[Avodah] If a woman can say "you do not need to redeem me and I will not give you peros"

[Chana Luntz via Avodah]

RZS writes:

>It should be borne in mind that there are still countries (including ones
>with substantial Jewish communities) where the need for pidyon is at least
>as common now as it probably was in Chazal's day. 

Are you thinking of South America? I confess that is what springs to mind
from your suggestion, although how often ransom is really required in such
countries I don't know.

> Also that while in many countries paying ransoms may be technically
illegal, hardly anybody who is
>r"l in that situation cares about this.

But presumably you are talking about the same ones (eg South America).

My question relates solely to countries, like Britain and Israel, to which
Rav Zylberstein was referring.  He took it for granted that in fact it was
exceedingly uncommon for pidyon to be needed.  I am not so sure it is so
uncommon, but I doubt very much that in these countries "hardly anybody who
is r"l in that situation cares about this".  That is, while I know from the
press of numbers of cases in which pidyon has been needed for British and
Israeli citizens, in none of these cases were private individuals allowed to
redeem (despite them quite naturally wanting to, and possibly being willing
to do so, if they had not been restrained, whether by circumstances or
otherwise).

Clearly if one lives in a place where pidyon is common, and where, whatever
the technical law says, in practice individual family members redeem,
neither my question nor Rav Zylberstein's gets off the ground.  But I don't
think the existence of a place in the world, that one would never
contemplate living in (and is not the locus of the ketuba), is relevant to
the obligations under that ketuba which must relate to the places that the
couple live and the governments under which they live.  Even when it might
involve some less scrupulous situations - one of the mothers in our school
in England had the situation that her sons were effectively kidnapped by her
ex-husband and held in Russia.  And while yes, ultimately she found where
they were hidden by means of a private investigator, which cost her private
money, she would never have been able to extract them had: (a) Russia not
signed up to the Hague convention; (b) the Russian court given judgment in
her favour; and (c) the Russian police at the bequest of the English
government on the basis of the Russian judgment actually going in and
retrieving the boys (whose location they had singularly failed to identify
until the private investigator had provided the cast iron information as to
where they were). And she would have struggled to have brought them back
into England without the rulings of the Russian authorities.  And even if an
adult is different, I cannot see the British government allowing one of its
citizens to go off and try and attempt pidyon of another of its citizens
without its active involvement, it being seen as cutting across its foreign
policy (even if this was occurring in a place where ransom payments amongst
locals was common). 

>Zev Sero               I have a right to stand on my own defence, if you

Regards

Chana