The asarahharugei malchus lived and died to sanctify His Name
Every Yom Kippur, Ashkenazi communities tearfully recite the piyut “Eileh Ezkerah,” which recounts the death of ten Tannaim, known as the asarah harugei malchus, at the hands of the Roman emperor Hadrian.
Their crimes: keeping the mitzvos, learning Torah in public, and continuing the mesorah.
The cruel deaths of these Tannaim — their cries of Shema Yisrael, their defiant assertion of Hashem’s Oneness and kedushah, their pride and courage, their faith in the righteousness of Hashem’s judgment — echo through the pages of Jewish history. The greatest empires have evaporated into nothing, while these martyrs’ legacies live on.
While researching this story, I discovered that this piyut was deliberately placed right after the seder ha’avodah of the Kohein Gadol to teach us that to die sanctifying His name and to live sanctifying His name are one and the same act — the ikar is to amplify kevod Shamayim in the world.
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