The Sanctity of a Jew Who Died Because of His Jewishness: “Mistaken Sanctifications” (Column 215)

With God’s help

We have only just passed Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, and this week Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers of the IDF is already upon us. Between these two memorial days I wanted to address a common mistake that recurs again and again at this time of year. The point is sensitive and painful, but as our sages said: “Plato is dear and Socrates is dear, but truth is dearest of all” (it appears in the responsa of Rabbi Isaiah di Trani, in Havot Yair and in many other places).[1]

The problem itself

In both of these contexts we are speaking of people who died because of their Jewishness (not all of them; some fallen IDF soldiers are not Jewish), and for that reason they are constantly referred to as holy. When soldiers killed in war or in training, or victims of terrorist attacks, are brought to burial, emotional eulogists tell us that these are holy people. In El Maleh Rahamim we speak of the holy ones. We never stop hearing about “the holy victims of the Holocaust,” “our holy soldiers,” and “the holy murdered victims” in this or that attack. In every eulogy for these “holy ones” we hear again about the holiness of one who died because of his Jewishness, and those who wish to embellish the point add that Maimonides ruled this explicitly (see below). Even when this is not said explicitly in a given case, everyone is aware of the assumption that underlies these statements.

This claim seems absurd to me already at the conceptual-logical level. Take, for example, someone who dies in a car accident. Would anyone think of relating to him as holy? Certainly not. He did pay a heavy price, but he did not do so for the sake of a sacred value and for the sake of Heaven; in fact, he did nothing here of his own choosing. This death was imposed upon him. Even if after his death a study hall were established and dozens of people were thereby brought to improve themselves and rise in their service of God and Torah study—even that would not turn his death into the death of holy ones. At most, it might perhaps retroactively increase his merits. Now think of a person who was innocently walking down the street, or sitting in his home, and was murdered in a terrorist attack. Is there any justification for viewing him as holy? What did he do to merit the title holy? True, he paid a heavy, painful, and pointless price, but, as noted, there are additional conditions that must be met for a person to be considered holy. What is the difference between a victim of a car accident and such a person? The first was not murdered because of his Jewishness and the second was. So what? That difference pertains to the characterization of the act and the intentions of the murderer, not to the status and character of the murdered person. In both cases the victim did exactly the same thing, and therefore it is unreasonable to view the spiritual standing of the second differently from that of the first. Did Hitler’s intentions turn all the murdered into holy ones? Are others to whom the same thing happened, only not because of their Jewishness, less holy? Why?

A common explanation—and its flaw

The common claim is that the fallen soldier and the victim of a terrorist attack chose to live here in the Land of Israel while taking into account the heavy price and the possible risk. Therefore, one can indeed say that the death was for a sacred value and for the sake of Heaven. But this seems absurd to me. Their choice is exactly like mine; only in my case my luck has meant that I have not been murdered (so far). So is my choice less significant? Why should the result matter at all? Morality is determined by motivations, not by outcomes. Suffering does not make you holy unless you took that suffering upon yourself for the sake of the goal. Not to mention Holocaust victims, whose murder in many cases was unrelated to their way of life or to any choice to live as Jews. It was murder on an ethnic basis, not on the basis of a way of life.

To be sure, if a soldier goes out to war because he sees it as a mandatory war,[2] and courageously gives his life, perhaps there is room to view him as holy. But that is only because he performed an action on his own initiative and by his own choice, with the intention of acting for a religious value and for the sake of Heaven, and paid a very heavy price for it. Therefore there may perhaps be room to view his act as a sanctification of God’s name and perhaps even to call him holy. But I cannot see the difference between a secular Jewish atheist soldier, who is killed in war after displaying supreme courage on his own initiative, and a Belgian soldier who is killed while displaying similar courage. Each of them gave his life by choice and paid a heavy price to save his people. In such cases, the requirement that the act be done by choice and for an important value (the defense of the people and homeland) is indeed satisfied, but the “for the sake of Heaven” is still missing. However moral a person may be, even to a truly exalted degree, he cannot be considered holy in the religious sense. To be regarded as one who sanctifies God, a person must do his deed for God’s sake. If we are speaking of a secular atheist soldier, can it seriously be thought that by giving his life he becomes holy? He does not acknowledge God at all, and certainly did not do what he did with the intention of sanctifying Heaven. Therefore there is no way to view his act as a commandment or as an act of religious significance. At most, it is a heroic act in the moral or national sense, but not in the religious one. Of course, one may view him as an elevated and moral person, an example to us all, and we certainly owe him gratitude for his deed and his sacrifice. But what does any of that have to do with holiness? All of this exists in the Belgian soldier as well. There is no difference at all between the act of the first and that of the second from the standpoint of the actor and the act itself. One can, of course, use the term “holy” metaphorically, really meaning moral or noble. But that is not the religious connotation usually intended. These points are doubly true of victims of terrorist attacks. They certainly do not deserve the title holy, for virtually all of them did not give their lives by choice at all.

Moreover, even if there is a soldier who went out to fight with religious conviction and fell, I still find it hard to view him as holy. After all, all the other soldiers made the same decision he did (to enlist and go into battle); it is only by good fortune that what happened to him did not happen to them. The same applies to all Jewish residents of the Land who decided to live here (most of them did not decide this at all). Are they all holy like the person harmed in the terrorist attack? Why does the fact that he was harmed change anything, if he had no part in it? And what about someone who was killed in a car accident or by falling into a pit, or perhaps from air pollution in the Holy Land? All of these were killed because they decided to live here in the Land. Is it proper to regard them all as holy?! This seems to me an absurd view.

And in general, a soldier killed in the army did not die for his Jewishness or because of it. As noted, quite a few non-Jewish soldiers died in the very same circumstances. The enemy too is fighting us in the way nations fight one another over territory and interests; it just happens that here the war is with the Jewish people. I find it difficult to view such a casualty as someone who died for his Jewishness.

The cheapening of the title holy is mistaken and harmful. If everyone is holy, then the concept of holiness has no meaning. A holy person is one who added holiness to the world and offered a meaningful sacrifice for that purpose of his own choosing—that is, one who sanctified God’s name through his deeds.

Possible sources

This determination that a person who died because of his Jewishness is holy is especially striking, because so far as I know it has not the slightest source—not in the words of the Sages and, so far as I know, not in the medieval authorities either. I should add that even if it did have a source, I would not accept it; but certainly when it has no source at all there is no logic in accepting it.

Many quote Maimonides as having ruled this way, but I would be delighted if someone would show me the source for that in his writings. In my humble opinion there is not the slightest source for it anywhere in Maimonides’ writings, and I say this not because of my extraordinary mastery of his works but because of my regard for Maimonides. It reminds me of the well-known story about R. Chaim of Brisk, in the course of a Torah discussion one of the participants raised a difficulty in a passage of Tosafot he had seen that very morning. R. Chaim confidently declared that there was no such Tosafot. The man insisted that he had seen it that morning, went to check, and returned utterly astonished: indeed, he had misread it, and Tosafot did not say any such thing. When asked, R. Chaim explained that his assertion did not stem from mastery of all Tosafot throughout the Talmud but simply from the fact that such nonsense could not be found in Tosafot.[3]

Several articles have been written seeking a source for this “tradition,” and you will no doubt be surprised if I say that every last one of them comes up empty-handed. Some of them, in their desperation and intense desire to find some source at all, resort to arguments marred by gross interpretive errors and by mixing categories that do not belong together. Thus, for example, Rabbi Menasheh Klein of Ungvar, in the responsa Mishneh Halakhot vol. XVI no. 121 (the responsum is addressed to Rabbi Yitzhak Zilberstein), discusses whether an apostate who was killed because of his Jewishness is holy or not (the case concerned one of those killed by Iraqi Scud missiles in the First Gulf War. Incidentally, I knew him from our synagogue). He opens the discussion with the passage in Sanhedrin 47, where it is explained that an evil person who is killed by Gentiles is mourned because his sins have been atoned for. He then brings the disputes on this issue and argues that if he was killed because of his Jewishness, then according to all opinions people mourn for him and his sins are atoned for. This claim is based on several sources in which it appears that No one can stand in the section occupied by those slain by the government. (no one can stand in their company; Pesaḥim 50a), with reference to Rabbi Akiva and the other victims of the authorities, as well as the victims of Lod (Pappos and Lulianus. See Rashi there). He also cites Maimonides’ Iggeret Kiddush Hashem (this is probably the Maimonides everyone cites) and more.

And why these proofs fail

But everything he says there is baffling and baseless, because he ignores the dimension of intention. The victims of the authorities, such as Rabbi Akiva and the victims of Lod, were people who chose to give themselves up for the sanctification of God’s name (Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues) or for the rescue of the Jewish people (the victims of Lod). What does that have to do with someone who is simply killed because of his Jewishness (like the Scud victim mentioned above)? Who ever dreamed of claiming that such a person sanctified God’s name? Why does the fact that the missile hit him make him holy, while his friend who was sitting beside him and survived (and he too chose to live in the Land and thereby exposed himself to danger) is not holy? What did the first do that the second did not?

Regarding the argument from the Sanhedrin passage, an additional difficulty arises. Even if we accept that such a person’s sins are atoned for, this only means that death atones (as is explicit in the Talmudic passage on the four categories of atonement in Babylonian Talmud Yoma 86a). What does that have to do with holiness or with the sanctification of God’s name? At most, he received his punishment and therefore was atoned for, and that is all.[4] What makes him holy? From where does this conclusion arise? To be sure, the author presents these remarks as a plea in defense of the Jewish people during the High Holy Days, but even apologetic arguments are supposed to hold water.

A precisely similar explanation can be found in another article on this subject, far more comprehensive and full of sources, written by Rabbi Yehoshua Menachem Ehrenberg, head of the rabbinical court in Tel Aviv, in his responsa Dvar Yehoshua vol. V no. 37 (see also there vol. I no. 32 sec. 15).[5] In the final analysis, he calls the expression “holy ones” attached to Holocaust victims (he is speaking of those among them who performed no special act of self-sacrifice but were simply murdered) “mistaken sanctifications.” On the other hand, he himself maintains that their sins were in fact atoned for, like a person (even a wicked one) who is killed unlawfully in the above-mentioned Sanhedrin passage.[6]

A source from esoteric literature

Gershom Scholem, in his book Devarim Be-Go vol. I p. 272, cites from the Shulchan Arukh of the Ari a story about Rav Gaddiel Na’ar. Here I will present a different and clearer version of that story, taken from Otzar HaMidrashim (Eisenstein), p. 84:

In the Garden of Eden there is a head of the academy in the Hall of the Walnut, which is the hidden and concealed Hall of Splendor, near the Hall of the Bird's Nest; and he is called the youth Rav Gaddiel. He reveals all the depths of the Torah and its mysteries, and through him they are disclosed, and all the righteous long for him. He was born in the days of persecution and was studying Torah in a cave when he was seven years old. The enemies came, found him, and cut him to pieces. His soul ascended on high and said, 'Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the surrounding brightness; this was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.' The Holy One, blessed be He, set him before Himself and swore to grant him the Hall of Splendor as his inheritance, and through him to reveal in the Garden of Eden secrets and profound matters within the Torah that had not been revealed before. All the righteous in the Garden of Eden long to see him and hear from him the depths of the Torah and its mysteries. When he goes out, the letters of the Ineffable Name stand out and shine upon his head, and all the righteous rejoice. He enters and falls on his face, crying out and weeping because he did not merit to have a son in this world. Joshua son of Jehozadak the High Priest stands over him, takes hold of him, and sets him on his feet, saying to him: 'Arise, go—those pale ones, those pale ones are your sons!' Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai fasted seven fasts in order to see him, and they showed him in a dream the treasuries of the seven firmaments; and at the end of them all he saw him like the brightness of the firmament, with seventy angels around him and fifty keys in his hand, and many groups of righteous before him, and the letters of the Ineffable Name upon his head. Then he was immediately hidden away, and he did not see him again. He asked about him, and they said to him: 'Thus far you have been permitted; this is the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud.' The sages investigated his father and found that he had never looked upon the form of a wicked person, had never gazed at his circumcision, had never let his hand go below his navel, had never risen from Torah study to involve himself in worldly matters. There was no righteous person in the world in distress with whom he did not share distress. Never in his life did he speak of anything outside the Torah or the way of Torah. He fathered this son and died; his mother gave birth to him and died, and he remained an orphan. He grew up in suffering and learned much Torah, and they killed him—and he merited all this.

This child was killed by Gentiles, and it appears that this alone sufficed to grant him all that is granted to those who sanctify God’s name. Yet it may be that this was because they killed him for studying Torah, that is, there was some element of self-sacrifice here.

Scholem, in note 24 there (p. 277), cites an entire chain of kabbalistic works that deal with what happens to one who is killed by Gentiles. The beginning of the matter is in the book Limudei Atzilut, which is attributed to Rabbi Hayyim Vital, the Ari’s disciple, who writes:

Know that when a Jew is killed by the nations of the world, even if he is not righteous, since he has received his punishment through being killed without justice, immediately Orphaniel comes and takes his soul; at once he arouses Yotzefkhiron to meet it, and he takes the soul and brings it through the gate over which he is appointed, and engraves his soul and what befell it in the king's purple robe… And this soul, since it was engraved in the king's purple robe, is thereby purified and exalted, even though it has no good deeds; and for its benefit it was broken and slain…

See all of his remarks there. I suspect that the authors of these sources let their imagination carry them away in order to console the relatives of those who were killed (Scholem writes there that “the words are full of imaginative power”). Kabbalah has a mystical force that allows us to hang on it all kinds of principles for which we have no other source. But we will speak about Kabbalah later in our conversations; have no fear.

The connection to the question of active providence

In the background, perhaps, stands the conception of history and the universe as God’s playground. In eulogies for those killed by the authorities, it is customary to cite the midrash (Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot ch. 2 hal. 8):

Let us say: the students said, 'A human being is as dear to Him as His own creation.' He entered and eulogized him with the verse, 'My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to pasture in the gardens' (Song of Songs 6:2). It should have said only, 'My beloved has gone down to his garden, to pasture in the gardens.' 'My beloved'—this is the Holy One, blessed be He. 'Has gone down to his garden'—this is the world. 'To the beds of spices'—these are Israel. 'To pasture in the gardens'—these are the nations of the world. 'And to gather lilies'—these are the righteous, whom He removes from among them. They offered a parable: To what may this be compared? To a king who had a son, and he was exceedingly dear to him. What did the king do? He planted an orchard for him. When the son did his father's will, he would travel throughout the whole world and see what planting was finest in the world, and plant it in his orchard. But when he angered him, he would cut down all his plantings. So too, when Israel do the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, He goes through the whole world, sees what righteous person there is among the nations of the world, and brings him and attaches him to Israel, such as Jethro and Rahab. But when they anger Him, He removes the righteous from among them.

The roses gathered by the beloved are specifically the great righteous. The assumption here is that when someone dies, it is God who took him to Himself. Hence, if a particular person was chosen to die in a terrorist attack, that indicates that he was probably a great righteous man (as God said to Aaron after the death of his sons: Through those who are near to Me I shall be sanctified.). According to this, there is room for a more moderate claim, namely that even if death in a terrorist attack is not a holy death and does not make a person holy, the very fact that so-and-so died indicates that he was already righteous or holy. In analytical terms, one would say that this is a sign (an indication), not a cause.

But I find myself opposed even to this more moderate claim, because as I have written here more than once, a person’s death is the result of the laws of nature (in the case of a natural disaster) or of another person’s choice of evil (in the case of human evil). God did not take him to Himself. Even if one can argue that sometimes God does indeed take a person to Himself, we have no way whatever of knowing whether that is the case here.

So why do people say this anyway?

We have seen that this puzzling belief has no source. Nor does it contain the slightest bit of logic or reason. On the contrary, we have seen that it is truly absurd. So why has it become an article of faith? How did such an absurd claim come to grow in our midst? I assume that the root of the matter lies in the psychological value of this claim. A person whose loved one or loved ones died for no reason and with no meaning is in a severe crisis. If there is no meaning to his disaster, how can he be consoled? If we convince him that his loved ones became holy in their death, that they died for their Jewishness—that is, that they gave their lives for a great idea such as the survival of the nation, the passing on of the Torah, and the like—there is no greater consolation than that.

But we have never heard that the psychological value of any statement makes it true.[7] And if someone says there is no harm in a falsehood that grants consolation, I would argue in response that, painful as it is, there is no place to use this comforting falsehood even for psychological purposes. Its harm is greater than its benefit, if only because it dulls the minds of the masses and educates them to adopt bizarre and unfounded ideas. A person should confront difficulties with truthful means (sedatives should be given by doctors, not by rabbis). Even if such statements have educational, therapeutic, or comforting value (that, after all, is the need this principle serves), in my opinion we would do well to educate ourselves not to be consoled by fools’ consolations and not to educate on the basis of distorted and mistaken conceptions. A person who dies an unnecessary death—it is painful, infuriating, and enraging, but none of that makes him holy. Better to find another remedy for calm and consolation.

In the second book of my trilogy I showed that this is one of the widespread folk beliefs that should be rejected out of hand as nonsensical and baseless, like many others. The criteria I recommend for examining such beliefs are: what is the basis, how well defined is it, what is the source, does it serve some need; and in light of all this, one should ask why this claim is regarded as an article of faith that may not be disputed.

On Shabbat, Parashat Pekudei, 5768, after a horrifying attack that took place at the yeshiva high school near “Merkaz HaRav,” in which eight yeshiva students were murdered, I gave a talk in our synagogue. To sharpen the points made here I refer readers to the things I said and wrote in the wake of the events. You can easily detect in my remarks my anger at the slogans and the hollow, placard-like consolations that were then filling the air.

[1] These remarks are based on a chapter from the second book of my trilogy.

[2] That is how he sees it. I do not mean to say here that Israel’s wars are indeed mandatory wars. In my personal opinion, they are not.

[3] One has to believe that this story could have happened, as was written in the introduction to Shivḥei HaBesht.

[4] Of course, the assumption is that this death is punishment from Heaven, a very problematic conception (since it stands in tension with the Talmud in Ḥagigah 5a: There is one who perishes without justice.—“one may perish without judgment”—which teaches, according to Rabbeinu Hananel there, that death is not necessarily the result of a divine decision).

[5] It was first printed in the journal HaPosek, Shevat 5706, as a response to an article published in HaPardes (year 19, 5706, issue 8). The author of the first article discussed the puzzling ruling of the author of Sefer HaMiktzo’ot (attributed to Rabbeinu Hananel) that For if a person sanctified the Name, his wife should never remarry, because of the honor of Heaven. (“if a person sanctified God’s name, his wife should never remarry, out of honor for Heaven”), and wanted to apply this also to Holocaust victims (see responsa Maharaḥ Or Zaru’a no. 14, who cites it. See also responsa Maḥaneh Ḥayyim vol. III Even Ha-Ezer no. 27, and responsa Maharitz Dushinsky no. 126, who hesitated whether to permit the widows of Holocaust victims because of this). Excerpts from it are brought in the collection Orayta, issue 21, p. 94. On this matter, see further Yehezkel Lichtenstein’s article, in the Daf Shavui of the Center for Basic Jewish Studies at Bar-Ilan University, “Defining Kiddush Hashem in the Holocaust Period,” Parashat Shemini 5769. He brings several additional sources there and proposes a suggestion (not plausible in my view) for explaining the belief regarding the sanctity of one killed as a Jew.

[6] As for myself, I would hesitate even about that, for several reasons. First, this is a rabbinic determination based on the reasoning of the Sages (including the distinction among the four categories of atonement in general). Second, in its plain sense the Sanhedrin passage deals with one who died for his Jewishness intentionally and on his own initiative.

[7] On this see Column 199, especially Stephen Weinberg’s quotations at its end and in the footnote there.