Kedushat Hashem

Sanctifying God's name

by Lynn Gottlieb

"Has it ever been heard or seen?
Who can believe what we have witnessed?
Children led to the slaughter.
O Most Highly Exalted
When such things happen
How can you hold your peace?"

R. David Bar Meshullam from the time of the Crusades (11th century)

Before embarking upon reflections about martyrdom in Jewish life and narrative, I pause to offer the above lamentation for the innocent children who have died upon the violent altars of history. The children mourned in this Selicha, or penitential prayer, were killed by the hands of their own fathers to avoid being slaughtered at the last moment by the zealous Christian soldiers of the Crusades. If we could ever count the graves of all the earth’s children who suffer our endless wars, perhaps amazed silence would melt our hearts and turn all our efforts toward saving lives. As a mother and rabbi who has shepherded one son and many students through the tender years of their lives, there is little in this world that can justify the death of children. I have stood over open graves and recited burial prayers over children in the presence of their families. The sorrow of this loss runs so deep, nothing can ever heal the wound.

In the legends of Abraham, there is a story about Sarah, mother of Isaac. On that fateful morning when Abraham prepares to sacrifice Isaac on the altar, Sarah awakes in a panic, calling for her son. In a vision, she sees him bound on the altar, her husband’s knife above his tender heart, and she wails to the heavens. Some commentators say her voice is the voice of the angel that cried out, "Abraham, Abraham do not harm your son in any way."

Other commentators say God demanded a sacrifice, and Sarah offered her life in place of her son. The text recounts that upon Abraham’s return to the city of Beer Sheva, he learned that Sarah had died. Another interpretation identifies the sound of the shofar we blow on the New Year as the sound of Sarah’s voice admonishing us of the potentially brutal side of absolute surrender to what we believe is God’s will.

Kedushat HaShem is the technical term for sanctifying God’s name which, in extreme cases, requires the giving of one’s life. Kedushat HaShem refers to right action. Behaving well towards others in all the spheres of one’s relationships is the way Judaism understands the meaning of holiness and the way to worship God. Every deed one performs can be seen as a positive or negative witness to God’s demand for a holy life. Giving witness to God through acts of loving-kindness is the highest religious ideal. Each person is created in the image of God; each person is deserving of love, fairness and dignity, regardless of their religious or ethnic identity. The Talmud regards the saving of one life as equivalent to the saving of the whole world, and the taking of one life equivalent to the destruction of the whole world.

According to Talmudic sources, there are only three situations when one is obligated to take one’s own life rather than transgress a commandment. If a persecutor or perpetrator demands that one murder another person, commit sexual violence against another or publicly deny one’s faith, one is obligated to surrender one’s own life rather than commit murder, sexual violence or idolatry. One cannot kill another in these circumstances to save one’s own life. However, in the medieval period of the Crusades and Inquisition, another more moderate stance developed toward the practice of a foreign faith, and persisted through contemporary times. Some rabbinical sages acknowledged the dire need of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to hide the practice of their faith while publicly pretending to be Catholic. Concealing one’s identity to save one’s life became an accepted practice. Jewish law permits, even requires the breaking of rules for the purpose of saving a life.

Does the sanctification of God’s name ever refer to the killing of one’s enemy to glorify God? Unfortunately, some voices in our tradition see the killing of others for theological purposes as a legitimate form of Jewish practice. Every faith tradition contains multiple voices that are in struggle to discover God’s will in their own particular time. In the Passover Seder, for instance, we initiate our prayers with an invitation to all who are hungry and oppressed to join us in a feast of liberation. On the other hand, the liturgy also contains the phrase: "Pour out your wrath upon the nations that oppress us." Once we acknowledge the contradictions inherent in these sentiments, we are obligated to choose which parts of our religious traditions we raise up as beacons of God’s light in the world and which parts of our tradition we retire to the past.

I believe that Judaism’s most Godlike expression is faithfulness to the struggle for justice and peace through methods of compassion and nonviolence. Therefore, I cannot accept the legitimacy of those voices that claim God desires the desecration and murder of other human beings for any purpose.

Jewish voices throughout our generations wrestle with the contradiction inherent in the affirmation of God is love and the claim that God punishes the wicked through acts of vengeance. This contradiction surfaces in the narratives about the tribe known as Amalek. Amalek is mentioned twice in the biblical narratives (Exodus 17:8—16; Deuteronomy 25:17—19) as the tribe that attacked the most vulnerable and weakest members of the people of Israel as they fled slavery. God requires an eternal war with Amalek: to blot out the name of Amalek generation after generation. Later generations had many responses to this mitzvah. Some said that the man known as Amalek hated Israel because the patriarchs rejected his mother when she desired to convert. This Midrash (rabbinical commentary) uses the Amalek story to admonish Jews to be hospitable to converts and strangers. Another interpretation declares the war over, since the tribe of Amalek disappeared long ago. Others however, transmute Amalek into the archetypal enemy that seeks to destroy Jewish people in every generation. That is why Baruch Goldstein could enter the tomb of Abraham on the Feast of Purim, February 1994, and commit mass murder, and why his community could see him as a martyr. Goldstein identified Palestinians with the nation of Amalek and saw the killing of innocent worshippers as an act of God.

Early Hasidic thought evinced another approach. Rather than seeing Amalek as a flesh and blood people living in the external world, one should see Amalek as an inner quality within one’s own soul. Amalek is the part of ourselves that causes us to hate others. Amalek is the constellation of fear, ignorance and arrogance that drive us toward acts that hurt others. Blotting out the name of Amalek becomes a spiritual practice focused on our own state of being. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, counseled his disciples: When seeing something in another one does not like, find where that place lives inside one’s self and work to transform it into a positive spiritual quality.

What does this mean in the face of Israeli occupation of Palestine and the ongoing siege against Palestinians inside Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza? For me personally, it means a continuing witness before my own community about the nature of our relationship to Palestinians. We are occupiers and oppressors. We have become Amalek. We have displaced millions in our drive for security and nationhood. We are building great walls of separation that are ruining agricultural communities and forcing millions to go hungry. We have supported policies of breaking bones, torture, humiliation and economic deprivation. We have taken away the hopes and dreams of millions and replaced them with hopelessness and despair. This is what we must fearlessly confront in ourselves as we ask how best to give witness to God’s presence in the midst of overwhelming tragedy.

The Jewish community in Israel and throughout the world must work toward acknowledging the ways we treat Palestinian youth to seek revenge. We must acknowledge the ways in which we are sacrificing our own children to the god of national expansionism, brutality and dehumanization of our cousins and neighbors. Sanctifying God’s name can only be accomplished on the path of compassion, justice and peace.