mourers into a funeral procession. But when the moment came to recite the prayer for the dead, he froze and his silence gave him away immediately. Everywhere the agents turned, there were details they didn't know. Every gesture had meaning. Every interaction was governed by rules they didn't understand. They had grown up in secular homes. They spoke Hebrew, not Yiddish. And they were completely unaware of the unspoken norms of these ultraorththodox sects. These agents had hunted Nazis across continents and brought them home in chains. And yet they were more comfortable sneaking around Europe, rubbing shoulders with elites and kidnapping Nazis than entering the ultraorththodox enclaves just a few miles from their own homes.

[00:10:57]But they were chasing a shadow because Yosel wasn't even in Israel. He was on the other side of the world. Rewind to 1960. For months, Nakman Starks and his conspirators had managed to keep Yos away from the police. But after Starks was thrown into jail, the stakes were clear. He and his community could not hide Yosliff for much longer with the police breathing down their necks. They had to get him out of Israel. But illegally smuggling a child overseas was not exactly easy. They needed someone with experience, someone trusted in the ultraorththodox world, with connections to families [music] abroad, someone completely committed to their cause.

[00:11:37]They knew the perfect candidate. Ruth bend Davidid was not your typical ultraorththodox Jew. As a young Catholic woman in wartime France, she had joined the resistance and infiltrated the Gestapo by seducing a senior Nazi officer. Then came a stint in Morocco as a French spy where she learned how to move through the shadows and disappear in plain sight. After the war, she earned a PhD in philosophy. Then something shifted. She married, had a son, and divorced. And in the tumult of her life, she found herself increasingly drawn toward Judaism. What followed was a long winding search. She struck up a relationship with a secular Israeli man and went through a reformed conversion.

[00:12:19]When that relationship ended, she got involved with the modern Orthodox rabbi, moved to Israel, and converted again.

[00:12:26]This time through the Orthodox Israeli rabinet. Her engagement to the rabbi collapsed. Her conviction didn't. She kept searching, finally winding up ultraorththodox and fiercely anti-ionist.

[00:12:38]It would be an understatement to say that Bendavid stood out in the ultraorththodox community where she settled down and not in a good way, but she was used to defying expectations.

[00:12:48]And when the Starks decided they needed to smuggle out their grandson, Ruth's unorthodox past [music] became an asset.

[00:12:55]This was a woman who knew how to slip through underground networks, how to look someone in the eyes and lie to their face, how to speak multiple languages fluently, how to drift in and out of countries without attracting notice. So when her notoria mentor, Rabbi Abraham Micus, approached her and asked her to perform the great mitzvah of saving a Jewish child from secular influence, she agreed immediately. Once she had saved Jews from the Nazis, now she was saving a Jew from his secular parents. Later she would describe how she became progressively more convinced that something of the greatest importance, something fateful was underway. Because this wasn't just about saving a single boy. It was about defending Judaism itself against the growing pull of the secular state. So in June 1960, [music] as the police scoured ultraorththodox neighborhoods in Israel, Ruth Benderie calmly walked Yosa Schumacher dressed as a girl through the Israeli airport and onto a flight to Lassern, Switzerland. He was surprisingly calm for a little boy forced into a dress and snatched from [music] his parents. And that was Ruth's doing, too. She had enlisted her own son, who was barely out of his teens, to help convince Yosla that his parents did not want to raise him as a proper Jew.

[00:14:11]And Yosa was just a kid, an 8-year-old who had spent much of his life immersed in the ultraorththodox community. It wasn't hard for Ruth and Uriel to convince him that this kidnapping was in his best interest. When they arrived in Lucerin, Ruth changed Yosula's name to Manakim Levy [music] and enrolled him into a yeshiva to continue his religious education. Two years later, without a single lead, the MSAD finally realized that Yosh must have been smuggled out of the country. What followed was a three-monthlong chase as the MSAD race to answer the question gripping the entire nation. Where is Yosel? First, the agents swept through Switzerland.

[00:14:49]But by the time they had got there, Bendid had already smuggled Yosel out.

[00:14:54]The MSAD went to the United Kingdom, [music] Italy, France, the United States. But no matter where they went, they failed to find the missing boy or any definitive leads. It was a handful of agents versus a former spy and an army of volunteers. Throughout the diaspora, ultraorththodox communities helped Ruth conceal Yos, believing they were doing the right thing. Major rabbis spoke out in support of the kidnapping.

[00:15:18]The Schumacher affair had exposed a critical fault line in Israel. Now the controversy spread to the rest of the Jewish world. Harel was facing one of the most challenging operations he had ever conducted and there seemed to be no end in [music] sight. After yet another dead end in France, Harel turned his sights to the United States, enlisting the help of the FBI to search Jewish summer camps in the Catskills and then finally a lead. After analyzing travel records, the MSAD noticed something suspicious. There was a woman who regularly traveled in and out of Israel, often visiting Narta members when she was there. She had met Yosla's grandfather, Nakman Starks, several times, and her last visit coincided exactly with the timing of Yosla's kidnapping. This was it. She was the key. So, the MSAD tracked Bend to the outskirts of Paris and tricked her into a meeting, pretending to be real estate agents [music] interested in helping her sell her house. But it was a different kind of agent who awaited her. As soon as Bendavid arrived, Harel took her in for questioning, confident he would finally get some answers. After all, he had broken terrorists and Nazis. But Ruth Bendid was something else entirely.

[00:16:30]For 14 days, Harel and his agents tried to squeeze a confession out of her. When confronted with the evidence of her involvement, she proudly admitted her role, but refused to divulge Yos's location. But Harel had a trick up her sleeve. Ruth's son, Ulan. The 20-year-old [music] had helped convince Yosa that this kidnapping was in his best interest, but he was beginning to worry about his mother. She had survived interrogations before. She knew what danger was. But this was different. The state of Israel wasn't going to hurt her, but Msad had the power [music] to throw her in jail for a long, long time, and Uriel couldn't handle that. So when the Msad brought him in, he tried to muddle through without incriminating his mother. He told them only enough to spare her from punishment, believing he was helping her case. That's what gave Hal the idea. Clearly, the [music] bond between mother and son was strong. What if he used it against her? What if he told her Ula had betrayed her? He wasn't sure it would work. Just a casual comment. Your son already told us everything, you know. Clearly, he thinks you're in the wrong. For the first time, Ruth's resolve began [music] to crack.

[00:17:38]Had Uriel turned on her, her beloved son, her only child, her accomplice in this crime, Allet had found it, the one crack in Ruth Bend's seemingly impenetrable armor. Encouraged, he pressed harder, promising she wouldn't be prosecuted if she would just tell him where Yosella was. Her mind racing, her heart broken over what she believed to be her son's betrayal. Bended weighed her options. If she didn't cooperate now, she might spend the rest of her life inside a jail cell, away from Ul, unable to raise and take care of her boy. [music] He may have turned on her, but he would always be her son, and she couldn't stand the thought that they might never have a chance to reconcile.

[00:18:23]Finally, Ruth came clean. She told Harel that Yosel was living with a religious family in Brooklyn under the fake name Yank Franle. In September 1962, FBI agents raided the Williamsburg home where they finally found Yosese Schumacher. Mossad operatives boarded him on a flight back to Israel where he reunited with his parents, his sister, and even his grandfather [music] who had been released from jail just a few hours before Yos's arrival. Hundreds cheered for [music] Yos as he landed. Yos had no idea what the country had gone through for him. He didn't know that he had been the missing boy or that his disappearance had triggered a national crisis. All he knew was that he was happy to be back in Israel, back with his parents. Finally, after nearly two and a half long years, the search had ended. But the wounds it left behind would take a [music] long, long time to heal. Yosa's kidnappers and their accompllices were brought to trial.

[00:19:21][music] Some were briefly imprisoned to show that no one stood above the law, not even those claiming divine authority.

[00:19:28]But the case had already torn Israel apart long enough. Benguran worried that harsh punishments would just pour fuel on the fire. [music] Religious leaders called for leniency, warning that the public anger had turned into a collective blame of all religious Jews.

[00:19:42]It was a modern blood liel roing the Jewish state [music] itself. And if the government didn't stop it, no one knew where it would lead. Bengurion agreed.

[00:19:50]The Ntoria were a minority. Even though some major ultraorththodox groups had backed them, the fringe did not represent all religious communities.

[00:19:59]This factionalism was a cancer that had spread across the national body. If the state was going to survive, secular and religious Jews had to learn to live in compromise. They might disagree, but they had to reunite for the good of the entire country. So, the Israeli government granted a general pardon to Yosel's uncle, who had been instrumental in the kidnapping and placed the accompllices under a year's probation.

[00:20:23]Like a family, they would heal and move on. And so, the case ended, as it [music] started, as a family feud. But the shoeer's internal conflict was a lot easier to solve than the national conflict it had kicked off. When reporters asked Ida how she felt about her father, her son's kidnapper, she shocked them by saying, "I'm not angry with him." [music] And she meant it. She never stopped maintaining her relationship with her father, even caring for him throughout the long illness that later claimed his life. After Yos was brought home, his parents enrolled him in a religious school as he wished. But quickly he realized religious life was not for him, and his parents accepted that. So he cut off his sidelocks, set aside his religious clothing, and switched to a secular school instead. Yosa grew up to live a typical secular Israeli life, serving as an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces and graduating from Hebrew University. [music] Everything his grandparents had tried to prevent.

[00:21:19]As for Ruth, well, she transformed into a minor celebrity. Brimming with marriage prospects, she caused a public uproar when she married Rabbi Amram Blauo, the famous head of Ntoria, 25 years her senior. His sons refused to accept her. The community was scandalized, but the two didn't care.

[00:21:39]45-year-old Ruth married the 70-year-old rabbi in a tiny midnight ceremony that was nonetheless covered gleeully by all the Israeli papers. But she wasn't done shaking things up. After her husband passed away, Ruth Ben Davidid, now Ruth Blau, remained a committed member of the Nur Carta. And in that capacity, she arranged meetings with figures like Palestinian Yasa Arafat [music] and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayat Kummeni. She said she was negotiating for the well-being of Jews in Muslim lands. And that may have been true. As in the case of the Schumacher affair, most of the Israeli public saw her as a menace, [music] an extremist willing to hurt Jews in the name of Judaism.

[00:22:19]58 years after his kidnapping, Yosh eventually reconciled with those who had helped conceal him, even visiting the family who had held him in New York.

[00:22:28]Everyone except Ruth Bendavid who had never apologized and even [music] claimed that Yosula was grateful for his kidnapping.