My remarks introducing the Yom Kippur “Martyrology” Service this year:

We’ve reached the final point in the Yom Kippur morning service known as Eleh Ezkarah, which means in Hebrew, “These I remember,” also known in English as the Martyrology. It was added to the Yom Kippur liturgy to remember the ten leading rabbis, including Rabbi Akiba, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Yishmael, who were publicly executed for their resistance to the Roman empire in the year 132. On Yom Kippur, we honor their memory – and the memory of all who have paid the ultimate price for taking a stand against injustice and intolerance.

Many people often define martyrs as people who “give their lives so others may live.” It’s worth noting, however, that most of the people we remember as martyrs did not give their lives – their lives were taken from them. And while there are many martyrs who were killed while taking a stand for justice, there are many others who simply did not have a choice. Emmett Till, whom we regularly refer to as a martyr, certainly did not take a stand against injustice – he was on vacation with his family, visiting Mississippi from Chicago, when he was brutally tortured and murdered by white supremacists.

So too, the millions of Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust had no intention to become martyrs. Among tens of thousands of Palestinians who are being martyred during the ongoing genocide in Gaza are scores of children, mothers, fathers who want nothing more than to live a life of normalcy – but have been forced to live and die in an environment of massive, murderous injustice. In all these cases, if it were up to them, most would certainly choose life, not martyrdom.

The word “martyr” comes from a Greek word meaning “to witness.” The Arabic word “shahid” has the same meaning. While there are many religious takes on martyrdom as witness, one meaning, it occurs to me, is that those whose lives are unjustly taken from them are, in a sense the ultimate witnesses to injustice. But their witness, their martyrdom, also contains a challenge to us, the living. It is up to us all to remember and tell their stories, in life as in death. To carry forward their witness. To ensure that their unjust deaths will not be in vain.

On October 8, novelist, poet, and educator Heba Abu Nada, a beloved figure in the Palestinian literary community and the author of Oxygen is Not for the Dead, was killed by an Israeli airstrike. She was thirty-two years old. In her final tweet on that day, Heba wrote these words of witness in Arabic: “Gaza’s night is dark apart from the glow of rockets, quiet apart from the sound of the bombs, terrifying apart from the comfort of prayer, black apart from the light of the martyrs. Good night, Gaza.”

Here is her poem, “Not Just Passing:”

Yesterday, a star said to the little light in my heart,
We are not just transients
passing.

Do not die. Beneath this glow
some wanderers go on
walking.

You were first created out of love,
so carry nothing but love
to those who are trembling.

One day, all gardens sprouted
from our names, from what remained
of hearts yearning.

And since it came of age, this ancient language
has taught us how to heal others
with our longing,

how to be a heavenly scent
to relax their tightening lungs: a welcome sigh,
a gasp of oxygen.

Softly, we pass over wounds,
like purposeful gauze, a hint of relief,
an aspirin.

O little light in me, don’t die,
even if all the galaxies of the world
close in.

O little light in me, say:
Enter my heart in peace.
All of you, come in!

Let us now take a moment of silence in to respond to the witness of all of our martyrs, past, past present and ongoing.