[Avodah] Dying al Kiddush Hashem

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 09:42am EST, Zev Sero wrote:
: 3.  What those who recorded them for history believed:  We regard them as
: kedoshim because that's how the authors of the kinnot described them, and
: that's how our ancestors handed the story down to us.  If this view was
: mistaken, if in fact they didn't have a choice, and didn't even think they
: had a choice, then those who canonised them were mistaken; if so, what
: grounds do we have for regarding them as kedoshim today?  Perhaps, *if we*
: *were to conclude that this is so*, we should stop saying those kinnot and
: stop referring to them as kedoshim; or perhaps we should make clear that
: we refer only to those (whether all, a majority, or a minority) that did
: have a choice, or that thought they had a choice.

 From this angle, the question we're trying to get to is whether "Av
haRachamim" was written by someone who believed the individuals had
choices or not when he wrote "shemaseru nafsham al qedushas H'".

Since RMP convinced me that it's a description of the qehillos, and I
believe the qehillah as a whole did have a choice, I'm retracting any
attempt to cite this tefillah as a proof.

On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 10:01am EST, Zev Sero added:
: But what really happened to R Akiva?  What was he really killed for?
: I think if we were to do a poll in any MO community, or even on Areivim,
: we would find the majority view was that he was executed as a traitor,
: for his leading role in the Bar Kochva rebellion.  If this is so, then
: the only kiddush Hashem in his death was in his attitude, that he didn't
: despair and reject Hashem, or curse Him for what was happening to him;
: that even while he was being horribly tortured he proclaimed how much he
: still loved Hashem.  Very inspiring, and if true it's a model that could
: apply very much to the Holocaust, at least to those who went to their
: deaths singing Ani Maamin, etc.

As I already pointed out, REED did. And I added that there are few that
we shouldn't assume had hirhurei teshuvah at the final moment. After all,
we are concerned about hirhurei teshuvah in a "harei at mequdeshes li
al menas she'ani tzadiq", how much more so when the atheist is in a
foxhole!

To add to what I said before, three quotes from Victor Frankl's "Man's
Search for Meaning". Frankl invented logotherapy our of his experiences
in Auschwitz, Turkheim and Dachau. One of his central conclusions was
that as long as a person had a meaning to life for, he could learn to
adapt to pretty much anything. Psychosis therefore is traced back to
feelings of meaninglessness. He was not zokheh to reach the conclusion
that there is an ultmate Meaning which the soul is thirsting for, but
that's clearly where his evidence points.

    We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked
    through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of
    bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient
    proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the
    last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given
    set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

    We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by
    creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a something or
    encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward
    unavoidable suffering.

    We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we
    experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a
    situation of unchangeable suffering.

Applied to the notion of qedushah, and we can say that Frankl reaffirms
the signifance of the choice of how to accept one's death.

: But this isn't at all the traditional Jewish view of R Akiva's story.
:                                                ... it's about Hadrian's
: decrees, particularly the one against teaching Torah, and R Akiva's
: deliberate public defiance of it.  According to this view, it was that
: defiance, knowing very well what would happen to him as a result (it's
: not as if he acted in secret, hoping to get away with it), that
: constituted his kiddush Hashem....

(I got the following idea from a recent scjm post by Andy Katz which
argued against a discussion whether the terrorists in Mumbai were
motivated by the Paki cause or by a Moslem one. Pakistan exists as
a homeland for Moslems of the Indian peninsula, and the causes are
inextricably intertwined in the Paki mindset.)

I am not sure why RZS assumes the two are distinct. R' Aqiva supported
Bar Kochva because of his belief in the Torah, Hadrian passed those
decrees in order to suppress those rebellious Jews. In both of their
eyes, the rebellion and the resurgance of Yahadus were aspects of a
single thing. Of course a leading figure in the rebellion was a leading
teacher. Neither side would have expected otherwise.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

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