As Jewish protestors are dragged from the synagogue by their own Israeli police, shouts of "We will not fall again!" swell above the throng of Jewish settlers, as one by one these brave people are uprooted and forced to leave their homes in Gaza. What in the world is going on here? "We shall not fall again," is a veiled reference to the Masada.
History records four events which, on the surface, seem to be similar--the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; Custer's Last Stand; the Texans at the Alamo, and the Jewish Zealots at Masada. The two things that all of these events have in common is bravery and standing up for a cause. But what is Masada and why can the present Israeli peace crisis be compared to this event?The Masada is a place. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Israel. It is a gigantic rock, rising out of the hot, arid desert floor. It is an event. It is a tomb today as it was in the first century A.D., when 960 Jews committed suicide there--and it is a symbol of Jewish survival!
Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in the year 70 A.D., the Great Revolt ended, except for those Zealots who survived and fled Jerusalem to the safety of Masada, located near the Dead Sea. At Masada, the the Jewish Zealots held out for three years against the Roman army who had surrounded them, as they remained entrenched atop the gigantic flat-topped, rugged, rock fortress.
While the Zealots passed time in Masada's false safety, the Roman Tenth Legion ceased not in building catapults and other weapons of destruction to be used against the men, women, and children on top. Theirs was an old grudge against the Zealots who had been in revolt against Rome since 6 A.D. Rome was not to let a piece of rock deter them.
Rather than succumb to Roman conquest, Elazar ben Yair, the Zealots' leader, determined that all of the Jewish defenders--every man, woman, and child should commit suicide, in spite of the Jewish law which absolutely forbids suicide. Now, this was not another Jonestown. In this case, the alternative for the Zealots was forced slavery and an eventual cruel death.
The great historian Flavius Josephus wrote of Masada's final hours in his history of the Jewish revolt against Rome. Josephus tells of two women and five children who managed to survive the suicide by hiding. It is from these seven survivors that the accounts of Masada's stand and fall come.
