Q&A: Did Maimonides hold that every Jew killed by gentiles is “called holy”?
Did Maimonides hold that every Jew killed by gentiles is “called holy”?
Question
Mordechai Lansky, in his book The Lives of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, writes[1]:
“Can one crown with a wreath of holiness the masses being led to annihilation? Can one at all call a Jew ‘holy’ when it is not known whether he would have stood the test had his will been free and the choice in his hands? The campaign of annihilation carried out by Hitler, unlike the decrees of forced apostasy in earlier periods, deprived the Jew of choice, for only one road remained open before him: the road to Treblinka.”
And this was Rabbi Hillel Zeitlin’s reply:
“This question was already resolved long ago by Maimonides. In a case where a Jew is found murdered on the road, he is to be called holy, since he was killed because of his Jewishness. Thus Maimonides rules. According to this, the essence of holiness is death on account of belonging to Judaism. A Jew can therefore attain the crown of holiness without being put to the test. Of course, there are different degrees of holiness. Death that comes after standing the test raises a person to a higher level, since that is a loftier rung on the ladder of holiness.”
We likewise find this supposed “ruling of Maimonides”—that every Jew killed because he is a Jew is thereby considered a case of sanctifying God’s name—also in Rabbi Menachem Ziemba:
“There are different ways of sanctifying God’s name. If today the Jews were being forced to apostatize, and it were possible to save ourselves through conversion as in Spain or at the time of the decrees of 4856, then our death in itself would constitute sanctifying God’s name. Maimonides says that even if a Jew is killed because he is a Jew, that itself is sanctifying God’s name, and the Jewish law follows his view.”[2]
But as of now, I have not found any clear source in Maimonides’ writings that every Jew killed because of his Jewishness is considered to have sanctified God’s name. Do you know of anything? At first glance it seems completely implausible to me.
P.S.
I don’t want to get into the question of authority or the logical reasoning behind it, only the source in Maimonides’ words as stated above.
[1]. Jerusalem, Reuven Mass Publishing, 1983, p. 209.
[2]. Cited by Hillel Zeidman, Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, Tel Aviv 1945, p. 221.
Answer
There is no such Maimonides anywhere. And the idea is of course implausible on its face. I discussed this at length in the second book of the trilogy.
Discussion on Answer
Even if they were to define sleep that someone simply falls into as a commandment, then it would be a commandment.
(According to the view—which seems mistaken to me—that there is “moral weight” to the outcome, for example, if two people negligently loosened their iron from a tree and only one of the pieces of iron caused damage, then aside from payment some would also load onto him a kind of guilt—what they call agent regret—one could say that there is likewise moral value to someone through whom a positive result happened to come about.)
From the Talmud in Shabbat 89b it seems that a Jew killed by a gentile is considered sanctifying God’s name: “In the future to come, etc… these have sinned, etc… let them be erased for the sanctification of Your name.” Rashi there.
I don’t see even the slightest hint of that there. What it says there is that punishment of sinners sanctifies the Holy One’s name. What does that have to do with our discussion?
If we were to hold that “and I shall be sanctified” is a commandment in the passive sense, and therefore even minors fulfill the commandment—would that, in your opinion, make it possible to understand why any death for the sanctification of God’s name is considered a commandment, even if the element of the person’s intention is missing?