e and grief, whose
blood is to fertilize the soil with the seeds of righteousness and love
for mankind. From the days of Pharaoh to the present day, every oppressor
of the Jews has become the means of bringing greater liberty to a wider
circle; for the God of Israel, the Hater of bondage, has been appealed to
in behalf of freedom in the old world and the new. Every hardship that
made life unbearable to the Jew became a road to humanity's triumph over
barbarism. All the injustice and malice which hurled their bitter shafts
against Israel, the Pariah of the nations, led ultimately to the greater
victory of right and love. So all the dark waves of hatred and fanaticism
that beat against the Jewish people served only to impress the truth of
monotheism, coupled with sincere love of God and man, more deeply upon all
hearts and to consign hypocrisy and falsehood to eternal contempt. Such is
the belief confidently held by the people of God, and ever confirmed anew
by the history of the ages. "He is near that justifieth me; who will
contend with me? let us stand up together; who is mine adversary? let him
come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help me; who is he that shall
condemn me?"(1193) Thus speaks the Servant of the Lord, certain that he
will finally triumph, because he defends God's cause, and is bound
indissolubly to Him.(1194) Indeed, God says of him: "Surely, he that
toucheth you toucheth the apple of Mine (his) eye."(1195)

8. The great importance which the rabbis attached to Israel's martyrdom is
shown by the following remarks in connection with the laws of sacrifice:
"Behold, how the Torah selects for the sacrificial altar only such animals
as belong to the pursued, not the pursuers: the ox which is pursued by the
lion; the lamb which is pursued by the wolf; the goat which is pursued by
the panther, but none of those which feed on prey. In like manner God
chose for His own the persecuted ones: Abel, who was persecuted by his
brother Cain; Noah, who was derided by the generation of the flood;
Abraham, who had to flee before the tyrant Nimrod; and Isaac, Jacob, and
Joseph, who met with unkindness from their own brothers. In the same way
God has chosen Israel from among the seventy nations, as the lamb hunted,
as it were, by seventy wolves, that it should bear His law to
mankind."(1196) This idea is expressed also in the Haggadic saying: "Those
shall be privileged to see the majesty of God in full splendor who meet