Merciful Father

By the Bray of Fundie

As if on autopilot I mumble in the Av Harakhamim prayer every Shabbos. But in the wake of the latest tragic incident of Jewish Martyrdom I paid a little closer attention than usual to what I was mumbling. This communal “Yizkor” was inserted into the Mussaf service following the first crusade and so it seemed sensible to look there for pointers on how to grieve for martyrs and how to react to martyrdom. To my chagrin instead of picking up a few pointers I came away with more disconcerting questions.

What struck me most is that although there are repeated requests in this prayer for revenge and retribution the appeal is consistently being addressed to Divine Mercy… not to rigor or justice. Permutations of the word rakhamim=mercy are repeated three times in the first sentence. In the proof texts that the prayers author cites we find the Tetragrammaton (shem havayah )connoting the Divine attribute of mercy as often as the name Elokim connoting the Divine attribute of justice. I find this odd in that we'd expect the name Elokim would be dominant in an appeal for retribution and justice.

We venerate martyrdom but unlike Muslim’s do not desire it. It isn’t our “Plan A”. It would seem that HaShem would have better exercised His mercy in saving those in the Chabad House of Mumbai from the fate of Martyrs. But post-mortem? How is it merciful to punish the killers? What mercy accrues to the victims if their murderers suffer as much as they did? Eight to eighteen years from now when Moshe Holtzberg will be old enough to digest his own biography will he feel that HaShem had mercy on him and his parents because the terrorists were successful shahedis?

I also found it ironic if not downright paradoxical that although we consider Jews murdered on account of their Jewishness as having died Ahl Qidush HaShem = for the sanctification of the Name of G-d, the mere fact that they were allowed to be killed by their enemies, rather than being rescued, constitutes a great, if not the supreme, khilul HaShem= desecration of the Name of G-d. לָמָּה, יֹאמְרוּ הַגּוֹיִם-- אַיֵּה אֱלֹהֵיהֶם= Wherefore should the nations say: 'Where is their God?.

Just wonderin'

--------- So that he stop considering himself a martyr to the cause of dispassionate Judaism FCOL Buy Dov's book. already(please)