(Deliberate?) Confusion in the Ten Martyrs
Over Yom Kippur, I used the Artscroll Machzor. Yes, I know it is impious… as the pasuk says, ye-ru et Hashem kedoshav, ki ain machzor liyrei’av… Anyway, we got to the piyut of Eileh Ezkerah, about the Asarah Harugei Malchut, the Ten Martyrs. Artscroll prefaced it with the following footnote:
אלה אזכרה - These shall I recall. The story of the Ten Martyrs is an emotional peak of the Yom Kippur service as well as of the Kinnos (Lamentations) of Tishah B'Av. It is the moving and tragic story of ten sages of the Mishnaic period who were brutally put to death to satisfy the anti-Semitic caprice of a Roman ruler. It should be noted, however, that while all ten of these righteous men were murdered by the Romans, their executions did not take place simultaneously, as described here, nor could they have, since two of the ten did not even live in the same generation as the other eight. Namely, the martyred Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Yishmael the Kohen Gadol lived before the Destruction of the Second Temple, and were murdered shortly thereafter, while Rabbi Akiva was a relatively young man at the time of the Destruction and he (as well as the others mentioned here) was killed after the Bar Kochba revolt, over sixty years counts of the years later.
The liturgical accounts of the martyrdom were not meant as historical records, but as dramatic accounts of the story, in order to evoke feelings of loss and repentance on the part of the congregation. There are several differing midrashic accounts of the event, and the piyut draws on all of them.
This piyut was composed by an otherwise unknown paytan, whose signature יְהוּדָה חֲזַק Yehudah, may he be strong, follows the alphabetical acrostic. It is inserted in זְכוֹר רַחֲמֶיךָ Remember Your mercy, because it is here that we beg God to recall His covenant with the Pa triarchs to be merciful to their descendants, even if those descendants are undeserving.
Speaking for myself, a fictionalized dramatic account with invented details — such as the ten deliberating together and deciding to accept this judgement upon themselves — doesn’t impact me once I know it is fiction. Also, the hashkafic ramifications, such as willingly accepting death, and as atonement for the sins of Yosef’s brothers, become questionable. Also, I haven’t made a study of what each of the midrashic accounts say of the event, but I wonder if the piyut drawing on all of them is an issue of harmonizing potentially conflicting midrashim.
But what really struck me — and thus the post, is the claim that (to requote the salient portion):
their executions did not take place simultaneously, as described here, nor could they have, since two of the ten did not even live in the same generation as the other eight. Namely, the martyred Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Yishmael the Kohen Gadol lived before the Destruction of the Second Temple, and were murdered shortly thereafter, while Rabbi Akiva was a relatively young man at the time of the Destruction and he (as well as the others mentioned here) was killed after the Bar Kochba revolt, over sixty years counts of the years later.
I wonder whether if:
this was deliberate — that the midrashim, and the paytan, were fully aware that two of these lived and were martyred before the Churban, so this was a literary / dramatic choice by someone who knew the relative scholastic generations,
OR…this was accidental — and the midrashic authors / the paytan mistakenly thought they live at the same time, and so constructed a plausible scenario
What is unique about the two Sages who lived during Second Temple times is that they share a name with later Sages who lived post-Destruction. Thus, maybe it was a chronological mix-up, because of their doppelgangers / identically named descendants.
Thus, see this article:
where Tosafot discuss two different Sages named Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, one related to the other. But they aren’t sure of it, so the paytan might similarly be unsure.
As for Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, there’s a principle that the halacha is like him when he appears in our Mishnah, but this refers to the second one, rather than the pre-Churban one.