Yom Kippur 2006/5767
What would we include in the service today in order to inspire the masses to change their ways and dedicate their lives to God? Would we include sections from the Torah and the rest of the Bible that recount instances in which people were transformed? Maybe we’d have the section where God calls to Abraham for the first time and asks him to leave his homeland and venture to a new land. Abraham simply packs up his family and follows God with perfect faith and trust.
Perhaps we could read the section about the prophet Elijah on Mt. Carmel. The Israelites of the northern kingdom of Israel had become idolatrous. They had begun worshipping the Canaanite god, Ba’al, and they had forsaken God. Elijah’s job was to denounce the Israelite king – Ahab – and to convince the people to return to God. He gathered the people on the top of Mt. Carmel for a competition – which God would answer the people’s prayers? Two altars were built – one to Ba’al and one to god. An animal was slaughtered and placed on each and the goal was to have the offering spontaneously combust. The Ba’al priest flayed themselves, sang, and danced – to no avail. Elijah poured water on it, said a few words, and the sacrifice was engulfed in flames. The people immediately said “Adonay hoo ha-Elohim – Adonay is God.”
Or maybe we would focus on the section that describes the building and dedicating of the first Temple in Jerusalem, or the part that describes Moses praying to God asking God to forgive the people, or maybe we would just recite many of the psalms which cry out to God asking God to hear us and to answer us.
All of those sections and many more, would be suitable to include in the liturgy today. Today, traditionally, is spent in its entirety in synagogue and we need enough material to focus our thoughts spiritually and emotionally. All of those sections help us understand what the Biblical God of Israel expects of us and they help us evaluate our spiritual readiness.
Instead of these chapters from the Bible being included in today’s service, we have a section known as the martyrology. It is the part of the musaf service that in the traditional machzor recounts tales of rabbis 2000 years ago who were tortured and murdered by the Romans. It is gruesome in its detail. Our machzor retains some of that traditional element and adds stories of victims of the pogroms in Russia 100 years ago and of the Holocaust 60 years ago. The gory details of murder come right before the gory details of the sacrificial service that transpired in the Temple on Yom Kippur. Knowing what the rabbis could have put into the machzor, but chose not to, we ask ourselves, why is this here? What lessons are we supposed to take away from it that could impact our lives 2000 years later?
Let’s first understand the context. We must remember that this was inserted in the machzor in the middle ages. We have to remember what it was like to live as a Jew in the middle ages in Europe. Europe was under Christian dominance. The Christians hated the Jews. In many churches throughout Europe, Jews were portrayed in the stain glass windows as blind for continuing to not accept the divinity of Jesus. The Jew was the living reminder to the Christian of denial of god’s existence. Every year at Easter the passion plays would be reenacted in which the Jews were portrayed as handing Jesus over to be crucified. The Jews were god killers. That was a not a good climate for the Jews. They were granted permission to reside in a country solely at the whim of the king or queen. If they served the king well – by providing a source of revenue for the treasury or by providing translation services – then the Jews were allowed to stay. Because of their special status they were taxed heavily. In many places they were told what to wear. They were told where they could live and what they could do for a living. If they were lucky only a few would be killed every year. From one year to the next the king could change his mind or a new king could be installed and then the Jews could be evicted from the country or they could be forced to convert.
The martyrology service on Yom Kippur then would serve to remind the people that their precarious position and their persecution was not new – it had been happening for 1000 years. For the Jews of Christian medieval Europe the stories of the tortured rabbis would help give them the resolve to face their dubious future with faith and determination.
And the placement of the section next to the one that describes the Temple Yom Kippur service would teach the Jews a further lesson. If they were to be martyred this coming year then their lives would be accepted lovingly by God. Their death by the sword would be equivalent in sacred stature to the offering brought by the kohen in the Temple. That too would be comfort and solace to the Jew of Europe who knew that life was tenuous and that death could just be around the corner.
When I recite this section now 1000 years later, I don’t think about the historical context right away. I read the gruesome stories and at first I am repulsed. I think the details are disgusting and awful and reading them makes me angry. How could so many of my ancestors have been tortured and slaughtered? What would the Jewish community be like if these massacres never occurred? My initial reaction and the questions I ask help me understand how I could derive meaning from the section, but they don’t inspire me or help me change my life. I think “what if” but I don’t think right away “so what?”
Though we don’t read about Jewish martyrs today, we do read almost every day of Muslim martyrs – those Muslim youngsters who blow themselves up in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel. They are encouraged by their religious leaders to volunteer for those suicide missions and they are promised that they will receive great reward in their heaven. Pictures of these Muslim martyrs are displayed on walls in public squares and the stories of their murderous missions are told and retold in mosques through the Islamic world.
When I read about those martyrs and see their stories on the news I question what they have to do with the Jewish martyrs we read about in the machzor. How could Jews who were slaughtered by Romans, Christians, and Nazis be compared to Muslims with explosive belts around their waists? How could Jews who were tortured be compared to Muslims who are terrorists? How could the same word be used?
The definition of martyr in Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary provides great insight. The first definition says: “one who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce his religion.” That’s the definition that I’m familiar with and that applies to the Jews throughout history. Those Jews who were killed because they were Jewish and refused to convert are exactly what this definition referred to. The Jews on Masada who committed suicide rather than be tortured and enslaved by the Romans; the rabbis who taught Judaism rather than be subservient to the Emperor; the Jews in Spain who were burned at the stake instead of sincerely converting to Catholicism; and the 6 million Jews shot and burned by Hitler were all martyrs.
But then the second definition says: “one who sacrifices his life or something of great value for the sake of principle.” Unfortunately that clearly applies to all those suicide bombers. They voluntarily sacrifice their lives for the sake of what they believe to be Moslem principles but in the process they murder scores of innocent bystanders who have no interest in participating in that murderer’s religious quest.
The problem for me with the use of the word martyr today is that I’m used to it being applied according to the first definition. I’m used to martyrs being innocent victims who, by their death, serve as models for future generations. Martyrs I think become martyrs because of being killed. A martyr is a victim. A martyr has been pursued and killed.
When the second definition is applied it only confuses me. Those Moslems are not victims. Death didn’t pursue them. They actively took matters in their own hand and they intentionally killed others in an attempt to fulfill a religious mission. But because they died in the process they qualify to be a martyr.
I’m not here to talk about and criticize the fundamentalists in Islam who teach and encourage this martyrdom. I bring it up because of the confusion martyrdom has wrought and how that impacts our appreciation for the martyrlogy service. I can’t help but think of those suicide bombers when I hear or read the word martyr and that bothers me. I wish there weren’t any martyrs, but since we have millions in our history – millions of Jews who were killed simply because they were Jews – then their memories should be revered. We should recall the times in which they lived and remember the circumstances leading to their deaths. And it is most unfortunate that suicide bombers get mixed into the fold. To me those bombers are a desecration to our martyrs and in fact are just the opposite of what our martyrs tried to teach us.
So challenge number one for me as I get to the martyrology service is to try to overcome the very negative image of the suicide bomber who is called a martyr, and to focus instead on the hallowed and sacred memory of our Jewish martyrs. It is a great obstacle but it is necessary to do so. We need to understand the great disparity between the two definitions of martyr and we need to focus on that first definition. A martyr is a victim not a murderer.
The second challenge for me is to derive relevance and deep meaning from reading the stories. I can’t just read the stories and poems of the Holocaust victims and be moved to tears. I can’t just read the stories and say how awful their lives were and how awful a death they suffered. That’s not enough. There has to be a deeper meaning and reason for the stories to be there.
When I read Holocaust stories I invariably say to myself, “there but for the grace of God go I.” I try to imagine what it would have been like if I lived in Poland in 1939. What would I have done if I were 16 years old or 30 years old? Would I have had the courage and the stamina to survive a concentration camp? Would I have been able to run away from my family to save my life? Could I have fought with the Partisans? Would I have tried to kill a Nazi soldier or SS storm trooper? Would I have tried to escape and seek freedom in another country? That underlying question – what would I have done – is what I think of when I read those stories of martyrdom.
I also think of that question when I see movies of WWII. I still remember how the first 30 minutes of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” was so awful to watch. Not only was the fighting at Normandy Beach so vividly and gruesomely portrayed, but it made me think, what would I have done if I were an American soldier? Would I have had the courage to fight with bullets flying in every direction? Would I have had the discipline to listen to orders and survive the mud and cold of the European battlefield? Would my sense of patriotism been enough to fight for, even at the risk of death?
Two of those questions – what would I have done and could I willingly fight for my patriotism – are at the heart of the martyrology service. That’s why the service is there. Yom Kippur is the day in which we spend evaluating our lives. We are supposed to seriously question our values and priorities in life. We are supposed to spend the entire day today thinking about where our lives are headed and if we are steering ourselves in the right direction. Though the sections of Abraham, Elijah, and Psalms would be nice and would be motivating, they aren’t jolting. We need to be shocked in order to face the real heavy questions. We need to be forced to ask “what would we have done” and “what are the values for which we are willing to die.”
Last year Abigail Pogrebin published a book called Stars of David. In it she recounts the interviews she conducted with 62 famous Jews. She wanted to find out how their Jewish identity shaped their overall identity – if at all. By interviewing them she readily admits she wanted to learn more about and to appreciate her own Jewish identity. Joan Rivers talked about her ardent Zionism and Dustin Hoffman recounted how he tried to hide the fact he was Jewish. He never readily admitted to being Jewish until he was at a Yankee-Red Sox game in New York. He wasn’t wearing a baseball cap for either team and a woman behind asked, are you neutral? And he answered, “No, I’m Jewish.” He continues, “That wouldn’t have happened a bunch of years ago. Some part of me wants to advertise it now. Finally.”
Imagine then today that Abigail Pogrebin is interviewing us for her book. How would we answer her question? How has Judaism shaped our identity? How has it enriched our lives? Are we who we are because we are Jewish?
After answering those questions then we must figure out how we are going to act on it. What has Dustin Hoffman done since he said he’s willing to advertise that he’s Jewish? Has he joined a synagogue? Does he support Jewish charities? Does he take advantage of adult Jewish learning?
The martyrology then serves that purpose for us. We read about the lives of all those Jews and how their lives were brutally cut short. What more would those Jews have accomplished? And that’s what we are supposed to ask ourselves. If, God forbid, our lives ended now would we be satisfied with what we accomplished? Would our children be able to know the values for which we stood? Would we have left enough of a positive mark on our loved ones and on the Jewish community? The martyrs left an eternal legacy. What will our legacy be?
As we get beyond the gruesome details and the confusion with Moslem fundamentalists we recognize that the martyrology service provides an important religious service. The rabbis knew that Abraham and Elijah were important symbols and their stories are recounted at other times of the year. But on Yom Kippur we need to be shocked. On Yom Kippur we need to be challenged. The martyrology helps us ask the right questions. What would we have done? For what would we be willing to die? May this Yom Kippur then be one of intense reflection and introspection so that we can begin to answer those questions for ourselves, our families, and for our community. May the memory of the martyrs always serve as an inspiration and a blessing. Amen.
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