Day 5

Heroism

This morning something flickered and then filled my closed eyelids with an uncomfortable white light. I didn’t know where I was for a second, and then I realized that I had fallen asleep in the Redpath library in Montreal, and it was time to start reading again, so I tried to roll over but I felt like I was stuck in Tar. Wait. Israel. Oh it's a Bedouin tent, that's where I am, but the lights. A Bedouin tent with bright fluorescent lights to wake us up. Bedouin tent. It was 4 am, time to go hiking. Casey turned to me in a stupor and joked that it was a good thing I slayed that beast last night or else we'd all be dead. Now I was reminded of noises I heard at around 2, yelping sorts of sounds, and thinking that the Russians outside were the source of the commotion, got up without my glasses shoes or a shirt to inform them of the Bedouin barracks full of 80 sleeping people they were disturbing. On my way over, I realized the noise was coming from a bush, so I kicked some dirt into it and in a pitiful looking, dirty stray cat hobbled out. I felt sorry for kicking dirt at it, so I gave it some beef jerky I had in my pocket and told it to quiet down. It did. When I got back in the tent people asked me what it was, what happened, were the Russians drinking? Do they have enough for us? Nope, I told them it was a cat, a ferocious one, as big as a German Shepherd, foaming at the mouth with red eyes and it came right at me, so I had to wrestle it, scuffling in the dirt, trying to avoid its claws until I finally pinned it down, then kicked it, letting it retreat cowardly into the desert. Someone said that there are leopards that live in the Negev, maybe it was leopard…I said yeah definitely, it was leopard for sure.

So now, it was still 4 am. Time to go hiking. Hiking at 4 am, after maybe 2 hours of sleep. We gathered our gear, and boarded the bus for the short drive to Masada. We weaved in and out of the barren hills, and eventually, to our left, rose a particularly impressive giant plateau, beyond which was a drop of unimaginable height, and then the dead see far down the valley below. The sun had not yet risen, but the glow of the horizon over the Jordanian mountains was enough cast the Masada plateau in a silhouette. We could barely make out an unnatural looking sand ramp leading to the top.

Masada was an ancient fortification throughout the Jewish Empires. Under the Romans, King Herod built a palace there, the remains of which can still be seen. In the year 66 the first of three Roman-Jewish wars took place after an altercation between Jewish priests and Greek Pagans who were sacrificing birds outside of a synagogue. Jerusalem was placed under siege and the temple was eventually destroyed. Masada was the last holdout of a particularly radical splinter group of Jews called the Sicarii (daggers in latin). These Jews did not recognize Roman rule of Israel, refused living at peace with the Romans and refused to negotiate with them. Unfortunately, they were in the minority, and many Jews living in Palestine argued that there was much to learn from the Romans, that there was much good in Roman culture and that it would do the Jews good to maybe even become a little more Roman themselves. The Sicarii killed many high profile Jewish leaders, making it look like Roman persecution. They also killed many Jews who urged cooperation with the Romans. The Talmud states that during the siege of Jerusalem, they destroyed the city's food supply so that the residents would refuse to negotiate a peace treaty with the Roman's and would fight them instead (it seems to me that destroying the food supply would expedite surrender rather than prolong it, but whatever).

Eventually the Sicarii wound up at Masada, under siege again by the Romans in the year 73. The Romans decided to build a ramp to the top, where they would eventually massacre the last remaining insurgents of the first Jewish Revolt. Knowing that their deaths were imminent, the Sicarii chose to die with honor instead of surrender to the Pagans. All of the men killed their wives and children. Then a lottery was held. One man was chosen to kill all the rest. The last man then fell on his sword to kill himself.

When the Romans completed their ramp and arrived at the summit they found nothing but dead bodies and a burning fortress. However, they found that all of the food was left untouched. There was enough food left to last the Sicarii another 4 months if they had wanted. Today the remains of the Roman camps as well as the Ramp can still be seen around the mountain. IDF soldiers come to Masada when they are Drafted to swear: Masada will not fall again.

Aaron, another Aaron than the one I've mentioned that is, brought up an interesting point. He has holocaust survivors in his family and they always told him that the most important thing for any Jew was always to survive, to keep living, to keep Judaism alive, in some form, all the time without ever giving up. Self preservation was always the most important thing. It was an interesting contrast with the Masada story that tells of a group of Jews who did exactly opposite. I also pointed out that the Sicarii were not regarded in very high esteem by religious Jews in the Diaspora at all for hundreds of years, and that most Jews today are descendents of the more moderate Jews who favored reconciliation with the Romans. Masada, it seems, has only taken on its mythic significance very recently and its lessons are still somewhat in tension with some very common themes of survival and perseverance prevalent in the European Jew's narrative. Of course, this is not to say that its Mythic status is itself insignificant or wrong, it means exactly what people say it means simply because they believe it does. It is not altogether dissimilar with the myths in the Palestinian narrative that assume continuity and a collective group consciousness with the Arabs who lived in Palestine during the 1920's and 1930's. Nonetheless, Masada is particularly telling of the historical revisionism wielded by Nationalism because of its direct contradiction of the very ideals which preserved Judaism for centuries and eventually facilitated the creation of Israel.

We spent two hours on Masada and watched the sunrise. The temperature was still cool, and the Dead Sea was gleaming below. It was all very nice. Then I realized that I was in the desert without any sunscreen and it was about to get extremely hot. Luckily I found some and I was able to enjoy the rest of the time on the mountain. Roni showed us all the old fortresses, Herod's palace and the Old Synagogue. He was very informed and had a lot to say about the place. In general he's a really good tour guide.

The next stop was Ein Gedi. There is not much to say about Ein Gedi except that it is amazingly beautiful, and well worth a trip for anyone who enjoys hiking, rock climbing, swimming, photography or any combination thereof. I got to see Rock Hyraxes, which was awesome (I don't really know why). There were lots of natural pools that formed at the bottoms of huge waterfalls and we got to go swimming. I don't think the convert Margot got in. Everything along the river is green, which is a great contrast to the crazy desert that surrounds the place. There were tons and tons of great looking trails and rocks faces to climb, but we weren’t allowed. Roni sensed my restlessness at not being able go off the main trail, so he told me to call him next time I'm in Israel and we'd go for some real hiking. This is a good Idea, I will certainly take him up on it. We talked a bit more about some politics etc, he told me his wife is 9 weeks pregnant and that it is his first kid. I congratulated him. Good stuff. He met his wife on a trip to Germany, and I believe she converted to Judaism. He speaks German with her and now they both live in Israel.

Next was Dead Sea, something I'd been looking forward to for a long time, considering I didn’t get to swim in it last summer. It lived up to the hype (including the stinging). It was great and very surreal, but you know words don't quite suffice.

After the Dead Sea we had a long bus ride to the North. We were staying at Kibbutz Degania. I was excited because I knew this was the very first Kibbutz in Palestine founded by Jewish settlers in 1910. Turns out we were staying Degania Bet, part of the same expanded compound, but founded in the 30's I believe. It was still really nice. Jesse and Diane split us into groups and had us draw what we thought Israelis were like because we were meeting the 8 soldiers who would accompany us for rest of the trip tomorrow. It was very fourth grade, but entertaining. Liron helped us draw ours. It was just a girl, but she had stubble on her legs, cigarettes sticking out of her ears nose and eyes, and she held an M-16.

At dinner Casey and Aaron and me sat with a Josh from the other group. Josh told us about the Convert, Dario, was getting more and more intense. He was wearing slacks, a tucked in collard shirt and a kippa all the time now. He was also getting very confrontational with anyone who openly questioned the historical accuracy of the stories we were being told. More disturbingly, he was becoming even more confrontational with anyone who even mentioned the presence of another set of claims to the land. Josh reported that he was using the phrase "our people" excessively.

So far my experience in Israel is the polar opposite of last year's. Last year, everything was strange, and different, and people were rude and the food was bad, the music worse. This year, the food and music have stayed the same, but I'm having a much better time. This is understandable and the reasons are obvious. What I am most struck by is the effective way Roni's storytelling evokes a very real emotional response in the group and even in me. Everything is set up in such a particular way, a particular frame through which to view the land, to provoke a very specific response that gets mixed up in thought and leaves everyone with a real, if not somewhat manufactured, emotional and psychological attachment to everything they see. Not even I can resist becoming extremely enamored with Israel.

From what I can tell, this can be a good and a bad thing. It's good to the extent that it does get people involved and interested in a very important place, one that I found great pleasure in getting to know at school and here now. On the other hand, it's bad to the extent that that same one sided interest that is being built up here may blind others to the difficult reality that exists within Israel between Jews and Palestinians, and between Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East. It is just as if not more likely to create a blind support for Israel as it is to create a greater genuine objective interest in the place. I told this to Jesse and he agreed with me, saying that one thing he couldn't stand was the kind of "blind Israel cheerleading" that some American Jews tend toward. That is why, he said, Kesher has tried to do more to engage everyone in debate rather than just taking them throughout Israel. That debate is yet to come, but it will in a few days I'm sure.