Mtizvah 9: Martyrdom

Rambam in his book of Mitzvos writes as follows.

The ninth mitzvah HaShem instructed us is to sanctify His Name. The verse in the Torah indicating this is ‘And My Name shall be sanctified in the midst of the Jewish people’. The notion of this mitzvah is that we are charged with publicizing the truth of our faith throughout the world and that we need not be frightened or intimidated into denying our trust in HaShem and in His Unity. This mitzvah is incumbent on every member of our people to sacrifice their life out of our love of HaShem and our trust in His Unity.

In his annotated code of Torah Law, Rambam elaborates on the details of this mitzvah. For the sake of brevity I will enumerate only several details which will hopefully give us an idea of the scope of this mitzvah.

1. The underlying principle with mitzvah observance is that the life of the Jew is more sacred than the performance of the mitzvos. Therefore, if a person falls ill on Shabbos and requires to be driven to the hospital we must drive on Shabbos in spite of the desecration of Shabbos because the ill person’s life is given precedence of the mitzvah of Shabbos. Another example would be if the government would force its citizenry to build a build railroad tracks on Shabbos for the sake of national security under the threat of being shot. In this circumstance we must build the tracks even though we are desecrating the Shabbos because we are sparing Jewish life.

This is true with every mitzvah except the three cardinal mitzvos.
a. adultery
b. murder
c. idol worship
When saving the person’s life requires him to transgress any of these three mitzvos the mitzvah takes precedence and life must be lost.

For example, if I can save my life by killing another person it is forbidden to do so even if my life will be lost. This is true even if the person being killed agrees to be killed it is nevertheless forbidden to do so. (Murder is a sin for two reasons; the first is that you are taking a life without permission of the owner. The second, perhaps the more compelling reason, is that HaShem instructed us not to kill.) This is the issue of taking the heart of a dying person before he actually expires in order to give his heart to another person who will live another 40 years. It is strictly forbidden to remove the dying man’s heart because it is murder. (The exception to this rule is when one person is chasing another person to kill him. In this case we are required to kill the murder in order to save the victim.)

2. The abovementioned principle holds true only when the circumstance of transgressing the mitzvah is circumstantial. However, if the circumstance of transgression is a result of the coercer’s interest in undermining the observance of the Torah then the law changes significantly, as follows.

If the coercion is in the presence of ten Jewish people the Jew being coerced must forfeit his life before transgressing the slightest mitzvah. If, however, there are less than ten Jewish people present, the coerced must transgress the mitzvah and save his life. (We must add parenthetically that obviously if there is the possibility of overpowering the coercer then of course we do that even if we must kill him.)

For example; an army of fervent missionaries enter the synagogue on Shabbos and hold everybody hostage. They call forward the rabbi and order him to smoke a cigarette in presence of all (smoking is a desecration of the Shabbos) or they will kill him. Since their intention is clearly for the purpose of desecrating the Torah and it is in the presence of ten Jews the rabbi must not transgress the Shabbos even though his life is threatened. If, however, there were only 8 people in synagogue that day, even though there are many non-Jews present the rabbi must transgress the Shabbos and save his life.

3. If the above story were to happen during a governmental decree that all Jews must surrender their belief under the threat of the sword then even if there are no Jews present we must surrender our life before surrendering our belief no matter what mitzvah it is. For example, under the Greek empire there was a concerted effort to erase the study of Torah in the hope that the Jewish people would eventually forsake their commitment to HaShem. One of their decrees was that circumcision was prohibited under the threat of death. In this case we are required to observe the performance of circumcision even though if caught people will be killed.

The laws are still more complex but let this small sampling demonstrate the level of commitment to HaShem we are expected to have. Throughout the two millennium of Jewish exile scores of generations were sacrificed by murderous teams of Christians in their frenzy to convert Jews to Christianity. We were killed by the thousands but did not flinch from our commitment to HaShem and to His Torah.

Without this complete commitment of our very life to HaShem and to His Torah there would no longer be a Jewish people. We would have all been converted to either Christianity or Islam just like the rest of the world.

Perhaps the intention of Rambam’s words “The notion of this mitzvah is that we are charged with publicizing the truth of our faith throughout the world” is to include world history not only world geography. Even though for the moment, Jewish blood is spilled and it seems to be lost, the truth is otherwise. When a Jew sacrifices his life out of his love of HaShem there is an eternal energy generated that insures the eternity of our relationship with Him.