Hadrian's Persecutions and the Ten Martyrs
Rome banned Torah study, circumcision and the Sabbath. The sages taught in defiance and were executed—their names are read on Yom Kippur.
After Betar, Hadrian set out to destroy not only the revolt but its root. Torah study, ordination, circumcision and the Sabbath were declared crimes, and the province was renamed Syria Palaestina to erase the name of Judea.
The sages went on teaching. When Pappus ben Yehuda warned Rabbi Akiva of the danger, he answered with a parable: a fox invited the fish to come out on dry land and escape the nets, and they replied that if they were afraid in the water, which is their life, how much more on land, which is their death. Torah, he said, is our water.
He was seized and executed, his flesh raked with iron combs, at the hour of the morning Shema. His students asked, Master, even now? He answered: all my life the verse with all your soul troubled me—even if He takes your soul; now I am fulfilling it. He drew out the word echad, One, and his soul left on it.
Tradition gathers the executed sages into the account of the Ten Martyrs: among them Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon and Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava. They did not all live at the same time; the midrash and the poem Eleh Ezkerah, recited on Yom Kippur, bring them into one chorus—not as chronicle but as monument.
How we know
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Berachot 61b — the fox and the fishes; Rabbi Akiva’s execution on the word echad
- Sanhedrin 13b–14a — Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava ordains five men at the cost of his life
- the midrash Eleh Ezkerah — the collected account of the ten martyrs — the basis of the Yom Kippur piyyut
- Avodah Zarah 17b–18a — Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon wrapped in a Torah scroll: “the letters are flying up”
Basis: tradition.
People and places
Rabbi Akiva · Rabbi Meir · Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai · Tiberias · Tzippori · Betar · Rome · Jerusalem Talmud · Brit Milah · Resurrection of the dead · Rabbi Yose ben Halafta · Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion · Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava · Rabbi Elazar ben Shamua · Rabbi Yochanan haSandlar · Beruriah · Lod · Rabbi Ishmael · Rabbi Chutzpit the Interpreter · Rabbi Chanina ben Chachinai · Rabbi Yeshevav the Scribe · Rabbi Yehuda ben Dama · Kiddush ha-Shem