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Ten Sages Killed for Joseph's Brothers' Crime

Rome's emperor asked his scholars to search the Torah for a debt still unpaid. They found it: the sale of Joseph by ten brothers, never atoned for.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Emperor Reads the Torah
  2. Rabbi Ishmael Ascends to Verify
  3. The Deaths of Shimon and Ishmael
  4. Chanina ben Teradyon Wrapped in Torah
  5. The Debt and Its Payment

The Emperor Reads the Torah

The story begins with a Roman emperor who was, for his own purposes, a student of Jewish law. He summoned Torah scholars and asked them a precise question: what is the penalty under your own law for a man who kidnaps and sells his brother? They answered him: death. That is what Exodus 21:16 says. That is what Deuteronomy 24:7 says.

The emperor said: then show me where this debt has been paid.

The scholars searched. They found Joseph's brothers selling him to the Midianites for twenty pieces of silver. They found no record of any penalty paid for that act. No execution of the brothers. No restitution. No court proceeding. Joseph forgave them; that is not the same as a legal discharge. The emperor's conclusion was cold and immediate: the debt is outstanding, and since the brothers are dead and beyond reach, their debt must be paid by the greatest Torah authorities of the present generation.

Rabbi Ishmael Ascends to Verify

Before the executions began, Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha, the High Priest, agreed to ascend to heaven to verify whether the decree had truly been issued there or was only Roman invention. He went up through the levels of the heavenly palace, reaching inward until he stood before the throne. He found the angel Gavriel and asked his question. Gavriel told him to wait.

He waited. The answer came back: the decree is sealed. Accept it. The ten greatest sages of Israel were to die for what Joseph's brothers did, because no generation since had produced ten men great enough to pay this debt, and now such men existed. The decree had waited for them.

Rabbi Ishmael descended and told the others. They accepted the verdict, though not without grief and not without argument. The tradition preserves their questions, the same questions anyone would ask: why us, why now, why for this? The answers it offers are never fully satisfying, which is the tradition's honesty rather than its failure.

The Deaths of Shimon and Ishmael

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, the head of the Sanhedrin, and Rabbi Ishmael were the first to die. They argued over which of them should go first, each wanting to spare the other the sight of dying. The lot was cast. Shimon went first. His head was taken.

Ishmael wept. A Roman noblewoman saw Ishmael's face and told the emperor: I want the skin of this man's face preserved. The command was carried out. The tradition records this detail not to horrify but to mark the depth of what was lost: a face worth preserving for its beauty was the face that had stood before God's throne and brought back the decree of its own death.

Chanina ben Teradyon Wrapped in Torah

Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon had been arrested for the specific crime of teaching Torah publicly after the decree forbidding it. He was wrapped in a Torah scroll and the scroll was set on fire. Wet wool was placed on his chest to slow the burning and extend the death.

His students watched from outside the flames and asked him: rabbi, what do you see? He told them: the parchment is burning, but the letters are flying up. He said it as observation, not as comfort, not as defiance. As simple fact. The material was being destroyed. The content was not destroyed. His students understood this as the distinction between the vehicle and what the vehicle carries.

A Roman soldier watching the execution asked Chanina: if I take the wool from your chest and increase the fire, will I have a portion in the world to come? Chanina said yes. The soldier removed the wool, increased the fire, and jumped into the flames himself. A voice came from heaven: Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon and the Roman soldier are both destined for the world to come.

The Debt and Its Payment

The theology behind the story of the ten martyrs is one of the most difficult in the entire tradition. It demands that we hold together several things that do not sit comfortably: that the Romans were wicked in what they did, that God permitted it, that the cosmos has a structure in which ancient crimes generate debts that must be paid by someone, and that the greatest of the great were the ones designated to pay.

The Yom Kippur liturgy preserves the account in the poem Eleh Ezkerah, These I Remember. It is read on the most solemn day of the year, during the afternoon service, at the moment when the fast is hardest and the day's accounting is most present. The poem does not explain the justice. It witnesses the facts. These men died. They were ours. We remember them.

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From the tradition

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Heikhalot Rabbati 1-2Heikhalot Rabbati

Rabbi Ishmael said: What is the distinction of the praises that one would recite who sought to gaze upon the vision of the Chariot, to descend in peace and to ascend in peace?

Greater than all of them is to enter, and to bring oneself in, and to be brought into the chambers of the palace of the firmament, to be set before the throne of His glory, and to know all that is destined to be in the world: whom they bring low and whom they raise up; whom they weaken and whom they strengthen; whom they impoverish and whom they enrich; whom they put to death and whom they keep alive; from whom they take away an inheritance and to whom they give an inheritance; to whom they grant Torah as a possession and to whom they give wisdom.

Greater than all of them is that he gazes upon every deed of the children of men: he knows and recognizes the man who has committed adultery; he knows and recognizes the man who has murdered a soul; he knows and recognizes the man who is suspected of these things. Greater than all of them is that he recognizes every kind of sorcery.

Greater than all of them is that whoever raises his hand against him and strikes him, they clothe him in leprosy and crown him with a bright spot. Greater than all of them is that whoever speaks slander against him, they cast and fling upon him plagues of boils, bruises, and wounds, from which moist sores break out.

Rabbi Ishmael said: Thus they would teach concerning the vision of the Chariot: One who is engaged with the Chariot has no permission to rise to his feet except on account of these three distinctions: before a king, before a high priest, and before a Sanhedrin at a time when there is a Nasi among them; but if there is no Nasi among them, then not even before the Sanhedrin should he rise; and if he did rise, his blood is upon his own head, for he shortens his days and diminishes his years.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 37:28Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis

How much is a brother worth? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:28) gives the answer with almost unbearable precision. The Midianite traders pulled Joseph out of the pit and sold him to the Arabians for twenty mahin of silver. And then the Targum adds a detail the Hebrew only hints at: they bought sandals of them.

Twenty silver coins. Enough to buy a pair of shoes.

The prophet Amos, centuries later, would thunder against the rich of Samaria because they sold the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals (Amos 2:6). The sages read Amos's line as a direct echo of the sale of Joseph. The brothers had begun a pattern in Jewish history: the moment when a human being becomes a price, and the price is small.

The liturgy remembers this. On Yom Kippur, the martyrology service recalls the Ten Martyrs, the sages executed by Rome, as a cosmic correction for the sale of Joseph. The ten brothers sold one. Ten sages gave their lives in return. The books do not balance easily.

And the sandals. Why sandals? Because sandals let you walk. The brothers, having sold Joseph, walked home in new shoes, leather warm on their feet, each step taken on the currency of their brother's life. The Targumist does not moralize. He simply names the shoes. And every reader for two thousand years has had to decide how to live in their own.

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Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 76Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924)

When the Romans executed the Ten Martyrs, the greatest sages of Israel, two of the first to die were Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, the Nasi (prince) of the Sanhedrin, and Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha, the High Priest. They were led out together, bound in chains, condemned by an empire that saw their Torah as a threat.

Rabban Shimon wept. Not from fear of death, but from confusion. "Why is this happening to me?" he cried. "Am I a murderer? Am I a thief? What sin have I committed to deserve execution?"

Rabbi Ishmael turned to him and asked: "Did it ever happen that someone came to you for a legal judgment or a question, and you made them wait while you finished your drink, or tied your sandal, or put on your cloak?" Even a moment of delay, making a petitioner wait unnecessarily, could be counted as a sin deserving the harshest punishment.

Rabban Shimon fell silent. He accepted the rebuke and went to his death with composure.

But when Rabban Shimon was beheaded first, Rabbi Ishmael lifted the severed head, held it to his chest, and wept: "O holy mouth! O faithful tongue that spoke words of Torah! Now you lie in the dust, and who will gather the ashes?" The Talmud in Sanhedrin (11a) and the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Ele Ezkera preserve this scene as one of the most devastating moments in Jewish martyrology. Even in the face of imperial slaughter, the sages measured themselves not against Rome's cruelty, but against their own impossible standards of righteousness.

Full source
Gaster, Exempla of the Rabbis No. 289The Exempla of the Rabbis (1924)

Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon was one of the Ten Martyrs executed during the Hadrianic persecutions in the second century CE. Rome had decreed that teaching Torah in public was a capital offense. Chanina continued to teach, gathering his students in open assembly with a Torah scroll in his arms.

When the Romans came for him, they bound him to a stake and wrapped the Sefer Torah around his body. They lit the pyre. To prolong his suffering, they placed wet wool over his heart, so that the flames would consume him slowly and keep the heart cool enough to delay death. The Rabbi's students stood at the edge of the fire. They asked him what he saw.

"I see the parchment burning," he answered, "but the letters are flying up into the air." The scrolls could be destroyed, but the Torah itself, the living teaching, could not. His students begged him to open his mouth so the flames would reach his lungs and end his agony. He refused. "It is better that He who gave me my soul should take it."

The Roman executioner, moved by what he was watching, asked Chanina, "If I increase the flame and remove the wet wool from your heart, will you bring me into the world to come?" The Rabbi promised him that he would. The executioner pulled away the wool and stoked the fire. Chanina's soul departed. Then the executioner himself leaped into the flames and died beside him, a proselyte in his final moment. A heavenly voice cried out, "Chanina ben Teradyon and the executioner are ready for the world to come."

Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (1924, No. 289) preserves the martyrdom that Jewish tradition has retold every Yom Kippur afternoon for nearly two thousand years. The Roman empire burned a scroll and gained a convert from its own garrison. And lost whatever argument it thought the fire was making.

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