Solica HY"D followed the Shulchan Aruch - Choosing Death over Islam

[edu]

In order to blackmail a pious and beautiful Jewish teenage woman, named Solica,  to marry him, a particularly wicked Muslim in Morocco concocted a story that he witnessed the girl converting to Islam and then she returned to Judaism, a "crime" punishable by death according to Islam.
Even though the girl denied she converted to Islam the Muslim court believed the Muslim "witness" and told her to start practicing Islam or be put to death.
http://hatchuel-hatchwell.net/solika/solikas-full-story/

ARREST AND TRIAL

Either way, the authorities were convinced that Solica had converted to Islam and that she then recanted her conversion. Supposedly, when they came to her home to arrest her, the soldiers could not find her and instead arrested her mother. Upon hearing this, Solica surrendered to the authorities who brought her before a kadi (judge responsible for sharia law) where she was accused by the rich neighbor of having converted to Islam and then wanting to recant her decision and return to Judaism. Under Islamic Law, this act of apostasy was punishable by death. She was ordered to declare her return to Islam or be executed.

Others say that the judge threatened her if she did not convert back: “How dare you convert to our faith, and then abandon it? I will load you with chains…I will have you torn piece-meal by wild beasts, you shall not see the light of day, you shall perish of hunger, and experience the rigor of my vengeance and indignation, in having provoked the anger of the Prophet”. To which Solica responded: “I will patiently bear the weight of your chains; I will give my limbs to be torn piece-meal by wild beasts; I will renounce forever the light of day: I will perish of hunger: and when all the evils of life are accumulated on me by your orders, I will smile at your indignation, and the anger of your Prophet: since neither he, nor you have been able to overcome a weak female! It is clear that Heaven is not auspicious to making proselytes your faith”

Solica remained resolute maintaining, “Never, never did I leave my faith. I never became a Muslim, and I never, ever will! A Jewess I was born and a Jewess I wish to die.” They placed her in a dank, dark dungeon with chains around her hands and feet and an iron collar around her neck. Her parents appealed to the Spanish Vice Counsel, Don Jose Rico, for intervention, but his efforts were to no avail.

In this version, Solica’s story had become very public and was no longer just the story of a defiant young woman, but a cause celebre. It is at this point that the Pasha was given the facts and that Solica was before him. Solica denied any intention of leaving the faith of her ancestors. Convinced that she would not recant, the Pasha notified the Sultan in Fez of what was happening and requested instructions as to how to proceed. In the meantime, Solica remained in prison. It is written that messengers from the wealthy Muslim families in Tangiers came to the prison to sway her heart. They promised her riches, wealth, prosperity – all the goods in the world, but it was all in vain. Even then, though isolated in a dreadful cell, Solica refused to listen and would not give in.

Some weeks later, the Pasha received an Imperial order to transfer Solica from Tangiers to Fez, and thus let the Sultan decide her fate. Her transfer and execution fee was to be paid by her father, who was threatened with 500 blows of the bastinado if he would not comply. Eventually the required sum was paid by Don Jose Rico as Solica’s father could not afford it. Solica was transferred from Tangiers to Fez, depending upon the account either dragged barefoot behind a donkey cart or tied to a mule. The journey took six days. Some of her relatives were allowed to accompany her.

The Sultan, Muley Abderrahman, had succeeded to the throne in 1822 and had exhibited protection of the Jewish community. He wished to calm the waters and reintegrate the Jewish communities of Fez and Tangier into the general society. The provocative nature of the situation roused passions and emotions in both the Muslim and the Jewish communities. Because of this, Solica was ordered to appear at court in front of the Sultan upon her arrival in Fez. Her beauty captured his imagination (or his son’s, depending on the tale) and he, supposedly, fell in love with her and proposed to raise her to the throne if she would revert to Islam and marry him. He commissioned a Muslim to conduct the delicate mission of catechizing the young Jewish woman. Solica held fast to her beliefs and refused to recant. She refused to eat the food in the prison because it was not kosher and appropriate food was provided by the Jewish community.

The Sultan handed the problem of the beautiful girl to Rabbi Rafael Hasserfaty, then the chief rabbi of Fez. The ha’cha’chamim and leaders of the Jewish community were ordered by the Sultan’s judge to extract a confession from the girl that she had previously converted to Islam. Though they were inspired by Solica’s dedication, they went to her and explained that the Jews of Morocco could be endangered if the authorities didn’t get what they want. They begged that she convert, and marry the Arab. Otherwise, they pleaded, the entire community would suffer. The pleading was to no avail. She remained resolved, responding that she would maintain her untainted commitment to Judaism until the very end. Some legends relate that the ha’cha’chamim rejoiced in their hearts.

According to Jewish versions of the story, prison guards were finally sent to brutalize and torture her, to forcefully persuade her to abandon her faith, convert and marry the Sultan. However, the torture, brute force, and terror fell short. “I cannot betray my God, the God of my ancestors, the God of the Universe.” The prison guards forcefully brought the Jewish leaders again to the prison, to command her to convert and marry the Muslim. She refused, outright. Solica remained strong in her heart and in her mind, and would not betray her faith.

According to recent articles, given the resolute attitude of Solica not to renounce her religion, the Sultan had no choice but to take into account the opinion of the Muslims of Fez, of Tangiers and of other parts of the empire. The political situation in Morocco was sensitive. France had conquered Algeria and was bearing down on Morocco. There had been widespread publicity of Solica’s case which had become a public issue and taken on a serious religious character. If it was clear that Solica could not be coerced into converting, any effort or attempt by a member of the court or by the sultan himself to reverse the sentence would appear to be a reaction to outside pressure and therefore an insult to Islam and its laws. The moment that witnesses testified that Solica was an apostate Muslim, the matter became public, and within the Moroccan context of 1834, such publicity served to warn others that death is the appropriate treatment for apostates from Islam. Discretion was not in Islam’s interest or in the interest of the young Jewess. The Sultan therefore decided to refer the matter to the main religious court for a ruling under Sharia law.

The Kadi gave Solica one last chance to recant so that she could live happily. Otherwise, she would be executed. Solica re stated that she had told the Kadi and the Pasha of Tangiers and the Sultan and the Kadi of Fez, as well as the rabbis of Fez, and anybody else who would listen that she had never renounced her religion. Stoic and impassive, she replied that she preferred death to conversion, as she was born Jewish and as a Hebrew she wished to die. The Kadi and his court ruled that the Jewess should be immediately beheaded, the event to take place in the public square, on market day, in the presence of an immense crowd of both Moors and Israelites. Romero described the emotions of the citizens of Fez on the day of the execution: “The Moors, whose religious fanaticism is indescribable, prepared, with their accustomed joy, to witness the horrid scene. The Jews of the city…were moved with the deepest sorrow; but they could do nothing to avert it…”

EXECUTION

The sultan instructed the executioner to wound Hachuel first and offer her one last chance to convert. He hoped that the girl would get scared, and accept the conversion, but Hachuel refused and preferred death to changing her religion. Her last words to the executioner were: “Do not make me linger—behead me at once—for dying as I do, innocent of any crime, the God of Abraham will avenge my death.” A very dramatic version of the story in Spanish relates, “With all his equipment, the executioner began his disgusting task. He abruptly parted the girl’s magnificent raven colored braids. With the well-sharpened knife, he made the first cut to the martyr’s neck. Solica, with her body bloodied from her wound, raised her eyes heavenward and muttered: Hear O Israel, Adonai our God, Adonai Unico. The right hand of the executioner separated the head from the trunk, which fell to earth in a pool of blood.” .

After her head was severed, the sultan displayed it on a high wall in Fez for all to see, so that the population could learn the terrible lesson of “the justice meted out in this country” and to teach a lesson to Jewish women in particular. The Jewish community of Fez was awestruck by the life and the death of Hachuel. They had to pay for the retrieval of her corpse, and the bloodstained earth for a Jewish burial at the Jewish cemetery. She was declared a martyr. One version holds that the Jews of the Burial Society rushed in, picked up the corpse and the earth generously soaked with blood, and wrapped a canvas bag around her. The body was then loaded onto the shoulders of two of the men moving toward the door of the Jewish quarter. Others followed, carrying the sacred bundle of blood-soaked earth. In order to break through the threatening and pursuing crowd, the Jewish men threw handfuls of coins to the left and to the right. The crowd responded eagerly, stopping to retrieve the money, which widened the distance between the Jews and the rabble. Upon reaching the Mellah, they found the door locked, as the authorities had been afraid of an invasion and pillaging of the Jewish Quarter. The men of the Burial Society detoured around the city, constantly being pursued by the fanatical mob to which the Jews continued to throw silver coins to appease them. They arrived at the foot of the great outer wall of the city where the Jewish cemetery was located. The wrapped body was hoisted across the high wall and carried through the Mellah by the Jews who formed two lines. A public burial was held so that all the Jewish men, women, and children of the Mellah could participate.

According to Isaac Abecassis-Hachuel (interviewed in November 1996 in Tangiers by Dina Hatchuel and Leora Hatchwell), the story he was told as a boy was that the ha’cha’chamim took up a collection of gold coins from the Jews in the Mellah. At night, they snuck out of the gates to the area where soldiers were guarding Solica’s head which was posted on the city wall. They threw gold coins left and right before the soldiers. As the soldiers scrambled to grab the coins, the Jews stole Solica’s head and scurried back into the Mellah. They buried her head, body, and the blood-soaked earth in the grave of Rabbi Eliayu Hassarfati who had died not long before. When the soldiers came looking for the head in the Mellah, they could not find it.

GRAVE

Veneration and the status of sainthood for women are unique to Morocco. Women tend to acquire their sainthood by virtue of their own good deeds and special qualities, rather than for being scholars and sages. Solica became venerated as a symbol of inspiration and sanctity for the Jews of Morocco. She was originally buried in the family plot of Rabbi Eliayu Hassarfati (1715-1805) in the ancient Jewish cemetery just outside the gates of the Mellah, called a gisa. When that cemetery was decommissioned in 1884, the remains were moved to a new cemetery that had grown out of the burial site for the pogrom victims of 1465, near the entrance to the Mellah, and opposite the Royal Palace. The remains of Rabbi Eliyahu and of Solica Hachuel were transferred with pomp and ceremony by the Jews of Fez to the current Jewish cemetery. It is said that when Solica’s remains were transported from the Old Cemetary to her final resting place, an aroma of myrrh emanated from her grave. Legend also has it that when her grave was to be exhumed and moved to the other cemetery, the men doing it became paralyzed and they thought they heard Solica telling them that only women can move her body so they had to get the women to do it. Solica is still buried in the Sarfaty family plot between two other venerated Jewish Moroccans: Rabbi Avner-Israel HaTsarfati (1827-1884), Rabbi Eliayu’s great great grandson, who requested to be buried next to Solica, and Rabbi Yehuda Ben-‘Attar (1656-1733). They rest together under a modest mausoleum in the middle of the Jewish cemetery of Fez.

Most female saints do not have shrines. Solica’s shrine is a distinct difference. Her tomb resides in the center of the Jewish cemetery of Fez in a small domed shrine. It overlooks a green and scenic hilly terrain. On the side of the tomb, a plaque in Hebrew and French recounts Solica’s saga. Her tombstone has inscriptions in both Hebrew and French. The French text reads:

Here lies Miss Solica Hatchouel,
born in Tangier in 1817
refusing to enter [rentrer] into the Islamic religion.
Arabs assassinated her
in Fez in 1834
torn away (or uprooting her) from her family.
The whole world mourns this
saintly child..

This text describes briefly Solica’s life and portrays her as a victim of Arab brutality.

The Hebrew text translated below emphasizes Sol’s life as a pure and virtuous martyr:

The gravestone of the righteous Soliqa Haguel, a virgin maiden who
greatly sanctified the Name of Heaven and died a martyr
in the glorious city of Fez in the year 5594 (1834) [and is] buried here.
May the Lord protect her.
May her merit protect us.
May it be God’s will.

I believe Solica's decision accorded with the ruling of Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Deah 157:2
G-d willing, and Bli Neder I will try to explain this more in a later post.

[edu]

Here is the censored version of the shulchan aruch YD 157:2
שולחן ערוך יורה דעה הלכות עבודת כוכבים סימן קנז

סעיף ב
כ] טז אסור לאדם לומר שהוא עובד כוכבים כדי שלא יהרגוהו. אבל אם כדי שלא יכירוהו שהוא יהודי  משנה מלבושו בשעת הגזרה, מותר כיון שאינו אומר שהוא עובד כוכבים
It is forbidden for a person to say he is a star worshiper in order that they don't kill him. But if it is in order that they don't recognize him as a Jew he can change his clothing in an hour of the decree; this is permissible because he does not say he is a star worshiper.
The term star worshiper was put as in as a code word for Gentile to appease the censors, but the older texts of the Shulchan Aruch before censorship was strong had the word Gentile in it, not star worshiper.
Rabbi Yosef Karo author of Shulchan Aruch, explains the source and the reasoning behind his ruling in his commentary on the Tur, who also deals with these areas of halacha.
First I will quote the censored Tur - which also has the code word star worshiper in it
טור יורה דעה הלכות עבודת כוכבים סימן קנז

אסור לאדם לומר שהוא עכו"ם כדי שלא יהרגוהו דכיון שאומר שהוא עכו"ם הרי מודה לדתם וכופר בעיקר
It is forbidden for a person to say he is a star worshiper (Gentile) for when he says he is a star worshiper (Gentile) he is admitting to their religion and denies a fundamental principle of faith (alt translation, denies G-d).
Rabbi Yosef Karo in his Beit Yosef commentary to the Tur gives several sources to back up the Tur.
בית יוסף יורה דעה סימן קנז

ובמדרש רבה פרשת וישלח (פרשה פ"ב אות ח) איתא שני תלמידים של רבי יהושע שינו עטיפתן בשעת השמד פגע בהם איסתרטוס משומד אמר להם אם בניה של תורה אתם תנו נפשכם עליה למה שניתם עטיפתכם ואם אין בניה אתם וכו' א"ל בניה אנו ועליה אנו נהרגים הרי מבואר שגם כי רצונם ליהרג בשביל התורה עם כל זה היו משנים מלבושיהם למלבושי נכרי שמא לא יכירום ולא ימיתום ע"כ. ומבואר הוא דלא מהני שינוי העטיפה אלא לשמא לא ישאלום מאיזה דת הם אבל אם ישאלום אסור להם לומר שהם גוים וכדכתב הרא"ש ז"ל והיינו דאמרו הנך תלמידים בניה אנו ועליה אנו נהרגיםו.

Translation: In Midrash Rabba Parshat Vayishlach (82:8} there was an incident where 2 disciples of Rabbi Yehoshua changed their wardrobe in the time of anti-Jewish decrees. A certain official who had abandoned his religion met up with them and said to them if you are sons of Torah give your lives for it, why did you change your outer wardrobe (that identifies them as Jews) and if you are not sons .... They responded we are sons of Torah and upon it we are killed. Behold it was clarified that although it was their will to be killed  for the sake of the Torah, nevertheless they would change their garments to the Garments of the non-Jews for perhaps they would not recognize them and would not put them to death,{ end of quote}. It is clarified that changing the garment only helps for the possibility, maybe they will not ask what religion they belong to. But if they ask it is forbidden to tell them that they are Gentiles and as the Rosh z"l wrote and this is what those disciples said. We are her sons and upon her we are killed.