Tractate Gittin (folio 57, column 2) preserves one of the most devastating martyrdom stories in all of rabbinic literature — a Jewish mother and her seven sons dragged before a Roman Caesar and ordered to bow to the imperial idols.
One by one the sons refused. Each justified his disobedience with a verse of Torah, quoting Scripture as the foundation beneath his feet, and each was led out and killed.
When the seventh boy, the youngest, was brought forward, Caesar softened — for appearance's sake. He dropped his signet ring on the ground and told the child to simply bend and pick it up; then his life would be spared. The boy refused. "Alas for you, O Caesar," he said. "If you are so zealous for your honor that you would have a child stoop to lift a ring, how much more zealous must we be for the honor of the Holy One, blessed be He."
He too was led away. But first the mother begged one favor: a farewell kiss. And as she bent over her last son, she whispered, "Go, my child, and say to Abraham our father: You built one altar for the sacrifice of one son (Genesis 22:9), but I have erected altars for seven."
Then she climbed to the roof and threw herself down. And a bat kol, a heavenly voice, echoed through the streets, quoting the Psalmist: "The joyful mother of children" (Psalm 113:9).
The verse is grim and radiant at once — every altar she built was also a song.