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Masada

© Frank Monaldo

One thousand four hundred twenty-four feet above the Dead Sea on the edge of the Negev Desert in modern Israel, on a large mesa, stands an ancient fortress, Masada. Masada is a perennial and potent symbol of Jewish defiance and courage. In AD 66, Jewish Zealots captured the fortress from the Romans. After the Romans conquered Jerusalem, they returned to besiege the last remnant of Jewish resistance. The Romans had an army of 15,000 soldiers, while the Jews defended the high-walled fortress with less than 1,000 people. This 1,000 included woman and children.

The Romans constructed a siege wall around the base of Masada to ensure that no Jews could escape at night. Remains of the wall are still visible looking down from the heights of Masada. Given enough time, disproportionate numbers and engineering overwhelm bravery. Roman engineers devised an earthen ramp to assail the fortress walls.

When defeat was imminent, the Zealots committed suicide, preferring death to enslavement by the Romans. Fathers killed their wives and children and then themselves.

It is hard to overestimate the saliency of the symbol of Masada to Israeli self-identity. At the end of their training, Israeli fighter pilots are initiated in a ceremony at Masada. Israelis know that despite the belligerence of their neighbors, surrender is not possible. Israeli pilots proudly boast that ``Masada will not fall again!''

It is only in the last century that the ultimate fate of the Jewish tradition has been tied so intimately to a single sovereign state. After expulsion from Palestine - the Diaspora - marked by the Roman conquest of the area, the Jewish tradition has survived by virtue of the breath of its dispersal. Significant Jewish populations were spread throughout Europe and the Middle East. The fortunes of the Jewish populations could wax and wane in any particular area, but there always remained the security that Jews lived elsewhere to carry on the tradition.

Charles Krauthammer, in an essay titled ``At Last Zion: Israel and the Fate of the Jews'' in the Weekly Standard, eloquently points out that the security of the Diaspora worked until Hitler and the Nazis. By conquering Europe and instituting systemic genocide, Hitler managed to kill two-thirds of the European Jewish population. Large numbers of the remaining Jews, particularly in Eastern Europe, have migrated to Israel. The century began with eight million Jews living in Europe. The century will end with one million Jews surviving in Europe

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