On the 26th of Nissan 5415 (May 3rd, 1655), Abraham Nunez Bernal was burned alive in Cordoba, Spain. At the age of forty-three, this father and son could still not reconcile himself to the Roman Catholic faith and so his sojourn in this world ended on a fiery pyre before a heated and ecstatic crowd. When the Spanish-Portuguese community of Amsterdam learned the news of his martyrdom they must have been devastated. Another member of their community had died al kiddush Hashem. He was not the first, nor would he be the last, but each one dealt a blow to the morale of the dignified Spanish-Portuguese Jews. They had all paid a heavy price to live as Jews in cities, like Amsterdam, in which they had taken refuge but many of those whom they left behind paid for Judaism with their lives.

On Shabbat, some nine days later (Shabbat, 6th of Iyyar 5415), Rabbi Isaac Aboab De Fonesca alighted the bima to give words of consolation and comfort to his flock and to eulogize the kadosh, Bernal. (The hesped can be found in the Kitve Rabbeinu Yitzhaq Aboab (De Fonesca): Hakhmei Recife ve-Amsterdam published by Machon Yerushalayim). It is not surprising that in the midst of his eulogy he mentioned the kinnah “arzei halevanon” about the asarah harugei malkhiyot, the lamentation about the ten martyrs that we read on Tisha B’av.

He quotes Mehnahot 29b where Moshe Rabbeinu seeing the future Torah greatness of Rabbi Akiva, exclaims “Hashem, you’ve shown me his Torah – show me his reward” and Hashem responds by showing him the martyrdom of Rabbi Akiva whose flesh was peeled off. Moshe then asks “This is Torah and its reward?” to which Hashem replies “Silence, for this is the thought that arose before Me.” Rabbi Aboab asks the following question. Moshe requested to see the reward of Rabbi Akiva and instead he was shown his death. What kind of a response is this? Do we not believe in an afterworld? Do we not have a concept of reward and punishment? Could it be that one gives up his life al Kiddush HaShem and that’s where it all ends?

These were questions that animated the theological background of Spanish-Portuguese Jewry. For centuries some of them had paid a very high price in this world for any small semblance of Jewishness and inflections of the question, is it all really worth it, must have crept into their minds. Rabbi Aboab movingly describes the scene of Bernal’s martyrdom in Cordoba: his mother begging him for her son, his wife begging him for her protector and his children begging him not to be left an orphan. Not only did he need to find the religious fortitude to be consumed by the flames he also had to find the emotional steadfastness to be deaf to the pleas of those whom he loved. How different this martyrdom was, remarks Rabbi Aboab, from the martyrdom of Hannah’s seven sons whose mother had encouraged their willingness to die al Kiddush Hashem. Thus, the Jews who heard of Bernal’s martyrdom may have wondered: what could the reward possibly be for such a Jew?

Rabbi Aboab explains that Hashem was imparting a teaching about martyrdom to Moshe. The reward of one who gives up their life al Kiddush Hashem can not be comprehended. By showing Moshe the death of Rabbi Akiva, he was letting him know that he, Moshe, would not fully understand the reward that awaited Rabbi Akiva because Rabbi Akiva was a martyr. On that Shabbat morning in Amsterdam, Rabbi Aboab had the same message for his flock. The reward that awaited their beloved Bernal was too great for any of them to comprehend for he too had been killed al Kiddush Hashem.