Rabbi Akiva, who died while saying the Shema prayer, went down in history as the archetypical Jewish martyr, a role model for all those who laid down their lives in God’s name. Jews, indeed, did not always regard the persecutions against them as entirely negative, calamities in which they were merely passive victims. They sometimes saw them as tremendous opportunities to realize the human (and divine) destiny that is the love of God. Non-Jews were considered a means to this end, a convenient solution for the conflict between the personal religious desire for a loving death and the public religious commandment to uphold life and society.

According to the Zohar and subsequent Lurianic mysticism, the soul of a righteous man who dies such a death fulfills an important role in the erotic life of the divine. It becomes mayim nukvin (female waters), the feminine element, which together with the male seed enables the unification of God with the shechina (divine presence).⁷² This sexual imagery is typical of kabbalistic writings in the Middle Ages, yet the idea that the death of the righteous man plays a part in divine eroticism dates back to the Talmud. One particularly patent example is the evocative eulogy given for one of the sages: “For God his wrath upon the earth has hurled, our pious sage his voice has called away; and God is glad that from this sinful world his dearest servant has come home to stay.”⁷³ And there are those, I believe, who have interpreted the term kiddush Hashem (death for the sanctification of God) in the same vein as kiddushei isha (marriage).

 

While the death of the righteous man is primarily for the sake of God and his love, it also carries indirect benefits for those who remain alive. When God’s desire is met by the death of his beloved, his anger subsides and the world is redeemed. Hence the deliverance achieved by child sacrifice in the stories of the king of Moab, Jephthah’s daughter, and the tale mentioned by Philo of Byblos. In this third instance, it should be noted, the father who sacrificed his son was a deity himself (the god El). Such is also the case with the religion descending from Judaism: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”⁷⁴ This description of the sacrifice of Jesus turns God’s deadly love into divine benevolence.

That a righteous man should die to atone for his generation is an idea not unique to Christianity. The Talmud presents a remarkably similar statement: “The righteous are seized for the [sins of the] generation.”⁷⁵ In both cases, the logic is the same: God is prepared to tolerate the sins and infidelities of mankind if his love can be bestowed upon a single beloved, whose soul he will reclaim.

From here it is but a small step to identifying the love of God with messianic redemption. This association is common in talmudic literature⁷⁶ and in the Zohar.⁷⁷ The world cannot be delivered until God overcomes his internal uncertainties. The sages go so far as to suggest that God will forever remain in the throes of doubt, as a woman suffering the pains of birth—which are, in truth, the pangs of the messiah.⁷⁸

The end of redemption, according to the Kabbala, is the redemption of God himself, the realization of his love in peaceful, eternal harmony. But this goal cannot be reached without a fundamental change in God’s personality. Thus, according to the Idrot teachings of the Zohar, the redemption will see a transformation of the face of God from zeir anpin (lesser countenance), which is short-tempered and rages with desire, to arich anpin (greater countenance), which is patient and compassionate, loving and serene. We have but to wait and see.