The Logic of Occupation - Part 3
by Aron Trauring

Right before the holidays, a good friend of mine posed the following question: "I know you are an a-theist, Aron. So why do you go to synagogue to pray on Yom Kippur?" My glib answer was that Jewish practice is for me a cultural act, not a religious one. But my friend did not accept that answer and neither did I. In fact, the question ran through my head during the entire service.

When I was in college, I took a course on the history of Judaism with the late professor Joseph Blau. I wrote a paper on the problem of prayer. I spent days working on it. I don't remember the grade, but I do remember Professor Blau's comment: "You didn't discuss the most important problem: people can't relate to the theology of the prayer book." That sentence too, reverberated in my head as I sat through the service.

Certainly, there are many things I find objectionable or even off-putting in the prayer book. The centerpiece of the High Holiday service, is the Netaneh Tokef prayer. My first problem relates to the story behind this prayer, which you can read here. I remember hearing this story when I was a young boy of 8 or 9 and being enraptured. The rendition given below is an edited version from a website I found which targets ultra-Orthodox Jewish "tots." It is nearly identical in form to the way I heard it as a child. Thinking about Rabbi Amnon, led me to think about the whole idea of martyrdom in Judaism. I have heard so many people talk with repugnance about the phenomenon of martyrdom in Palestinian society, and how awful it is. The Israeli army even circulated a picture they seized (obviously when they forcibly entered someone's home) which shows an infant dressed up as a shaheed - a martyr. The point of the army's action was to show how savage, primitive and immoral the Palestinians are for glorifying death and martyrdom.

From personal experience, I can say categorically, Jews are the last people on earth to criticize any one on that score. Rabbi Amnon was just one of many other stories of martyrdom I grew up with: the mothers who killed their children during the crusades rather than have them fall into the hands of Christians who would forcibly convert them; the story of the mass suicide at Masada; and many, many more. These were not told as horror stories of some remote Jewish past, but were held up to us as living examples of deep values which we should emulate. They were told to me by teachers and group leaders when I was very young. And I loved those stories. They resonated in some deep way. I know my friends enjoyed them as much as I did.
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This is a beautiful piece. Trying to come up with some clever words to describe this — I can't. Just read it.