not believe this can happen, which, perhaps, is why he calls himself a pagan.
In our day, Martyrdom has become the ideal of extremist Islamism. The victims are the scapegoats in a religious ritual. Its cause is not poverty or nationalism or politics. Its cause is religious and goes back“to things hidden since the foundation of the world,” to quote Girard. Martyrdom, as a positive religious act, which is desired by God for its own sake, is a sacrifice in which the perpetrator is also the victim, making himself/herself into a scapegoat. All religions have a dark side because of the yetzer hara and it is the obligation of religious people to struggle against the dark side of their own religion. Judaism is not immune to this, as the violence of Baruch Goldstein has shown. We can find the belief in Judaism that voluntary martyrdom is the highest form of service and that without it the mitzvot cannot be fulfilled and we have not succeeded in loving God . The Torah does not have a uniform message and interpretation establishes which message is preferred. This, certainly, was done by the Rabbis . It is our obligation to bring the scapegoat mechanism to an end in religious affirmation. It is time for us to declare that God does not want victims and does not desire the suffering and death of God ’s creatures as a demonstration of loyalty. There are times when a person who does not want to die must sacrifice a life in order not to violate moral principle, and this is noble. It is the evil of the world that might require such an act. But voluntary suicide as an act well pleasing to God , intrinsically, is not noble. The time has come for us to say that voluntary violence as a religious act, whether perpetrated against others or against ourselves, is not desired by God .
Notes
1. b Berakhot. 20a. 2. b. Sanhhedrin 74a-75a.
3. b. Gittin 57b.
4. b. Avodah Zarah 18ab.