“I shall be sanctified in the midst of the children of Israel…” (Leviticus
22:32)
Neither the Bible nor Jewish law have ever seen martyrdom as an ideal to
be courted. There is the commandment that “God must be sanctified,” however,
prior to this commandment for martyrdom, we find in last week’s portion: “You
shall guard My statutes and My laws which man shall do and live by” (Leviticus
18:5). As our sages teach, “You shall live by My laws – and not die by
them.”
Fascinatingly, Maimonides begins his discussion of the laws
pertaining to sanctifying God’s name (Laws of the Fundamentals of the Torah 5)
not with the occasions when we must give up our lives, but rather with the times
that we must live: “All of the House of Israel is commanded concerning
sanctifying the great name of God… and are warned against desecrating His name…
How so? When an idolater comes and forces an Israelite to transgress one of the
biblical laws or be killed, the Jew must transgress the law rather than be
killed, as it is written ‘You shall live by them and not die by them. And
someone who allows himself to be killed rather than transgress the law is
considered culpable for his [own] soul.”
Maimonides cites the talmudic
passage which states that one must give up his life rather than commit idolatry,
adultery or murder. In all other cases, one must transgress the law rather than
accept martyrdom. This Talmudic approach is encapsulated by the phrase, “it is
better to desecrate one Sabbath and remain alive so that you can keep many more
Sabbaths.” However, our talmudic sages further ruled that during a time of
persecution, a Jew must be willing to give up his life rather than commit the
most minor transgression “regarding his shoelaces” (B.T. Sanhedrin
74).
So the value of a human life is heavily emphasized, and martyrdom
seems to be only a position of last resort, but in times of persecution we must
be willing to give up our lives rather than change the smallest detail of how we
ties our shoes. How can one’s shoelace be so consequential?
Furthermore, the
very verse that teaches us to live by our laws (Leviticus 18:5) is followed by
30 verses prohibiting sexual immorality. Each of these laws falls under the
rubric of adultery, one of the sins which we may not transgress even on pain of
death. Why does the Bible present a ringing declaration of the importance of
living by our laws and follow it with a list of laws that demand death rather
than transgression?
TO UNDERSTAND this, we must first understand how our sacred
texts view life. There is an amazing dialogue in the Talmud between Alexander
the Great and the rabbis.
Alexander asked, “What must a person do in
order to live?” They responded, “He must kill himself.”
He further asked,
“What must a person do in order to die?” They responded, “He must preserve his
life” (Tamid 32a).
Our sages are teaching a crucial principle: The only
life truly worth living is a life consecrated to an ideal that is greater than
any individual life. No one lives forever. If a person lives his entire
life only in order to keep on living, he is bound to fail. However, if someone
gives up his life for an ideal that is greater than himself, he succeeds in
continuing that ideal – and something of himself – into the future.
This
idea is also found in the biblical story of the Binding of Isaac. God teaches
Abraham the greatest paradox of life: only if we are willing to sacrifice our
future will our nation continue into the future. Dr. Martin Luther King, the
leader of African Americans’ struggle for equality in America, said it very
cogently: “If a man has not found a value for which he is willing to die, he is
not fit to live.”
MANY YEARS ago, my revered teacher Rav Soloveitchik
explained that it is very difficult to assess the relative importance of any one
of our commandments; each is important in and of itself but the whole is greater
that the sum of the parts. However, there are certain commandments that assume
special importance in certain historical periods. The descendants of Amalek who
attempt to destroy the Jewish people are the ones with the best sense of which
commandment is most significant for each generation.
After the
destruction of the Second Temple, all of the Roman populace wore white
shoelaces; the rabbis decreed that Jews wear black shoelaces in mourning for the
Temple. The Romans were anxious to make us forget our national sovereignty and
the dream of our Holy Temple. Hence it was crucial, even to the point of giving
up our lives, that we wear black shoelaces so that future generation would never
forget Jerusalem.
Rav Soloveitchik said then, and it is even truer today,
that after the Holocaust, the most significant event in Jewish history was the
declaration of the State of Israel and Israel is the most important means for
securing the Jewish future. Anti-Semites realize this; hence their current
efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state. Giving up one’s life for the State of
Israel is eternalizing one’s life for Jewish future.
The writer is the
founder and chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone Colleges and Graduate Programs, and
chief rabbi of Efrat.
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