18 Jewish martyrs

Akiva ben Yosef, also known as Rabbi Akiva, was a leading Jewish scholar and sage, a tanna of the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second century. Rabbi Akiva was a leading contributor to the Mishnah and to Midrash halakha. He is also sometimes credited with redacting Abraham's version of the Sefer Yetzirah, one of the central texts of Jewish mysticism. He is referred to in the Talmud as Rosh la-Hakhamim "Chief of the Sages". He was executed by the Romans in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt.

Mordechai Anielewicz was the leader of the Jewish Fighting Organization, which led the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; the largest Jewish insurrection during the Second World War, which inspired further rebellions in both ghettos and extermination camps. His character was engraved as a symbol of courage and sacrifice, and to this day his image represents Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.

Dora Bloch, a dual Israeli-British citizen, was a hostage on Air France Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris. The flight was hijacked on 27 June 1976 after a stopover in Athens and rerouted to Entebbe, Uganda. Bloch became ill on the plane and was taken to a hospital in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. She was not rescued with the other hostages during Operation Entebbe, and went missing from the hospital. Her disappearance led to Britain cutting diplomatic ties with Uganda. Her body was discovered in 1979 in a sugar plantation near the capital. In February 2007, declassified British documents confirmed that she was killed on the order of Ugandan president Idi Amin.

Eleazar was a Jewish man whose story is portrayed in 2 Maccabees 6:18-31. Verse 18 describes him as "one of the leading teachers of the law", and "of distinguished bearing". According to verse 24 he was ninety at the time of his death. Under a persecution instigated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Eleazar was forced to open his mouth and eat pork, but he spat it out and submitted to flogging. He was then privately permitted to eat meat that he could pretend was pork, but he refused and was flogged to death. The narrator relates that in his death he left "a heroic example and a glorious memory,".

Sol Hachuel was a Jewish heroine who was publicly decapitated when she was 17 years old. She was executed in 1834 for alleged apostasy from Islam—apparently without ever having converted to Islam. According to The Jewish Encyclopedia Hachuel "was a martyr to her faith, preferring death to becoming the bride of the sultan." She is considered a tzadeket (saint) by some Jews and is also revered by some Muslims. Jews call her Sol HaTzaddikah, while Arabs call her Lalla Suleika.

Rabbi Haninah ben Teradion or Hananiah ben Teradion was a teacher in the third Tannaitic generation. He was a contemporary of Eleazar ben Perata I and of Halafta, together with whom he established certain ritual rules. He was one of the Ten Martyrs murdered by the Romans for ignoring the ban on teaching Torah.

Ishmael ben Elisha ha-Kohen was one of the prominent leaders of the first generation of the Tannaim.

Yom Tov of Joigny, also denoted of York was a French-born rabbi and liturgical poet of the medieval era who lived in York, and died in the massacre of the Jews of York in 1190. A Hebrew language hymn attributed to him, transliterated "Omnam Kayn" or "Omnam Ken" is still recited in Eastern Ashkenazi synagogues each year on the evening of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. He was a student of Rabbenu Tam.

The Exile of Mawzaʻ Hebrew: גלות מוזע‎, pronounced [ğalūt mawzaʻ];‎ 1679–1680, is considered the single most traumatic event experienced collectively by the Jews of Yemen, in which Jews living in nearly all cities and towns throughout Yemen were banished by decree of the king, Imām al-Mahdi Ahmad, and sent to a dry and barren region of the country named Mawzaʻ to withstand their fate or to die. Only a few communities, viz., those Jewish inhabitants who lived in the far eastern quarters of Yemen were spared this fate by virtue of their Arab patrons who refused to obey the king's orders. Many would die along the route and while confined to the hot and arid conditions of this forbidding terrain. After one year in exile, the exiles were called back to perform their usual tasks and labors for the indigenous Arab populations, who had been deprived of goods and services on account of their exile.

A Memorbuch is a book dedicated to the memory of martyrs in the Ashkenazi world.

Solomon Molcho, or Molkho, originally Diogo Pires was a Portuguese Jewish mystic and messiah claimant. When he met with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to urge the creation of a Jewish army, the emperor turned him over to the Inquisition and he was burned at the stake.

Daniel Pearl was an American journalist who worked for The Wall Street Journal. He was kidnapped and later decapitated by terrorists in Pakistan.

Steven Joel Sotloff was an American-Israeli journalist. In August 2013, he was kidnapped in Aleppo, Syria, and held captive by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

Israel Wachser was a Russian writer of Yiddish and Hebrew short stories and children's literature.

Elchonon Bunim Wasserman was a prominent rabbi and rosh yeshiva (dean) in prewar Europe. He was one of the closest students of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan and a noted Talmid Chacham. In the interwar period, he served as rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Ohel Torah-Baranovich.

Katarzyna Weiglowa (Wajglowa), was a Polish woman who was burned at the stake for apostasy. She converted from Roman Catholicism to Judaism or to Judaizing nontrinitarianism, and was executed in Kraków after she refused to call Jesus Christ the Son of God. She is regarded by Unitarians and Jews as a martyr.

The woman with seven sons was a Jewish martyr described in 2 Maccabees 7 and other sources, who had seven sons that were arrested by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who forced them to prove their respect to him by consuming pig meat. When they refused, he tortured and killed the sons one by one in front of the unflinching and stout-hearted mother.

Chaim Yellin was a Yiddish poet and leader of the resistance movement in the Kovno Ghetto during the German occupation of Lithuania.