A Trip to Israel — III

Masada.

Yesterday morning, we boarded buses at 7:30 a.m. and headed for Masada.  It is about an hour drive from Jerusalem, and we went through East Jerusalem on the way, stopping to view the city from the Eastern vantage point.

With the sun at our back, looking down and across at the Dome of the Rock and the hills of the city spread out before us, we got a view of Jerusalem even more stunning than the one the previous evening.

Then we passed the security wall (unfinished where we saw it, as the Israeli Supreme Court continues its review of the route), and the settlement of Maale Adumin, the most populous Israeli settlement, just outside the city boundary.  It looked like just another set of apartment complexes on a hill, newer than the residential buildings on the adjacent hills, but otherwise not noticeable had it not been pointed out to us.  It was hard to believe it “sabotages all efforts seeking to get the peace process back on track.”

At Masada, we climbed the “Snake Path” up its eastern side — a strenuous 45 minute trek up the side of the huge monument.  At the top, we spent more than an hour viewing the extensive set of buildings, wells, storage rooms, bedrooms, synagogue and King Herod’s palace that formed the structure of the extensive community of Masada during the first century.

In the small synagogue, a stone chapel in the round, we gathered to hear Rabbi Wolpe read the speech that Eleazar made to the leaders of the Masada community the last night, as they awaited the final assault of the Romans.  The speech was reconstructed by Josephus in his first century history ("The Jewish War"), based on the testimony of two women who survived that night:

“My loyal followers, long ago we resolved to serve neither the Romans nor anyone else but only God, who alone is the true and righteous Lord of men:  now the time has come that bids us prove our determination by our deeds. 

“At such a time we must not disgrace ourselves:  hitherto we have never submitted to slavery, even when it brought no danger with it:  we must not choose slavery now . . .

“For we were the first of all to revolt, and shall be the last to break off the struggle.  And I think it is God who has given us this privilege, that we can die nobly and as free men . . .

[L]et our possessions and the whole fortress go up in flames:  it will be a bitter blow to the Romans, that I know, to find our persons beyond their reach and nothing left for them to loot.  One thing only let us spare — our store of food:  it will bear witness when we are dead to the fact that we perished not through want but because, as we resolved at the beginning, we chose death rather than slavery.”

On a poster at Masada, there is the saying that accompanies the initiation of new people into the IDF:  “Masada shall not fall again.”

We went down the mountain by cable car, and traveled on to a hotel complex that appears amazingly in the middle of the barren rocks that surround the Dead Sea, where we stopped for lunch and a swim, and then traveled back to Jerusalem.

At 7 p.m., we walked from the hotel to the Western Wall, for the opening ceremony of Yom HaZikaron — Remembrance Day for the 20,368 service men and women fallen in the defense of Israel since November 1947 (the equivalent relative number for a country the size of the U.S. would be over one million).

At 8 p.m. a one-minute siren sounded across the country and everyone stood in silence, followed by a speech from President Moshe Katsav, and the Kaddish.