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Ten Sages Killed for Joseph's Brothers' Crime

The emperor asked what the Torah does to a man who sells his brother. The scholars named death. Then he asked which generation still owed that death.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Twenty Pieces and a Pair of Sandals
  2. Rabbi Ishmael Climbed to Ask
  3. Two Heads and One Face
  4. The Parchment Burned and the Letters Rose
  5. The Sandals Still Walked

The emperor held a Torah scroll open on the table and put his finger on a line. "What does your law do to a man who kidnaps his brother and sells him?"

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The scholars in the room answered. Death. That is what (Exodus 21:16) says. That is what (Deuteronomy 24:7) says.

"Then show me where this death has been paid."

Twenty Pieces and a Pair of Sandals

They searched. They found Joseph in the pit at Dothan. Ten brothers pulled him up and sold him to Midianite traders for twenty pieces of silver, and with the silver they bought sandals. They walked home in new leather. Jacob tore his clothes over a coat dipped in goat's blood, and no court in that generation ever sat for the sale.

Joseph later forgave them in Egypt. Forgiveness is not a court. The emperor closed the scroll. The brothers are dead, he said. Their debt is not. The ten greatest sages of Israel would pay it, because no generation since had produced ten men great enough, and now such men existed. The debt had waited for them.

Rabbi Ishmael Climbed to Ask

Before the first sword was lifted, Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha, the High Priest, went up through the palaces of heaven to see whether the decree was Rome's invention or a thing already sealed above. He passed chambers where they decide whom to raise and whom to bring low, whom to kill and whom to keep alive. 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. Rabbi Ishmael descended with that sentence in his mouth and told the others. They argued. They asked why them, why now, why for a sale none of them had made. The questions did not open the seal. They accepted the verdict with grief still on their faces.

Two Heads and One Face

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, head of the Sanhedrin, and Rabbi Ishmael were led out together, bound. They argued over who should die first, each wanting to spare the other the sight. The lot was cast. Shimon went first.

His head was taken.

Ishmael lifted it and held it against his chest. "Holy mouth," he said. "Faithful tongue that spoke words of Torah. Now you lie in the dust, and who will gather the ashes?" A Roman noblewoman saw Ishmael's face and told the emperor she wanted the skin of that face kept. The command was carried out. The face that had stood before the throne and brought back its own death sentence was stripped from the living man and stored as a prize.

Earlier, when Shimon had wept and asked what sin had brought him here, Ishmael had asked a smaller question. Had a petitioner ever come for a ruling while Shimon finished a drink, or tied a sandal, or put on a cloak? Even a moment of delay can be counted. Shimon had gone quiet. Then the lot fell, and the smaller question no longer mattered.

The Parchment Burned and the Letters Rose

Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon had been arrested for teaching Torah in public after Rome forbade it. They wrapped him in a Torah scroll and set the scroll on fire. Wet wool was packed on his chest so the heart would stay cool and the death would last.

His students stood outside the flames. "Rabbi, what do you see?"

"The parchment is burning," he said. "The letters are flying up." He said it as fact. The skin of the scroll was going. The words were not. The students begged him to open his mouth so the fire would reach his lungs and finish it. He refused. "Better that He who gave me my soul should take it."

A Roman soldier watching the pyre asked him, "If I pull the wool off your chest and raise the fire, will I have a portion in the world to come?" Chanina said yes. The soldier tore the wool away, fed the flame, and jumped into it himself. A voice came from heaven: Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon and the Roman soldier are both destined for the world to come.

The Sandals Still Walked

Ten men died. Ten brothers had sold one boy and gone home in new shoes. Rome did the killing and was still wicked in the doing. Heaven had permitted the payment, and the payment did not make the emperor righteous.

On Yom Kippur the poem Eleh Ezkerah, These I Remember, is read when the fast is hardest. It does not close the account. It names the mouths that were cut off, the face that was taken, the letters that left a burning scroll, and the soldier who chose the fire after watching them go.

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From the tradition

Sources

4 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Heikhalot Rabbati 1-2Heikhalot Rabbati

Translation of the source text.Wertheimer edition · Public Domain

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

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862 · Public Domain

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)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster (1924) · Public Domain

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.

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

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster (1924) · PD-US-pre-1929

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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