Chanukah: The End of Martyrdom

The legend of "Hannah and Her Seven Sons' seems to epitomize the holiday of Chanukah. Hannah's sons, from oldest to youngest, are ordered by the evil King Antiochus to violate the Torah. Each son, in turn, refuses to desecrate the Name of God and is executed. Mother Hannah urges all of her sons to die sanctifying the God of Israel. After they are all dead, she kills herself. This is the first act of martyrdom in history--believers willing to die in testament to the truth of their faith. Hannah's sons and Hannah herself are seen as the paradigm of the ancient "Hasidim," those pious Jews willing to die in 167 BCE rather than submit to a wicked Hellenist who wanted to destroy their Judaism.

Yet, the real paradigm for Chanukah is not martyrdom but defiance. Judah Maccabee's genius was in challenging the Jewish movement toward self-annihilation in the Name of God. While the pious ones refused to carry a sword on the Sabbath and allowed themselves to be slaughtered, Judah provided the alternative of fighting for survival on the holiest day of the week. The story of Chanukah is the story of defiant Jews who stood up both for religious freedom and political independence. Judah and his brothers did not want to die in the Name of God. They wanted to sanctify the God of Israel by achieving victory on the battlefield and defeating the enemies of the Jewish people. This is a stance that is far removed from the martyrdom of Hannah and her sons. In fact, the Maccabees actively rejected the cult of martyrdom.

The revival of martyrdom as a Jewish ideal arose with the decline of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel and the end of Jewish political independence. The legend of the "Ten Martyrs"--the Roman Empire's execution of the leading scholars of Judaism as part of the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE--seized the imagination of Jews who were searching for empowerment in the face of defeat. Jewish chroniclers, writing a generation after the Crusader massacre of Jews in the Rhineland 900 years ago,  idealized dying in the Name of God, even if it meant that parents massacred their children rather than subject them to conversion to Christianity. Throughout most of Jewish history in the Diaspora life was good and Jews did not wander but thrived. However, when tragedy struck the Jews through persecution by Christians and Msulims, the ideal of martyrdom was trotted out as the act of ultimate faith. The tales of dying in the Name of God did serve their purpose--they strengthened the faith of the survivors and gave them fortitude to continue to live their lives as Jews.

The events of the past 100 years have impacted the role of martyrdom as a legitimate vehicle for Jewish expression of faith and piety. Judah Maccabee's rejection of dying in the Name of God and his willingness to fight back--this is the paradigm that inspires us in the post-Holocaust epoch. Zionists were not alone in rejecting "Masada's second fall." Rabbi Menachem Ziemba, a representative of the non-Zionist Agudas Yisroel in Warsaw and an Orthdox Jew to the core, advocated resistance to the Nazis based on "halakhah," Jewish law. The Jewish people and the world have forgotten Ziemba's heroic stance. In January of 1943, at a meeting of the remnant of the Warsaw ghetto leadership, Ziemba admitted that the stance of martyrdom in the face of Nazi genocide could not be defended. The Germans wanted to destroy every Jewish man, woman, and child. The Nazis would leave nobody alive to be inspired by martyrdom. Rabbi Ziemba rejected the traditional response of martyrdom, bravely recalibrating the contours of Jewish response to persecution. He stated only months before the ghetto revolt: "Halakhah demands that we fight and resist to the very end with unequaled determination and valor for the sake of Sanctification of the Divine Name."

Ziemba's stancce was a rejection of the ideal of Jews dying in the gas chambers of Treblinka with the "Sh'ma" on their lips. Rather, the ideal for Ziemba was to pick up a gun, believe in God, and fight back. He supported this even while knowing that many of the ghetto fighters were not religious Jews and would reject the Torah that he observed and adhered to in the hell of the ghetto. Although we should not place the label of "Religious Zionist" on Menachem Ziemba, his spirit of cooperation with Zionist Socialists, Bundists and Revisionists in Warsaw is in the best tradition of love for Israel of the great Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.

Rabbi Ziemba was cut down by Nazi bullets in the early days of the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion. He defended his faith in God and his adherence to the Torah to his last breath. But the reality of genocide forced him to reconsider the ideal of martyrdom.Martyrdom is no longer a valid Jewish response to persecution. Ziemba was a man of faith but was also a realist. He had the courage to redefine Jewish law to face human and Jewish reality. In many ways, he has a wonderful and brave harbinger in Judah Maccabee. As admirable and inspiring as the actions of Hannah and her seven sons, most Jews today would agree that--in the shadow of the Shoah and in the coming reality of a nuclear Iran--better to live in the Name of God than to die as a martyr. We must take destiny into our own hands. That, to me, is the message of Chanukah.

Rabbi Eli Kavon lectures on The Intellectual Assault on Zionism and the West

Topic: "The Intellectual Assault on Zionism and the West"
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Beth Ami Congregation
Boca Raton, Florida