9av 5784 Kinah- The 1st Zionists: Hostages in Rome

The word “Tzioni,” “Zionist” or “Zionite,” does not appear in the Tanach or the Talmud to the best of my knowledge, although it does appear in the Kinot of Tisha B-Av.

This use of the word is unexpected.  Today, Zionism, being a Tzioni, is being part of a forward-looking belief system about the future destiny of the Jewish people, while in the Kiniot the word is backward-looking, someone whose origins are from Zion – but it is the same word, and consequently its earliest occurrence in Jewish literature might be in this morning’s Tefilah, in Kinah #23 ve-et navi, chatati hishmiymah (l. 17).[1]

Much like the word is used today, the word “Tzioni” appears in the Kinah in the context of a lost war and hostage taking, so this Kinah has particular resonance right now.  Let me start by telling the story of these hostages taken nineteen and a half hundred years ago (Gittin 58a), and then we will look at the message of the Kinah, and how it helps us understand and define this word, Tzioni.

The Kinah is about the family of R’ Yishmael ben Elisha Kohen Gadol (l. 7) who was one of the greatest of the high priests of the second Temple period, and one of the few righteous ones among them (see Brachot 7a, 51a).[2] He was killed by the Romans and died al kiddush Hashem in the year 68, durring the destruction of the second Temple (Sanhedrin 11a, Chullin 123a, Avoda Zara 11b).  He also  appears  in the Kinah about the Ten Martyrs (Arzei Ha-Levanon), and upon his death his two children are taken captive.

The kinah reads: “The time came, and they were taken captive, and they fell upon two masters, and they were neighbors, living this one opposite this one (l.9-10).”  They aren’t taken prisoners by the king or in a military jail.  These captives end up in a residential section of Rome, and two regular members of the community, in their homes, have taken the two teenage children, a son and a daughter, hostage.

How does it happen that regular human beings envision taken other human beings as their property?  No person would ever jail another person in their basement if they hadn’t thoroughly dehumanized them first.  And that is what happens, tragically, in this Kinah, as these Jewish hostages are treated not as human beings, but as animals.  They have no identity to their masters besides their physical characteristics; indeed they go totally nameless in the Kinah: he has nice eyes (l. 18)[3] and she is as beautiful as the daughters of Job (l.15).[4]  They masters intend that the be bred: “Let us come and pair them, and divide between us, in the offspring, who will be like the stars of the heavens. (l.20-21)”[5]  These Jewish children lose their humanity, as the vicious owners conspire to force them to produce children, who will be divided, like further property, among the masters.

Returning to the story, the two children of the high priest are locked in a room together one night (l.25), with their captors thinking the two will do as expected.  But the children recognize that what matters most in life isn’t survival, it is living a life true to our values.  That it is better to die keeping the Torah than to live while keeping nothing.  Each independently – not knowing their sibling is with them – reasons: I am a Kohen, I may not marry a maid-servant!  I descend from Yocheved, I cannot marry a slave![6] (l.30, 32) and they each independently decide to maintain their faith, and determine to die al kiddush Hashem, in sanctification of Hashem’s name, rather than to further lose their humanity, their sanctity, their Judaism by succumbing to their masters’ designs.

They spend all night locked in a room, silent, and dark with another human being.  Can you imagine the tension?  Both of them sitting there, unable to see, expecting the worse of the unknown other, who might act on their worst inclinations and violate them!  The tension would be so thick and palpable, as you listen to another person’s deep, tense breathing, not knowing what will happen next for an entire night, while also knowing you’re locked in and can’t leave the room and might be killed in the morning.  How do these two Jews have the strength to endure?  Two teenagers who have lost everything and have the strength of conviction and character to still stay true to the values of the Torah and Judaism?

This is perhaps the true reason why their are Zionists or Zionites.  Being a Zionist doesn’t mean we’re waiting for the Messiah to bring us to Zion.  Being a Zionist means living a life of mesirut nefesh, self-sacrifice for an ideal, being willing to sacrifice so that we can bring ourselves closer to a return to Zion.  How did soldiers in Israel spend months on the battlefield with their lives on pause?  Mothers raising young families seemingly by themselves?  When it would be easier to make other life choices to avoid the challenges?  A Zionist affirms that we don’t choose the easiest or safest way to live our lives, we always act in pursuit of our values whatever the cost.

These two are the first Zionists, because it would have been so easy, even understandable, for them to give up all hope, or suffer from Stockholm Syndrome and say we’ve lost, Judaism is finished – and we should just do whatever we need to do to survive, in a basic, animalistic way.  But they say no.  Survival isn’t the most important need.  Values and self sacrifice are.

The story ends with dawn, and the two recognize they are brother and sister, saying “hoy ach & hoy achot!”  This line is a pun as the words in the context of the Kinah are the words for siblings in Hebrew, but puns with Jeremiah 22:18 where these words are part of the first line of a funeral elegy (l. 35-36); the two compose their own eulogy.  All night they didn’t touch, on account of the Torah prohibition of touching members of the opposite gender.  Now, as siblings, they do hug and come together as one, “ve-nitchabru,”[7] and they miraculously die at that moment, in heroism and on their terms, moments before the masters would come in and execute them for their defiance (l.37-38).  All night – thinking they were being forced into intermarriage – they cowered each in their own corner and silently prayed, scared of the other slave “in bitter soul, and in fear” (l. 27).  By day, they come together and have a measure of relief in their reunion.

The Kinah is attributed to the Ashkenazic rishon Rav Yechiel,[8] and the idea of martyrdom for the sake of Jewish values is central for many of the contemporaneous Ashkenazic Kinot written during and after the crusades, when future generations also gave up their lives for the ideals of Judaism.  This son and daughter taught their lesson to future generations of Jews, who continue to show mesirut nefesh for their faith.

When we live the Zionist life, the life of values, our story continues on as a people.  Though the high priest Rebbi Yishmael, and his two children died, the family and their commitments lived on.  The high priest’s namesake, born in Rome at roughly the same time as this story, would grow to become the great sage Rebbi Yishmael (Gittin 58a, Chullin 49a), the famous colleague of Rebbi Akiva, committed to Torah study (Brachot 35b, Menachot 99b, Shabbat 12b) and love for the Jewish people (Nedarim 66a, Negaim 2:1).[9]  He emerges from the story deeply committed to values, like his grandfather, aunts and uncles, and with a keen awareness that makes him one of the most important future spokesman about sacrifice on behalf of the Jewish faith (Bava Batra 60b, Sanhedrin 74a, Avoda Zara 27b).

The first family of Zionists.  Looking to the future, focused on values, and perpetuating them on to generations future still.

[1] The Kinah has nine stanzas, each with a handful of rhyming, roughly nine-syllable lines, where the last line of each stanza rhymes with an alliterative three word chorus, “ve-ahimha mi-yamim yamima,” and I shall moan day to day, based on Psalms 55:3 and Shemot 13:10.  At the end of the Kinah the word to moan ahimah , from the root h-v-m, further alliterates to the word for dirge n-h-y, nehi.

[2] Yoma 9a says that one of the few second-Temple priests to survive extended tenures as the Kohen Gadol was Yishmael ben Faba.  However, he seems to have been earlier in the time of the 2^nd Temple (see Sota 49a, Psachim 57a, Josephus, Antiquities, 18:2:2, 20:8:8-10), while Yishmael ben Elisha was later at the time of the destruction.  The Gemara says each of the remaining priests did not survive for a year, but that appears to be an average; Yishmael ben Elisha might have been high priest for a few years or in the final year of the Second Temple.  Rabbi Reuven Margoliot, in an essay titled “Ba`al Ha-Pol,” demonstrates that the name “Faba” is a sobriquet, following an incident with a bean: see Tosefta Sota 13:7, Tosefta Keilim 1:1:6.

[3] The phrase describes David (Shmuel 1:16:12), and later the child or nephew of this hostage, the Tannah Rebbi Yishmael (Gittin 58a).  The phrase also appears in Nazir 4b regarding an individual who had a challenge overcoming his temptations.

[4] She is compared to two of the three daughters at the end of the book: Ketziah and Yemimah.  Why is she compared to these women, and not any of the other beautiful Biblical women? (a) It may be an accident of the rhyme, that Yemimah’s name ends in  –“mah,” the sound that must end the line before the refrain.  (b) There may also be some foreshadowing here, as the first set of daughters of Job’s daughters died, much as these siblings do.  (c)  The third daughter of Job, Keren Ha-puch, appears to be named for the star Capella, which is the horn of Auriga/Aurochs (Bava Batra 16b, LXX), which may relate to one of the themes of the Kinah; see the note that follows.

[5] This amazing line reads in four different ways.  In its most simple level, the masters predict that the children will be as bright, beautiful, and wonderous as the stars of the heavens.  Yet, the line is also ironic, as it is in the promise to Avraham that the Jews are predicted to be as numerous as the stars of the heavens (Bereishit 15:5), and so the line twists the promise, essentially asking, what has become of the promise that the Jews would be numerous and free upon their land.  On a third level, the line is part of a larger astronomical dialogue that continue throughout the Kinah: The daughter is compared earlier to the moon in line 14, while the son is compared to the noontime sun in line 19.  In line 34, the constellations Ursa Minor, Orion and Scorpius cry on their behalf, and the story resolves by the light of day in line 35.  Fourth, the noun k-k-b, star, when inverted, becomes the verb to cry b-k-h (l.27, 28, 34, 40), as the celestial bodies are inverted they then cry.

[6] It is beyond the scope of this discussion to consider what the best halakhic response should have been to this circumstance.  For some discussion see Haym Soloveitchik, “Halakhah, Hermeneutics, and Martyrdom in Ashkenaz” Collected Essays II (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2014), 228-287.

[7] The martyrs’ seize control of the story from their masters at this moment.  In the end, the masters disappear from the narrative and the Kinah fails to discuss how their story is resolved, only focused on the two siblings.  Similarly the masters are earlier described as “they agreed upon this, the two of them together… and the masters were outside, their hearts like one.” (l. 24, 26).  Instead, the two martyrs become one at this moment.  [It is also possible that the coming together as one refers not to the siblings’ embrace but to the unity of each one of them with G-d; at the moment of martyrdom, the soul of the martyr fully realizes the complete sense of the Torah value system and instantly becomes one with their Creator, as their souls depart at that moment of perfect unity with Hashem.]

[8] See Ephrain Kanarfogel, “The History of the Tosafists and their Literary Output According to Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Interpretations of the Qinot for Tisha B-Av in In Ephraim Kanarfogel & Dov Schwartz (eds.), Scholarly Man of Faith, pp. 75-107, (New York : The Michael Scharf Publication Trust of the Yeshiva University Press, 2018), 82-83.

[9] Rav Hai Gaon notes that when the Temple stood, those departing from the high priest (Sanhedrin 18a), would says “we are your atonement,” accepting the punishment due to the high priest upon ourselves.  Rebbi Yishmael, grandson of the martyred high priest, inverts the relationship, and  – out of love for the Jewish people (Rambam) – says “I am their atonement.”