[Avodah] Dying al Kiddush Hashem

[Daniel Israel]

On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:01:51 -0700 Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> 
wrote:
>REED, as I already wrote, made it about choice -- choice of how to 
die,
>and how one accepts one's fate. This allows us to consider someone 
who
>died for being a Jew who didn't actually get a choice whether to 
live
>or die still as a qadosh.

Someone asked about the nafkah minah.  I am also confused by the 
technicality of this discussion.  Even if I take a strict approach 
and say that many people often identified as dying al kiddush 
HaShem didn't actually fulfill the mitzvah, does that make much 
difference?  Is our response to either R' Holtzberg or to a athiest 
communist Jew killed by the Nazis a function of how we pasken on 
the dinim of kiddush HaShem, or a larger evaluation of who they 
were and how they were killed?

--
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu