Throughout history, Jews are said to have chosen violence and death over bowing down to a pagan idol.
The festival of Hanukkah marked in December celebrates the anti-Hellenistic revolt of the Maccabees that was supposedly sparked when one priest, Mattathias, refused to sacrifice to an idol. Similarly, many Jews were prepared to die in the mass protests successfully staged, around 40 C.E., against the decision by the Roman emperor Caligula to erect a statue of himself in the Temple in Jerusalem. And many did die when the Bar-Kochba revolt exploded in 132 C.E. after the emperor Hadrian built a shrine to Jupiter on the ruins of that same Temple.
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