Masada

                                     by Chanah Haigh,     11^th grade,         New York

    The stars turned to a blue sky and still we climbed. Up and up and up, even when the path thinned to single file and the cliff edge reached out for us. Through the fatigue of waking up at four am and the physical strain of dragging our bodies up a mountain, we marched on. We had started in the dark at the bottom of  the mountain we could barely see yet as we reached higher the world was illuminated. Soft rays of the rising sun hit the sea below as we struggled through the never ending pass. People were doubled over or pouring water over themselves, all of us determinedly battling on despite the pain. The monotonous red stone couldn't tell us our progress as we stared at our feet, willing them to go on. And every time we glanced above, sure we were nearing the end, another turn in the path met our eyes. But then it was only five switchbacks left and then a hundred feet and a flight of stairs and suddenly we burst through the opening to the very top of the mountain. Beyond exhausted and swelling with the pride of our accomplishment, we didn't sit down until we had reached the wall looking over the Dead Sea and the sun and taken it the true magnitude of the height we had reached.

After a quick service under some shade we split into our class and took off in different directions. Traveling through ancient buildings, complete with waterways, David told us about the rich history of the mountain top. It was picked as a fortress for its defensive advantage, it was a very hard mountain to scale, as we could attest, and an entire army could surely never have gotten up there in one piece. Its history could be divided into three main stories, each more fascinating and violent than the last.

King's Rule

King Herod, the great. Well, I suppose great is a relative term. He built up much of Jerusalem and the temple mount in his reign from37 to 4 BCE. But he was constantly clinging to the power the Romans had granted him as their puppet king, and was always terrified of losing it.  In his paranoia he built up a fortress on Masada, one of many he could retreat to in times of danger. He built it lavishly, a palace befitting the grand king, built it in the image of the Romans. It was strategically placed and well stocked. Trenches guided the water from the desert hill tops to caves and water passage ways halfway up the mountain, after that slaves and animals would bring it up the rest of the way.

Sally With Her Dried Fruit

Herod's Water Ways

We had smuggled in dried fruit and sat in what used to be a bedroom, with a magnificent view. We ate our replica of ancient fruit and imagined what it would be like to wake up to the grandeur and natural beauty of King Herod's palace. And then to our dismay considered how easily a sleepy person in the morning might topple over the edge. We put ourselves in the mindset of a paranoid king with too many enemies, too much money, too much allegiance to the Romans, and not enough subjects who actually liked him.

Life

The zealots who refused to live under Roman rule went up the mountain in year 66. Under the leadership of Elazar Ben Yair, they conquered Masada after the destruction of the Second Temple. They had captured the fortress from the Romans in a sneak attack in the dead of night. Much of King Herod's old technologies they used to sustain life, such as his water tunnels and bath house. With their families they built a working Jewish community. The 900 Jews had a synagogue, houses, mikvaot, plenty of water and enough food to last them for years. In their little pocket of the world they created what might have been, for all they knew, the last Judaism in the world.

David Imitating The Zealot's Sneak Attack

The beit knesset of the Jews resided in an old amphitheater of King Herod's. In the corner was a geniza where they stored old holy texts that had been broken beyond repair. We sat in their old seats and wondered what it must have been like to pray there, in the Roman-like stage. We theorized whether the area held men and women, or just men and how that represented all the changes Judaism had made over time. WE have the same religion as these ancients, but maybe different traditions and beliefs despite that.

Defeat

Romans had been setting up camp around the mountain for a while. More and more campfires could be seen at night, as the predators surrounding the Jews grew. It was a threat to the Romans to have even one community not under their rule, but the mountain was nearly impregnable and the Jews had spent 3 years on its top in safety. It was steep and could only be climbed single file. But eventually, the Romans were able to build a ramp and a battering ram. The Jews saw this and knew the end was near. But these were the people who fled to the dessert to avoid Roan rule, they weren't about to accept it now. According to the historian Josephus, they didn't accept it.  All the men went home and killed their wives and families. Then they reconvened and picked lots and ten men cut the necks of all the rest. Then lots were drawn again and one man killed the other nine. Then that man killed himself. They had burned their whole village to the ground, razed their houses and destroyed everything that might have been a spoil of war to the Romans. They left only one thing untouched, their food, a message to the Romans  saying “We could have survived longer”. In one final act of rebellion, they left on the floor of their synagogue a quote from Ezekiel's prophesy of dry bones, the prophesy that we would return to Israel, that we would be a great people again.

We sat among the ruins looking out at the Dead Sea. Leaning against the rocks, we contemplated whether these people who died willingly were ones to admire or condemn. Where they wrong for taking their own lives, surely they were for taking the lives of their families. Is this really what we should be aspiring to as a people? This is a story that was recounted at army ceremonies and bnei mitzvot and had truly become a symbol of Israeli independence, until the last 20 years when we started reconsidering the wisdom of promoting group suicide. On the other hand, these were a people who knew the end was coming, they could die at the hands of the enemy or be taken into slavery to be raped and beaten. Maybe they were exercising the last right they had left, the choice of how they died. In the end they took it into their own hands, they died on their own call, not by the swords of the Romans.

Three stories happened on the mountain in the desert, but I'd like to add a fourth. The story of a group of  highschoolers who faced a mountain and managed to climb it. Who went up to learn the history of their people and revel in collective memory. Who achieved a goal that looked so daunting from the ground, but one they fought for and were able to conquer.