Kiddoush hashem
In the Judaism, the sanctification of the Name of God or " kiddoush Hashem " (in Hebrew: קידושהשם, literally " sanctification of Nom") religious regulation is a which doubles prohibition to carry out a " Hilloul Hashem " (in Hebrew חילולהשם), i.e. a " Profanation of Nom".
The Mitzvah to sanctify God is the sixth mitzvah according to the comput of Maïmonide while prohibition to profane it is the seventh mitzvah according to same the comput of Maïmonide.
Any action carried out by a Jew in order to honor and of glorifier God is thus regarded as a kiddoush Hashem . However, during the Jewish history, the kiddoush Hashem took a particular connotation, that to sanctify the Name while preferring to die rather than to profane it .
The kiddoush Hashem in the Jewish thought
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" You will not profane My Name of holiness and I will be declared Saint in the middle of wire of Israël" (. ).
A little further, at the time of the episode of the rock of Meriva (), God requires of Moïse to speak with the rock so that in kind of water. However, Brace, instead of speaking with the rock, strikes it by twice. It of left water, but Moïse sees private access to the Earth of Israel not to have sanctified the Name of God, while speaking with the rock in front of any Israel.
A kiddoush Hashem thus indicates any act by which one is brought to recognize and rent God of Israel. The Talmud (Yeroushalmi Baba Metsia 4:5) takes the example of an exemplary ethical control to illustrate it:
And which is a kiddoush Hashem? Shimon Ben Sheta' H sent his disciples to buy an ass with a idolâtre with Ashkelon. They were delighted when they found a jewel in the double sack of the ass, the indicator like divine Providence rewarding their Master. However, him made them restore it. When they did it, the idolâtre exclaimed Béni either God of Shimon Ben Sheta' H
Nevertheless, other forms of kiddoush Hashem appear in the midrashic literature and seem associated with the sacrifice with the life:
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One of the first and larger kiddoush Hashem mentioned in the Torah is the binding (sometimes called " sacrifice") of Isaac. Indeed, the narration of this act should cause, inter alia, at the reader, an admiration of this God in front of whom Abraham is not concealed.
- Bereshit Rabba 38,13: a few years earlier (but it is here of an interpretation, and not about the Text itself), same Abraham destroys the idols sold by his/her father, Terah, which delivers it to the king Nimrod. This last orders in Abraham to adore fire then, vis-a-vis its refusal, the fact of precipitating in a burning furnace from where it leaves unscathed.
Il does not act obviously of an account whose historicity is established, but of a rebuilding starting from verses. - At the time of the famous crossing of the Red Sea Na' hshon Ben Aminadav, chief of the Tribe of Juda, is illustrated while jumping the first in water, with a faith inébranlable in a divine intervention (Bamidbar Rabba 12,26):
Rabbi Yehouda says Rabbi Meïr: Na' hshon Ben Aminadav sprang then in the floods It is of Na' hshon that it is question in the passage which says " Save me, O God! Because water threatens my life (...). Do not allow that I would be submerged by the violence of the floods, absorbed by the pit; that the mouth of the abyss is not closed again on moi" (PS. 69,2-15) (Sota 37a)
Commit suicide and self-sacrifice
The Suicide is regarded by the Judaïsme as an unnatural act, the life, and the human life in particular being a divine privilege. The Wise ones did not hesitate to declare that the safeguard of a life has more importance than all the commands, including the Shabbat (it is the principle of פיקוחנפש Pikkouah nefesh ).
Lorsqu' one formally establishes the cause of an individual by Suicide, it is not entitled then to traditional the mark of honor reserved for dead the. Still it is necessary that it is about an intention deliberated to put an end to its days, and not of an irresistible impulse or a self-sacrifice.
An irrepressible impulse
Six cases of suicides are reported in a concise way in the Tanakh (the Hebraic Bible): those of Abimelekh (Jug. 9,52-54), of Samson (Jug. 16,28-31), of the king Saül and its ordinance (I Sam. 31:4), of Ahitophel (II Sam 17:23), and of Zimri (I Kings 16: 18).
Abimelekh, Saül and its assistance used their sword; Ahitophel was hung, Zimri set fire to its palate and Samson fell in the middle of the ruins from the building where it was connected.
Of all, the most famous case is that of Saül. The tradition says about it: anouss keshaoul , i.e.: " constrained like Saül ". Saül is known condemned to death, but especially to dishonor and the profanation if it is captured or carried out. The suicide is thus the only possible solution.
The self-sacrifice
The border between self-sacrifice (héb. מסירותנפש, messirout nefesh ) and suicide are rather difficult to establish. The standard case of the sacrifice is that of Hananiah, Mishaël and Azariah (daN. 3, where they bear the names of Chadrac, Mêchac and Abêd-Nego).
Refusant to honor a gold statue set up by the king Nabuchodonosor II, they are bound and precipitated in a burning furnace, of which they arise miraculeusement unscathed (this account without any doubt influenced the midrash of Abraham describes higher): Hananiah, Mishaël and Azariah chose death rather than to practice the idolatry.
Cases where the suicide is a kiddoush Hashem
The Wise ones, being based on this precedent, thus formulated in IIe century with Lod three limits with the Pikkouah nefesh , three basic principles for which the Jew must be ready to die rather than to transgress them ( Yéhareg bicycle ya' avor ):
- the Idolatry
- sexual transgressions (like the Inceste or the Adultery)
- the Murder
the association of the concept of kiddoush Hashem to the martyrdom is much later . It is only starting from the books of the Maccabées and the tannaitic literature that a relation is established between the concept and the death within the framework of the achievement of a command. There exist well two mythical figures but whose accounts were isolated biblical gun Jewish and taken again by the Christian tradition: Eleazar the scribe and Hannah and its seven sons (the name of Hannah was allotted to the Middle Ages) in the book of the Maccabées whose text was written at the origin in Greek (2 Macc. 6,18 and 7).
One of the central prayers of the Judaism, the shema became emblematic Jews with martyrdom: they die indeed by proclaiming Its Unit (in opposition to let us panthéons polytheists) and the unit of Its Name (in opposition to the doctrines trinitaire). Moreover, the idea to begin in the proclamation of Its Name until the sacrifice of its life (if one is absolutely constrained there) is suggested in the second verse of the prayer:
You will love the Eternal your God, of all your heart, all your heart and all your forces. (Deut. 6,5)
Hellenistic period
In year 167 before the Christian era, Antiochus IV Épiphane prohibits the achievement of the commands (מצוות in héb. mitsvot) of the Torah in Ground of Israel. The decree (גזרה in héb. gezérah ) royal is brought back in these terms in the first book of the Maccabées:
the king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the towns of Judaea, enjoignant to them to follow foreign laws to the country, to prohibit the Holocauste S, the Sacrifice S and the Libation S of the sanctuary, to profane the Shabbat ot and the feastdays, to raise furnace bridges, sanctuaries and idols, to offer impure pigs and animals, not to make to circoncire their son, to forget the Torah and to amend all the laws. Whoever will not act according to the order of the king will be put at death. (1 Macc. 1,44-49)
The 25 Kislev 167 av. nec., a statue of Olympian Zeus is installed in the Temple of Jerusalem and, ten days later, of the sacrifices are offered there to the divinity. The authorities prohibit with the Juifs to make circoncire their sons and to observe the Shabbat under penalty of dead then force them to honor the idols and to eat pig. The persecutions issued by Antiochus will last three years and half. Part of the inhabitants of Judaea refused to be subjected and preferred to die rather than to transgress the Jewish law. Among those, seven brothers, stopped with their mother, Hannah (Anne), were constrained by the king to take pigmeat prohibited by the Law, coiled whiplashes and of ox nerve. One of them, being made their spokesperson, known as:
" What you will ask us and learn from us? We are ready to die rather than to violate the laws of our pères." (2 Macc. 7,1-2)
Roman period
In 41, the césar Caligula orders that is laid out a statue with its effigy in each place of worship of the Roman Empire. The Jews refuse to draw up his statue in the Temple of Jerusalem. Caligula then orders to force them by the force and, in the event of opposition on behalf of the Jews, to choke in blood the revolt and to reduce the population in Esclavage. The assassination of Caligula puts an end to the risk of rising.
In year 73, three years after the destruction of the second Temple of Jerusalem and with the first times of the Jewish Rebellion which followed, Xe legion and of the auxiliary troops encircle Massada, a fortress on a rocky outcrop, drawn up with 450 meters above the Dead Sea. Supplied well in vivres, water and weapons, nearly 1.000 people, of the combatants and their families, found refuge with Massada and resist besieging ten times more. A slope is drawn up against the western slope and of the machines of war are hoisted there. Isolated and not being able to face the numerical and technical superiority Roman forces, Eleazar Ben Yair invites his comrades in arms to commit suicide rather than to be taken alive by the enemy. This account, which is not regarded as a kiddoush Hashem, arrived to us. The ideology Zionist granted, initially, a dimension very particular to this tragic episode, an example to be followed evoking the heroism and the spirit of sacrifice until - boutist.
In its book, the War of the Jews, Yossef Ben Matityahou (Flavius Josèphe) brings back thus the words Eleazar Ben Yair:
we do not make unworthy of the grace that God gives us to be able to die voluntarily and glorieusement being still free. (...) That our wives die before being submitted the insults and to our children before to have tasted with slavery; after having killed mutually them, render we the service to preserve our freedom in a worthy monument.
In year 132 bursts the revolt of Bar Kokhba. The césar Hadrian interdict with the Jews to practice the Circumcision and plans to set up on the ruins of Jerusalem a new pagan city, Ælia Capitolina, and a temple dedicated to Jupiter, Junon and Minerve. Supported by Rabbi Akiva, Bar Kokhba (in france wire of the star ) takes the head of the revolt which involves a terrible carnage. According to the rabbinical tradition, it would have had as a consequence the launching of a vast persecution (שמד in héb. shmad ) against the Jews per Hadrian. After three years and half of insurrection, Bar Kokhba finds refuge with its partisans in the fortified town of Betar which would have fallen the 9 AV 135.
According to the tradition, ten wise Jews were tortured and martyrisés on the orders of Hadrian. The literary myth of the Ten put at died of the Empire (עשרההרוגימלכות in héb. asarah harougei malkhout ) rests on several Midrash im, in particular the medieval Midrash elleh ezkérah . The Roman Emperor studied the book of the Genèse and, arrived at the passage relating to the sale of Joseph which was removed and sold by his/her brothers like slave, requested from wise generation what the Jewish Law like punishment for the culprits prescribed. Hadrian affirmed that since his/her brothers were not carried out, the ten wise ones were to be put at death. Among the ten were Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Ishmaël or Rabbi Shimon Ben Gamaliel. On the historical level, these wise did not live all at the same time and of many errors appear in the midrash. Even if certain elements are not founded, the legendary account were integrated into the Jewish liturgy.
The kiddoush Hashem with the Middle Ages
It is with the Middle Ages, during the first and the second crusades, which we witness a major change of the concept of kiddoush Hashem in the Jewish history among the communities established in the valley of the Rhine, in Germany (אשכנז in héb. ashkenaz ) and in France (צרפת in héb. tsarfat ).
Which saw and heard what did this woman right and pious, Marat Rachel, the young girl of Rabbi Isaac, woman of Rabbi Yehoudah. She says to her friends: “I have four children, do not save them for fear these incirconcis does not arrive, carry out them, and persist in their error. You will also sanctify, thanks to them, the Name of Holy God. ” One of his/her partners seized the knife and immola his/her son. By seeing the knife, the mother of the children pushed a major and painful cry, and struck the face and the chest, and exclaimed: “Where is Your mercy, God? ” The bitterness in the heart, it was addressed to his/her friends: “Do not kill Isaac in front of his/her Aaron brother! That he does not see dying his brother. ” He escaped to him. The woman seizes the boy and the égorgea; he was small and very nice. The mother tightened her wrists to collect blood, it accepted on her handles the splashes. The Aaron young person, seeing his cut the throat of brother, shouted with his mother: “Does not kill to me! ”
Extrait chronicles of Rabbi Solomon bar Siméon
The place granted to the woman by the Jewish chroniclers is central: she takes an active share in the combat carried out against the stray (תועים in héb. to' im ) and immole his/her own children with the approval of his husband. The myth of Anne and her seven sons is interpreted literally, just as the idea according to which God sees ashes of Isaac on the Mont Moriah. The ash of Isaac remains on the furnace bridge, like a perpetual memory of its sacrifice. Rachi thus comments on a verse of the passage on the binding of Isaac:
“For all the generations to come, on the mountain God will see the ash of Isaac piled up like an expiatory sacrifice” (Gen. 22,14)
In his chronicles, Rabbi Ephraïm bar Yaakov of Bonn mentions with a certain leniency a whole community of converts to the Judaism (גרים in héb. gérim ) which was massacred " because they refused to soil in the stinking water ".
Rachi was pilot of these years of storm but no allusion is in its work about the dramas which occurred, if it is not its very first comment (Genesis 1:1). Its successors, the Tossafistes, also observed silence, as if these tragedies events were registered in long and uninterrupted continuation of misfortunes in the history of the exile.
According to the historian Israel Yaakov Youval, the sacrifice of the children by their parents would have played a considerable part in the charges of ritual murders and profanations of Hostie S.
According to a popular tradition, the liturgical poem “ Ounetanneh tokef ” would have been recited for the first time by Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, from which the feet and the hands were distinct on the orders of an archbishop to have refused to convert. The integration of this poem, the elegy AV harahamim and the reading of long lists of victims in the liturgy ashkenaze stress the importance attached to the kiddoush Hashem.
In addition certain communities had their clean Yizkor Bukh in which were consigned the tragic events (massacres and Pogroms) and the names of those and those which had perished. Sometimes, of the lists were added at the end of the Mahzor of the Hazan, sometimes at the end of the manuscript of a Bible.
Victims of the pogroms to those of Shoah
In 1648-1649, the riots which accompanied the revolt Cosaque directed by Bogdan Chmielniski decimated the Jewish communities of Ukraine, reduced in ashes important centers of Volhynie, Lithuania and Poland. In its work entitled the Fund of the abyss , Rabbi Nathan Nata Hannover describes misfortunes of the victims. Many Jews were massacred, converted of force to Christianity or were sold like slaves on the markets of Constantinople.
The Pogroms which were held after the assassination of the tsar Alexandre II of Russia, of March 1881 in April 1884, would almost make forget the three tragedies which took place with Odessa (1821, 1859,1871). A first wave of two hundred and fifty-nine pogroms struck Odessa, Kiev and Warsaw. Writers testified to violence, the fires, plunderings, the rapes. This open wound was revived by terrible pogroms of Kichinev, in April 1903, until Białystok in June 1906. Hayyim Nahman Bialik, witness occulaire of the waves of violence in Odessa on May 3rd, 1881 shouts its horror and its dislike:
Rises, goes-T in the city of the massacre, come in the courses
See your eyes and to palpate your hands on the barriers
And on the trees, the stones and the rough coat of the walls
coagulated blood and hardened brain of the victims (...)
Demain the rain will fall, will cart it in a ditch, towards the fields
blood will not shout any more of the sumps nor of the haumiers,
Because it will be lost in the abyss or will water the thistle
And all will be like front, as so of nothing was not.
Extract of the poem be' ir haharegah (in france In the city of the massacre )
Many writers and poets evoke in Hebrew and in Yiddish the heroes fallen for sanctification from the divine Name, call with revenge, exaltent Jewish bravery and the resistance armed with the heroes of the past. It is in this context that form the Sionisme as a reaction of survival and hope takes.
The Shoah widened the concept of the kiddoush Hashem because the Jews were not killed for their belief or their refusal to convert with Christianity but for the only fact of being Jewish and of belonging to the Juif people.
Little time before its execution by the Nazis, the rav Elhanan Wasserman taught with its pupils:
" We must remember that we will be mekadshei Hashem (in france sanctifying of the Name) and draw aside very thought being likely to make the sacrifice unacceptable (סול in héb.). We achieve the most important mitsvah now: the sanctification of the divine Name. The fire which will consume our bones is the same one which will animate the people juif." again;
See also the articles
- Anoussim
- Marranisme