ISRAEL BETTAN

Jewish thought, though"sufferance is the badge of our tribe.” In the history of our people, from remotest antiquity to days most recent, we come upon pages that tell of men in agony and despair turning to self-destruction for relief. We also read of men in high places counseling their followers, when faced with sure defeat by a cruel enemy, to welcome self-inflicted death rather than to submit to capture and disgrace. But nowhere do we encounter the suggestion that such examples merit praise and emulation.

The Bible , which affirms religious doctrine more often by implication than by direct command, leaves no doubt as to what the religious man’s attitude toward a life of affliction should be. He will accept the lot apportioned to him. He surely will not tamper with the life given him. When Job’s wife, herself prostrate at the sight of her husband’s overwhelming affliction, cried out,"Dost thou still hold fast to thine integrity? Blaspheme God , and die," Job indignantly replied, "Thou speakest as one of the impious women speaketh. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God , and shall we not receive evil?"(Job 2:9-10).

Later, in the early Rabbinic period, the same religious temper was evidenced by a famous rabbi who suffered martyrdom for his religious convictions. When Hananiah ben Teradion, a Tannaitic teacher of the second century, was condemned by the Romans to be burned at the stake, his disciples counseled him, as the fires began to flare, to let the consuming flames surge into his frame and thus put a speedy end to his suffering. In reply, the celebrated martyr is reported to have said:"It is best that He Who hath given the soul should also take it away; let no man hasten his own death"(Avoda Zarah 18a).

Both of these statements, while seemingly made in. a casual manner, were by no means the stray utterances of individual teachers; they sprang from a common ethical tradition. They are closely related to a principle of faith that lies at the foundation of Jewish ethics. Human life is more than a biological phenomenon; it is the gracious gift of God ;

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