[Avodah] Dying al Kiddush Hashem

[Zev Sero]

In this whole debate, I think we have to keep track of three distinct
points of view:

1.  What actually happened: Could the victims have saved themselves by
converting.  This is a question of metzius.

2.  What the victims believed: Did they *believe* that conversion would
save their lives, and deliberately reject that option.  If they did, then
they were kedoshim even if they were mistaken in that belief.  Perhaps,
had they chosen to convert, they would have found themselves "bald on both
sides", losing both this world and the Next; but (as far as we know) they
didn't choose that, so they're kedoshim.

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.

And when we analogise from them to other cases, and decide whether to
regard other similarly situated people as kedoshim, which POV should we
take?  It seems to me obvious that we must take the 3rd POV, that of the
ones who canonised these people in the first place.

But now let's step back a bit.  The Crusades are not our first model of
kiddush Hashem.  Our first model, I think, is that of R Akiva and his
colleagues.  More on that in a bit.


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas