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Subject: JUICE: Cultural History of the Jews - Masada - Part 2
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 14:42:31 -0800
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From: Sidney Slivko
Subject:: JUICE: Cultural History of the Jews
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com

Continued from Part 1

The Masada Complex

In about 1963 the expressions "Masada Complex" and "Masada Syndrome"
began to be used to describe the attitude that Israel must face on its
own insurmountable odds. Discussion about the Masada Complex reached a
fever pitch during the early 1970s when the American government tried to
convince the intransigent Golda Meir to cooperate with the Egyptians
(After almost two years in Israel, unlike when I was growing up in the
US, I have never heard a kind word said by any Israeli about her, only
the most vicious imitations of her by those on both the right and the
left.) Secretary of State Rogers used the expression and it appeared at
least twice in Newsweek, once by the columnist Stewart Alsop, to whom
Meir responded: "You say that we have a Masada complex. . . It is true
we do have a Masada complex. We have a pogrom complex. We have a
Hitler complex."

To this the Hebrew literary critic Robert Alter responded, "Torchlit
military ceremonies on top of Masada are, I fear, a literal and dubious
translation into public life of a literary metaphor and a Prime
Minister's subsuming Holocaust, pogroms, and Israel's present state of
siege under the rubric of Masada might be the kind of hangover from
poetry that could befuddle thinking on urgent political issues." And
the Israeli Historian Benjamin Kedar, wrote in a similar vein: "But
this is a false analogy for two reasons. The bitterest fate that the
people of Masada could have expected was far better than that awaiting
the Ghetto rebels. Vespasian, Titus and Silva, after all, were not
attempting to exterminate a people but to crush a revolt . . . There can
be no doubt that the writer of the Book of Josippon is closer to
Mordechai Anielewicz of the Warsaw Ghetto and to Danny Masss of the
thirty-five who fell in 1948 on their way to Gush Etzion, rather than to
Eleazar ben Yair . . .. The rock on the shore of the Dead Sea is a dead
end, a cul-de-sac, a dramatic curtain-fall. He who tells his soldiers
of the armored corps at the swearing-in ceremony on the heights of
Masada that it is owning to the heroism of the fighers of Masada that we
are here today, is both deluding himself and deluding others."

Conclusion

Masada, the mountain, the narrative, the translation, the poem, and the
myth, reflect the cultural transformation of our understanding of
events, events for which we have no direct historical access but much
emotional interest. Below are listed some books and articles
representing magnificent research and analysis of the Masada Myth, but
present in almost all of them, is the idea that lurking behind the
cultural discourse stands a Jewish values that can be called mainstream
or normative. I offer instead this discussion of Masada as a way of
understanding the development of Judaism and the competition among
values for acceptance by Jews without any interpretation holding a
monopoly on originality, authenticity, or truth.

Recommendations for Further Reading

Books (with extensive bibliographies)
Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of
Israeli National Tradition
( 1995)
Nachum Ben-Yehuda, The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in
Israel (1995)

Articles
Shaye Cohen, "Masada: Literary Tradition, Archaeological Remains, and
the Credibility of Josephus," Journal of Jewish Studies 33 (1982).

Raymond Newell, "Suicide Accounts in Josephus: A Form Critical Study,"
Society of Biblical Literature 1982 Seminar Papers

Robert Paine, "Masada: A History of A Memory," History and Anthropology
6 (1994)

Baila Shargel, "The Evolution of the Masada Myth," Judaism 28 (1979)

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