Hey, I’m Noam Weissman and this is Unpacking Israeli History, the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the most intense, historically fascinating, and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history. This episode of Unpacking Israeli History is generously sponsored by the Zalik Foundation Junior Board. If you want to sponsor an episode of Unpacking Israeli History, or you just want to say what’s up, get at me at noam@unpacked.media.
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Last week, I told you a really intense story.
It started with me climbing a mountain, which isn’t my favorite thing to do at 5am. I did, though, because Masada is a must-see. But as I mused last week, why?
Unlike Jerusalem, Masada was never a rallying cry or aspiration for the Jewish people. Sure, it’s a historic fortress with Roman-era ruins, but Israel is absolutely littered with historic fortresses and Roman-era ruins. So why is Masada such a must-see? Why does it top every itinerary, captivate so many people?
Well, you’re about to find out. Today is the day we talk about it.
But first, we need to do a quick recap of everything we learned last week, because the history is dense and complicated, and none of this will make sense unless it’s clear.
So. It’s 66 CE, and the first of three Roman-Jewish wars has just begun. (Oh, yeah, somehow, there were two more after this one. Never let it be said that the Jews went into exile meekly. No dice, not what happened.)
Ancient Judea was split into factions who seriously disagreed about how to handle the Roman occupation of Judea. But instead of merely saying mean things about each other online, like too many of us do today, some of these factions would kill or die for their beliefs – and take everyone else down with them.
At the top of the heap were the priestly elites, aka the Sadducees. These were the aristocrats, whose answer to the Roman occupation was more or less “go along to get along.” As the priestly elites, the Sadducees had it pretty good as long as they kept their mouths shut and didn’t complain about things like having their tax shekels used to fund the construction of pagan temples.
For the scholarly elites, aka the Pharisees, things weren’t quite so simple. They really, really did not appreciate the whole “being ruled by pagans” thing. But the Pharisees responded in the best way they knew how: by studying Torah, carrying on their traditions, and hoping that faith and Jewish continuity would eventually lead them out of this mess unscathed.
Then there were the “outsiders,” or the Essenes – a boys-only doomsday cult that believed the End of Days was near. Mostly, these guys hung out in the desert, bathed themselves frantically, wore white robes, and wrote slash collected the corpus that would eventually become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Essenes had left Jerusalem in a huff sometime in the second century BCE, disgusted by what they viewed as a “corrupted” priesthood, so by the time Jews began revolting against the Romans in 66 CE, the Essenes had been waiting for the apocalypse for close to 200 years.
Rounding out these factions was an even more intense group known collectively as Zealots. These were the men and women who believed that collaboration with Rome amounted to treason, and they weren’t squeamish about dispatching traitors.
But the Zealots were hardly united. They, too, were riven by splinter factions with serious ideological disagreements. And the most extreme of these splinter factions were the Sicarii, named for their sicae, the curved daggers they used to assassinate Romans and Jews alike. (If you’ve seen the movie Sicario, yep, that’s where the name comes from: a rebel faction of first-century Jewish assassins.)
And though their exploits were more daring than the Pharisees’ studying, or the Sadducees’ hobnobbing, or the Essenes’ constant baths, they were also the most morally problematic. Because on the whole, Zealots and Sicarii had no problem killing fellow Jews, which is why they burned Jerusalem’s food stores as the capital buckled under Roman siege.
There were two reasons for this borderline-suicidal extremism. One, they believed, unwisely, in my opinion, that desperation would inspire people to fight more fervently. But each faction was also jockeying for as much control of Jerusalem as possible, and they thought that burning one another’s food stores would help the fight.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. The infighting and mass starvation made it a breeze for Rome to take the city, destroy the Temple, kill hundreds of thousands of Jews, take roughly 100,000 captives, and then hunt down all the rebel strongholds still holding on.
By 72 CE, only one stronghold was left: Masada, a mountain fortress in the eerie, remote, and unforgiving Judean desert. And reminder, much of the story of Masada is, shall we say, factually murky. It comes exclusively from the historian Josephus, the controversial Roman-Jewish historian who gives us the only account of the mass suicide at Masada. And we have reasons to believe he may not have been the most reliable narrator – reasons we discussed at length last week.
According to Josephus, at the top of this mountain at the end of the world were 967 Sicarii rebels who knew the Romans were coming. Rather than let themselves be taken, each man killed his family and then himself. At the end, only ten were left to kill one another and make sure the job was done.
But the job wasn’t done. Two women and five children managed to escape the slaughter by hiding in a water cistern. And when the Romans came, these survivors were the only ones left, recounting the story of the martyrs of Masada to Josephus himself.
For centuries, few Jews read Josephus. And the story of Masada hadn’t made it into any other sources – not the Talmud, not the Jewish liturgy, not the history books. And the story might have remained a maybe subtle footnote in Jewish history if not for a strange confluence of events that started with the Jewish Enlightenment and ended with a fateful expedition in 1942. And that is where we’re picking up today, in the conclusion of our two-part series on the story of Masada.
A lot of the background here comes from Professor Yael Zerubavel’s incredible book Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. I’m going to be quoting from her, and from Ari Shavit, throughout this episode.
Part Two, Chapter One: Apocalypse Now
They left Jerusalem in the dark.
46 Jewish teens, hand-picked leaders of a Zionist youth movement, and one 33-year-old teacher slash soldier slash semi-professional adventurer, headed for the most remote corner of the Judean desert.
They had food, sleeping bags, Bedouin guides with camels, and a bizarre amount of youthful energy considering the hour and the destination. As the landscape grew barren, and white hills gave way to a harsh, empty panorama of dust and rock, the teenagers belted out Hebrew songs that echoed off the canyon walls. Is there anything better than being 17, full of verve, and out of school on an adventure?!
Their leader, Shmaryahu Gutman, watched them with a mix of fear and pity and nostalgia. He was only 33, but he felt centuries older than these excitable teenagers, who had no idea yet of how little they really knew.
Gutman was once like them. Born in Scotland, but raised on a kibbutz, he grew up with the land of Israel under his feet and Zionism pumping through his veins. Despite his stocky build, he was agile as a mountain goat, and by 1942, he had already guided countless teenagers on hikes through every wadi and hilltop. He was one of the rising stars of the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community – an educator, an idealist, an adventurer. In short, Shmaryahu Gutman was the kind of guy who was born to guide a bunch of 17-year-olds up a deadly cliff in the middle of nowhere.
But in January 1942, the Nazi threat was growing. German forces made it to Libya, and then Egypt as the Brits struggled to hold on to the Middle East. At this moment, it was not inconceivable that the Third Reich might make its way to Palestine.
And where there are Nazis, there is death.
Gutman didn’t know the word “Auschwitz” yet. He couldn’t imagine the gas chambers, the crematoria, the naked, emaciated bodies stacked like cordwood in the dirt. He didn’t know that just three days earlier, on January 20, 1942, the innermost circle of the Nazi elite convened in a villa with a river view to hammer out the details of his people’s annihilation. That they agreed on a “Final Solution” to the “Jewish question.” He couldn’t know that within three years, a third of the world’s Jews would be gone.
If he were able to stop thinking about the war, he might admit that the Jews of Palestine are thriving. The Arab Revolt of the 1930s was over, the roving guerilla bands crushed. The Yishuv was booming. Tel Aviv cafés teemed with intellectuals and poets reviving the Hebrew language. The young hikers by his side were born in this land, raised on stories of pioneers, kibbutzim, drained swamps, blooming deserts. They have been groomed to help build a new world beyond their ancestors’ wildest dreams: a world in which Jews have a home. In which Jewish teens grow up free and unafraid.
But Gutman was not able to stop thinking about the war. And so he looked at all this youthful hope and optimism and felt nothing but fear. He understood how quickly it could all be snatched away. How thoroughly a dream could die, ground into the desert sand by a German jackboot, an Arab army, an indifferent world.
One of Gutman’s mentors, the labor leader Berl Katznelson, had recently said to him, “No man of words can express the horrors of these times, the great fear that engulfs us… the fate of Israel is about to be decided as it was not decided upon since the Destruction of the Temple, since we lost our land and liberty. Our history has not known such a time when the fire of destruction will surround at once all our diasporas across the globe.” Another mentor, Yitzhak Tabenkin, backed up the doom and gloom, warning “We are upon the abyss.”
As far as Gutman was concerned, there was only one thing keeping the Yishuv from the brink of that abyss: the next generation of Hebrew youth who have grown up free and fearless in their own land. But he knew that that freedom and fearlessness came with a price. There would be a battle ahead, and it was his job to prepare the next generation, starting with these 46 teenagers, the most promising youth leaders Gutman could find.
That was why he brought them to this sand-blasted nowhere, to climb towards the long-abandoned fortress where a thousand Jews once took their final stand.
But, and here I’m quoting Ari Shavit, in page 88 of My Promised Land, quote:
“Gutman knows that his enterprise is controversial. Even in Zionist circles, many regard the Zealots of Masada as brutal extremists who robbed, murdered, and finally committed suicide. David Ben Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency, is apprehensive about the Masada tale because it is a tale of death and destruction. But Gutman begs to differ. He believes that what he is promoting is not a Masada complex but a Masada paradox: only the young Hebrews willing to die will be able to ensure for themselves a secure and sovereign life. Only their willingness to fight to the end will prevent their end.”
Because to Gutman, Masada wasn’t just a historical site, but the key to the Jewish future, and he hoped that by the time he was done with these kids, the lessons of this fortress would be etched onto their souls.
If they managed to get there.
It took the entire day and the better part of a night. The Bedouin guides had lost their way in a maze of ravines. It was dark, and rocky, and the students had been at this all day, thirsty and tired and achy from shouldering their heavy packs for hours. But Gutman refused to let them rest. He knew how hard this journey would be. That was the point. He was steeling them against the disorientation, fatigue, and disappointment they would face again and again and again. He was toughening them up for the battles ahead.
So far, they were passing the test. Despite their exhaustion, the kids kept going. When someone fell, others lifted them up. When morale dipped, someone started to sing. All the while, Gutman watched, consumed with the worst-case scenario. If the Nazis arrive, would these young people stand their ground?
Would they be enough to hold back the dark?
It was after midnight when they finally spotted it, a black shadow against the desert sky, like the silhouette of a giant beached ship. It was massive and steep and isolated, a fortress that seemed to belong on some other, desolate planet.
Masada.
Suddenly, no one was tired.
They cheered. Despite the blisters on their feet and the ache in their shoulders, despite their thirst and exhaustion, they started running towards the mountain to camp under its shadow. It was far too dangerous to climb Masada in the dark. There were no paved paths or no cable cars in 1942. People had died scaling the Snake Path: the narrow, rocky trail that coils higher and higher up the cliffside. I love how matter-of-factly Professor Yael Zerubave describes it, quote:
“Youth trips to Masada led by Hebrew teachers took place as early as 1912 and continued through the 1920s and early 1930s. When casualties occurred, schools were forced to stop these trips.”
Gutman himself had almost died trying to scale the mountain, nine years before. But he survived, and he was determined that these excited students would survive as well – not just the trek, but the battle that everyone knew lay ahead. So Gutman sent them off to bed with a few lines from a poem they all know by heart: Masada, by the Ukrainian-born poet Yitzhak Lamdan. Dr. Zerubavel describes the poem as “one of the sacred texts of the myth, second only to Josephus’ historical narrative,” and when you read it, it’s not hard to understand why.
Hineh omdim lifnei chomat Metzudah, she’erit ha-pleitah olah b’ma‘aleha…
“Here we stand before the high wall of Masada, the remnant of slaughter climbs its height…”
They had studied this poem at school. But hearing it here, at the foot of Masada itself, hit different. They students understood that they were about to reenact a desperate journey, tracing the footsteps of Jews who came here as a last refuge nearly two millennia ago. And they couldn’t miss the fact that the poem doesn’t promise salvation or assure them that things will work out. Instead, it says: This is the last place. There is nowhere else. Or, as Dr. Zerubavel puts it, quote:
“For Jewish settlers in Palestine and especially for the first generation of New Hebrews, Masada was not simply a geographical site nor a mere episode from Antiquity. For them it represented a highly symbolic event that captures the essence of the ancient Hebrew ethos and helped define their own mission of national revival.”
That night, while the teenagers slept, Gutman stayed awake, reading maps and archaeology reports and Josephus’s account for the millionth time. He, at least, could see the parallels, could hear history echoing against the sheer cliffs. Masada was history, even myth. But it could just as easily become prophecy. And Gutman was terrified.
The climb up Masada the next morning was unforgiving. But eventually, everyone made it to the top, where the view stole whatever breath remained in their lungs.
Gutman walked them around the perimeter, pointing out Herod’s walls. These are the water cisterns carved into sheer rock, the storehouses that once held years of supplies. That is the Roman camp where the Tenth Legion once waited for the Zealots to surrender. And that is the siege ramp they built when it became clear no one was coming down.
Over the next five days, Masada became a classroom for them to hike and explore and discover. They got to know the fortress, to understand how its ancient defenders once lived. On the final night, Gutman gathered them in a cave among the ruins to read Josephus’ account of that final night. Quote:
“They hugged their women with much love and held the children to their hearts and kissed them for the very last time, tears in their eyes… And all slaughtered their brethren. And each one lay down on the ground by his dead wife and sons and held them in his arms… And the one left after them… thrust his sword into his own flesh and fell down dead by his slaughtered loved ones.”
Some of the teenagers had tears in their eyes. It was almost impossible to picture that scene without shuddering. Even Gutman, their tough leader, stood there hypnotized. He had kids, and his mind shied away from the nightmare unfolding in his imagination.
But he was acutely aware that 1942 was beginning to look as dark as the year 70, that another calamity lurked on the horizon. So Gutman took a breath and explained something important. This story might seem harsh, difficult to swallow. But Masada was not about suicide, not about despair. If his teenagers took anything away from this excursion, it should be this: there is power in refusing to submit. Jews are not commanded to go helplessly to their own slaughter.
Together, they recited Lamdan’s poem, intoning: “Masada shall not fall again.” Together, they sang Hatikvah. Together, they signed a pledge and buried it in a sealed bottle on the top of the mountain.
The teenagers who descended the next morning were not the same teenagers who arrived. These 46 youths spread the gospel of Masada throughout the Yishuv, and within months, the Jewish community contracted a serious case of Masada fever. Just a few months later, the mountain’s face was crawling with hungry young sabras. As German forces threatened the Middle East and Europe’s Jews clawed desperately at ghetto walls, Masada became the rallying cry of a generation.
The Yishuv’s young people began to understand that history may not repeat, but it rhymes, and this refrain was unbearably ominous. The centuries seemed to collapse in on themselves, until the young people of the Yishuv saw themselves in the rebels of first-century Judea.
This is how myths are born. How stories get built, piece by piece. How even the most hardened cynic finds themselves moved and inspired by a story of self-inflicted mass slaughter.
And then the war ended, and suddenly everyone knew the word Auschwitz. Everyone knew about gas chambers, about crematoria and emaciated bodies stacked like cordwood in the dirt. Everyone knew what Gutman didn’t, that morning he led 46 eager teens to Masada. The Nazis’ Final Solution had claimed one third of the world’s Jews, a catastrophe beyond even the Roman destruction. Another catastrophe loomed – this one, powered by uncertainty. Would there be a Jewish state or not? And: How long would a Jewish state even LAST in this neighborhood, anyway?
The Jews of 1945 and the rebels of 73 both watched their world go up in flames. They were witnesses to catastrophe, survivors forced to reckon with whatever came next. In the wake of the Holocaust, the myth hardened further, deepening the defiance of the Yishuv, of the Jewish people as a whole. Were the smokestacks of Auschwitz really any different from the columns of fire that engulfed the Temple, Judea, the world as it once was?
For many of the Zionist leaders of the time, there was a difference. Masada may have been the last refuge of a band of extremists, but at least those extremists died with dignity. At least they chose to die.
We’ve spoken at length about the Holocaust in Zionist thought. About the New Jew, and the need for Jewish power. Zionist leaders even created a whole philosophy called Shelilat HaGolah, aka “the Negation of Exile,” that described Exile as a kind of disease – an “Exile mentality” of humiliation and defenselessness. The only cure was to become tough, self-reliant, heroic: a New Jew unafraid to fight.
Which made the victims of the Holocaust – not to mention the survivors – extremely inconvenient. The leaders of the Yishuv simply could not fathom the horrors of Nazi Europe. And in order to confront it, in order to begin to understand how six million people can disappear in just six years, they held desperately to a comforting story about everything they would have done differently.
They would have emulated the Sicarii; they would have fought til the end; they would have resisted. If the Jews of Europe did not resist, that was on them.
It’s an ugly, shocking sentiment until you remember one thing: this, too, was a response to national trauma. Because a Jew in 1945 Palestine had the Holocaust in the rearview mirror, and a near-certain bloodbath on the horizon. Sandwiched between two apocalypses, the only choice you could make was how to die.
I’m quoting Dr. Zerubavel again, who writes, quote:
“The prominent socialist leader Yitzhak Gruenbaum presented the following argument. ‘If the Germans had encountered a Jewish armed resistance in Poland, it would not have made our situation worse, for it was impossible for it to be worse than it is, but our honor would have been much greater in the eyes of the world.’ …The significance of the Masada defenders’ example was thus explicitly juxtaposed with the ‘disgrace’ of the Jews’ behavior in Europe.”
End quote.
It sounds dramatic, it sounds insane, but as someone who hasn’t lived through an apocalypse, I don’t think I have the right to judge. Just to explain, from my comfortable distance of more than 80 years, why Masada took on such importance after 1945.
But Eyal and Avi and I climbed up Masada well after 1945. And I have enough distance now, enough privilege, enough space to poke holes in the myth. Not because I’m trying to take anything away from this story, or the people who promoted it, or to somehow imply that they were wrong.
But because this is Unpacking Israeli History. And examining myths/stories/memory/history is what we do. Not to judge them, but to understand. And that means that we need to consider the possibility that maybe Josephus was indulging in some myth-making of his own, which is so meta, such a turducken of mythmaking that I can’t even handle it.
So, let’s tie this all together in our final chapter: is the story of Masada even true? What does it mean? And…how should we feel about it?
Part 3: An Unreliable Narrator
Normally, in a story, you trust the narrator, right? They’re the conduit between you and the characters. They’re how you know what’s happening in the first place.
But some narrators are sneaky. Unreliable.
They make things up. They’re biased. They omit crucial information.
Personally, I kind of love an unreliable narrator in a novel or a TV show. Think of Gone Girl, or Fight Club. I love the moment when you realize you’ve been duped, when you suddenly understand that you can’t trust anything you’ve been told. If done right, an unreliable narrator is a really excellent conceit.
In a history text, though? Not so much.
And look. In some ways, every historian is an unreliable narrator. Everyone has biases. Everyone chooses the facts they want to highlight and the facts they want to omit. But some historians are less reliable than others. And that goes double for one Flavius Josephus, AKA Yosef ben Matityahu.
As I’ve now said about a billion times, his is the only contemporaneous account of the story of Masada – and he wasn’t even there. Add that to the fact that he was writing under Roman patronage, with all the biases that entailed, and you have to wonder: how much of this should we believe?
Seriously, think about it. Before he switched sides, Josephus had commanded a rebel faction in the Galilee. By his own account, he and his comrades entered into a collective suicide agreement – a pact not unlike the one he later described at Masada.
Except Josephus didn’t die. He surrendered. He survived.
Which means the man who gave us the most famous story of “death before surrender” is himself someone who chose surrender over death. You feel?
And he didn’t just surrender and beg for mercy. He became an interpreter, an advisor, an aide to his former enemy, and when Emperor Vespasian granted him his freedom, Josephus became a Roman client, getting paid to write his histories.
Talk about an unreliable narrator.
You could ask, “Was Josephus lying?” You could. But that’s a question we may never know. So here’s the question I want to explore: what does Josephus need this story to do? What function does Masada serve for him?
Just like his doomed subjects, Josephus had also witnessed the apocalypse. His side lost, badly. The Romans crushed the revolt, destroyed Jerusalem, and razed the Temple to the ground. And despite his apparent comfort with Roman patronage, Josephus had to have been trying to explain how this catastrophe befell his people – if not to a wider audience, at least to himself… much like the leaders of the Yishuv fought for reasons to explain how it was possible that six million Jews had vanished in less than a decade.
Through that lens, it’s not surprising that Josephus recounts Elazar ben Yair’s long, elegant speeches – which are strikingly, and suspiciously, polished. He claims his source is the handful of survivors who secreted themselves in the water cistern, but how likely were they to have remembered each word of that speech?
To be fair, ancient historians regularly included speeches in their histories. It was standard practice, to dramatize motives, clarify stakes, and give shape to events. It wasn’t considered lying, but the standard practice of the day. Thucydides (thoo-SIH-duh-deez) did it. Livy (LIV-ee) did it. So while Elazar Ben Yair might have given a rousing speech, might even have hit on the same themes that Josephus does, it’s almost certainly not the speech that Josephus set down in his history. That is an invention of an author who understands the power of rhetoric.
So the speeches don’t invalidate Josephus’ account, or even make him an unreliable narrator, because we’re supposed to know he constructed the speeches himself.
But what about the rest of the story? The defensive walls, the siege, the battering ram, the mass slaughter? Was all that true, too? Or just another element of mythmaking?
Centuries later, archaeologists would find evidence to corroborate large chunks of Josephus’s account. All these years later, and the Roman camps, the massive assault ramp, remain etched into the landscape like fossils. And at the top of the mountain: evidence of fire and great destruction. Those tiny ostraca (oh-STROCK-ah) with 11 names. And the remains of 28 human beings: ancient bones preserved by desert air.
But 28 is a far cry from 967. If nearly everyone died on top of that mountain… where are their remains?
Now, none of that is proof of one interpretation or another. Those bones were up there through centuries of weather and erosion and wear. And hey, for all we know, the Romans cleared all the bodies away, or set them on fire, or pushed them off the cliff. We just don’t know. How can we?
So scholars are left to decide:
Did the siege happen? Almost certainly.
Did the stronghold fall? Also yes. The rebels at the top were doomed from the start.
But how many rebels were clustered there, whether they committed mass suicide, and why – those questions are still open for lively debate, which means Masada is both history and narrative. And that matters. Because how you interpret the ending depends on what you think actually happened – and what you think it means.
Because the rebels in that fortress were complicated. At least, according to Josephus.
Yes, they were fighting Roman tyranny. But – again, according to Josephus, who had many reasons to villainize them – they were also religious extremists with no problem killing fellow Jews. Remember, as we talked about in our last episode, over the Passover holiday of 67 CE, a handful of warriors made their way to the village of Ein Gedi, where they slaughtered 700 fellow Jews, burned the village, seized its supplies, and made their way back to their fortress.
When you consider all of that, the story becomes a little more complicated. No one in this story is either perfect or innocent. Not the Romans, not the Sicarii, and not the historian paid to recount this tale.
And maybe that’s why the rabbis shied away from commemorating this story. Maybe they thought it was better to let the memory of the Sicarii die. To let Jewish history forget this kind of extremism, which motivates a father to kill his son, a Jew to raise his hand to a fellow Jew.
Because Judaism loves life. “Choose life” is a Biblical imperative, a moral obsession. Saving a life overrides almost every other commandment. A Jew is allowed to martyr himself only to avoid committing idolatry, murder, or certain forbidden sexual acts. In every other instance: choose life.
That kind of martyrdom has a name: Kiddush Hashem – sanctifying God’s name. But Judaism does not romanticize the martyrs who chose death over renouncing Judaism. It mourns them. And there were many such martyrs – most notably, as the First Crusade rampaged through Europe, devastating every Jewish community they could find.
So why do they get Lamentations written about them, when the Sicarii at Masada do not?
If captured, the Sicarii at Masada could have looked forward to one of two scenarios: instant death, which was probably preferable; or a short and brutal life of torture, enslavement, and humiliation, in which they might have been asked to commit murder or perform prohibited sexual acts.
But might have is a possibility, not a certainty.
In the course of my research, I found a fascinating article in the journal Tradition called “Masada – In the Light of Halakhah,” aka Jewish law, by Rabbi Dov Frimer. It’s a super worthwhile read that I’ll link to in the show notes. In the article, Rabbi Frimer discusses this exact point. It’s a thorny question worth centuries of discussion – again, the article is super interesting, and I highly recommend reading it. But here’s the other thing. This question is also… unpleasant. It imparts a lesson that perhaps the rabbis did not want to teach. So perhaps that’s why the story of Masada never made it into the liturgies, the histories, the fast days. Ultimately, it was a tragedy, made by people who had been just as extreme in life.
The sages who preserved Judaism after the Temple’s destruction were focused above all on survival. And the best way to ensure Jewish survival, they believed, was through learning, through adherence to Jewish law, through community and continuity and pragmatic adaptation without surrendering Jewish ideals.
So, instead of writing about Masada, the rabbis of the Talmud preserved a different story from that era. They recounted the story of a rabbi named Yohanan ben Zakkai, who – with the help of his Zealot nephew – struck a secret pact with the Romans to escape Jerusalem and establish the Torah learning academy at Yavne. And though he was smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin, he did not choose death, but continuity. Not martyrdom, but survival. It took a deal with the devil to ensure the next generation of Jews. That’s the story that the Talmud tells.
And as generation after generation focused on survival, the legend of the Sicarii went quiet for a time, until it was dusted off and given new life by the scholars of the Enlightenment. Masada’s comeback arc actually started in the 19th century, when Jews re-discovered Josephus, who for centuries was mostly read by Christians. The Jewish world didn’t care much for this so-called “historian” who surrendered and assimilated. But at the dawn of the Jewish Enlightenment, someone translated Josephus’ works into Hebrew, and suddenly, Masada re-entered the chat, a 2,000 year old relic that fit perfectly with this new Zionist ethos.
Along with the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba, the Sicarii at Masada tattooed themselves into the psyche of the Yishuv. Jewish warriors casting off the yoke of the oppressor in the wake of catastrophe? For the fledgling Yishuv, these figures represented defiance and fearlessness, a comfortable wielding of power. And what was Zionism if not the ultimate declaration of Jewish defiance, fearlessness, and power?
So when Yitzhak Lamdan – the sole survivor of a pogrom that killed his entire family – published his epic poem Masada in 1927, his refrain echoed ominously through the Yishuv: “Masada shall not fall again!”
Not a hollow platitude, but a warning to a small, embattled community surrounded by hostile enemies, unsure of its future, but certain there was nowhere else to go. As Nazi forces marched through North Africa, Zionist leaders began formulating a “Masada Plan”– not on Masada itself, but on the Carmel mountains in Haifa, where they planned to fight to the last man if the Germans ever came to Palestine.
And like Elazar Ben Yair’s speeches, their rhetoric was both stirring and tragic. Yitzhak Tabenkin decreed that “not even one of us should survive” if it meant banishing the Nazis. Yitzhak Gruenbaum urged a last stand, a glorious death that would become, in his words, “a Masada legend.” It’s like the patriotic gloss put on the death of Joseph Trumpeldor, the one-armed defender of Tel Hai, whose famous last words It is good to die for one’s country are both convenient and sort of unbelievable.
But myths care more about the truth you feel in your bones than the literal truth. And against the backdrop of WWII, Masada felt true. The honorable defiance, a refusal to be marched helplessly into the abyss, seemed heroic.
So of course the next generation of Zionists began scaling the Snake Path for inspiration, reading Lamdan and Josephus once they made it to the top and swearing that Masada would not fall again, taking on the responsibility of making sure that this time, the stronghold stayed strong. This was their task as they confronted the end of the world. Much later, Shmaryahu Gutman would claim that the Masada spirit forged in the early 1940s “decided the fate of 1948” and helped shape the future state. That might be overstated, but still. That’s the power of national myths. That’s the power of storytelling.
And it was the need for this national myth explains why the early Zionist movement retrofitted the Sicarii from uncompromising extremists to Old-New Jews par excellence. In the wake of catastrophe, Masada became a kind of national therapy by injecting a story of defiance straight into the bloodstream. The mass suicide blurred, the murder of children softened. And the Sicarii’s raid on Ein Gedi, or the Zealots’ burning of Jerusalem’s storehouses? Erased completely. Too morally fuzzy.
So when Yigael Yadin led the large-scale excavation of the site in 1963, the legend grew even bigger. (Nerd corner: Yadin was the second-ever IDF Chief of Staff and world-renowned archaeologist, as well as mortal enemy of Moshe Dayan, who had a tendency to pilfer, AKA steal ancient ruins for his own collection. But that’s a drama for another time.) The dig, which was heavily publicized, drew thousands of volunteers – half scientific enterprise, half national event. And when Yadin presented findings that seemed to confirm Josephus’ tale – like the mysterious ostraca (oh-STROCK-ah) – the Israeli public went wild. The myth was true!
So youth movements kept up their punishing hikes. So did soldiers, swearing their allegiance to the IDF. With their comrades and commanders watching, new recruits gathered on the summit to conclude their oath with the declaration, Lamdan’s famous line, “Masada shall not fall again.”
I’ve spoken to friends who did their induction at Masada. They say it felt like joining an ancient chain of defenders. That’s exactly the point. The IDF – the modern Jewish fighting force – is explicitly linking itself to Masada’s legacy of “no surrender.” The subtext: we will hold this line, we will never let an enemy destroy us, even if we have to fight to the last.
By the end of the 60s, Masada was a sacred heritage site drawing roughly one million tourists each year, complete with a cable car, a sound-and-light laser show, even a restaurant up at the top. To this day, school trips go up the Snake Path. Foreign dignitaries get the sunrise photo op. Tour buses roll in by the hour.
Masada isn’t off the beaten path anymore, but a fixed point on the map of Israeli identity. But we know the long path it traveled to get there, the hurdles it encountered along the way. And that just makes me, and Carl, more enthralled by it… not less.
So that’s the story of Masada, and here are your five fast facts – and again, for the millionth time, we’re saying “fact” with a grain of salt here.
- After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, 967 Jewish men, women, and children took refuge in an Herodian-era fortress, 1500 feet up a mountain.
- Most of these people were Sicarii – the most extreme and violent of the rebel factions, who had killed fellow Jews during the war.
- When the Romans finally arrived to rout them, these Sicarii rebels committed mass suicide rather than be taken alive.
- At least… that’s the story told by the Jewish historian Josephus, though his reliability as a narrator is up for debate.
- Perhaps because of its disturbing ending, this story was more or less forgotten for 1700 years, until the Zionist movement revived it in the wake of the Holocaust, making it a national legend and a cornerstone of Israeli identity.
Those are your five fast facts, but here’s one enduring lesson as I see it.
As you’ve been hearing me waffle on, I don’t know what to do with Masada. As a cornerstone of Israeli identity? As a go-to national symbol? Should a story that ends in mass suicide be at the center of a tradition that insists, again and again, on choosing life?
Like the rebels atop Masada, early Israelis faced a constant existential threat. And like all the Jews who survived the First Jewish-Roman War, early Israelis were grappling with calamity.
Two thousand years later, in the wake of another cataclysm, a shattered people found refuge in a myth.
And I get it. I GET IT. Of COURSE early Israelis found a kind of comfort and meaning in this extremely dark story. Like the rebels atop Masada, they were confronting the destruction of their world.
The Holocaust had shattered the Jewish world. Millions murdered. Communities erased. Powerlessness exposed.
Suddenly, Masada felt terrifyingly relevant. So they latched on to it, blunting its sharper edges. In the retellings, extremists became heroes. Mass suicide draped itself in a hero’s cape.
And in the early years of the state, when six million ghosts haunted every street corner and existential threats loomed from every side, Masada fulfilled a necessary purpose. This story inspired a generation of young Israelis to stand tall, to stand firm, to refuse to surrender. To live – and maybe die – for something bigger and more important than themselves: the freedom of Zion.
But no one can sustain a siege mentality indefinitely. And in the nearly 80 years since Israel battled its way into existence, the map has changed.
For all the threats that surround the Jewish state, Israel is no longer the underdog. And though it does sometimes feel as though the entire world is burning, the Jewish people have the benefit of two thousand years of hindsight. We know that the Sicarii and the Zealots did not preserve the Jewish people. Their uncompromising stance – and their lack of squeamishness about killing fellow Jews – called down the catastrophe.
So who preserved Judaism? Who made sure Jews continued to exist even after the apocalypse? Who guided the Jewish people through the next two thousand years?
The rabbis did. The uncle of a Zealot, Rav Yohanan ben Zakkai, not the Zealot himself.
Judaism survived not because of Masada, but because it chose life again and again – even if choosing life meant compromising, shaking hands with the devil. And Zionism succeeded not because Jews were willing to die, but because they insisted on living when they had every right to give up.
So what do I tell the next kid I bring up here with me? How do I instill pride, without glorifying death? How do I honor the bravery of Masada’s defenders without romanticizing the divisiveness and refusal to compromise with their Jewish brothers and sisters that brought them to the top of that mountain?
In his final speech, Elazar ben Yair encouraged his people, “how good it will be to carry our freedom to our grave.” But I don’t want the next generation to carry their freedom to the grave. I want them to carry it into life. I don’t want Judaism to be reduced to a heroic but tragic story. I want Judaism to continue, with all the myriad mundane choices that entails.
Which means that maybe it’s time for the national symbol to change.
Masada can still be a national icon – but maybe it should be knocked off the top of tourist itineraries by a more modern icon.
Kibbutz Be’eri, with over 100 people killed. Kfar Aza. Nir Oz. The Nahal Oz military base. The grounds of the Nova music festival, where 360 innocent souls were gunned down without mercy, for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For the crime of wanting to live.
None of these martyrs chose death. All of them had something to live for. All of them just wanted to live.
And maybe it is their lesson we should be teaching now. Not the lesson of extremists who committed suicide rather than be taken alive, but the lesson of 1,200 souls who just wanted life.
The lesson of 251 hostages who did their best to hang on in the absolute worst conditions, in the subterranean depths of hell, who murmured half-forgotten prayers and tried to light Hanukkah candles that flickered in the oxygen-starved air.
Their circumstances were different from those of the Sicarii, of course. But so are ours. The world has changed. The lessons we impart should adapt accordingly. And what better lesson can we learn from the horror of October 7th, from the bravery of the survivors and the hostages, from the national trauma, other than this?
The people of Israel are brothers and sisters.
Choose each other, instead of petty squabbles and division.
To choose each other is to choose life.
Unpacking Israeli History is a production of Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. If this episode hit you in some way, please share it. And as always, I love hearing from you. So email me at noam@unpacked.media.
This episode was produced by Rivky Stern. Our team for this episode includes Simon Apfel, Adi Elbaz, Rob Pera, and Ari Schlacht. I’m your host, Noam Weissman. Thanks for being here, see you next week.