Q&A: Mistaken Sanctification, According to Your View
Mistaken Sanctification, According to Your View
Question
If it helps you, Rabbi Chaim Vital in the name of the Ari, in Limudei Ha-Atzilut 30b, says that all those who were killed by gentiles are sanctified. From his words, this is not דווקא in an incident of hatred.
Answer
I didn’t understand what exactly this helps me with, or why I need help.
It’s clear that even in an incident of hatred they are not holy martyrs. This has nothing at all to do with the nature of the event, but rather with their motivation and their deeds.
Discussion on Answer
Meaning, it’s not like an accident; rather, their souls rise higher than what they did and what would have been coming to them had they not been killed.
And I’m again repeating and asking everything I already asked.
I saw in your column (“Elegy for Young Men”) that there is pain here without consolation—people who just died because someone chose to kill them.
There is at least some small consolation in that they are elevated because of his choice.
He lived in a period when everyone observed the commandments.
According to Jewish law, the status of most soldiers is that of apostates. It’s absurd to claim that they are holy martyrs according to a belief they do not share and do not relate to.
Maybe, but it doesn’t seem to me that there was no heresy and sectarian unbelief there, just like in every generation.
I’m just saying that he says they are called holy, that they are elevated.
Not just ordinary people who were killed.