On my visit to Israel I made a pilgrimage to Masada. Not
quite Chaucer-like, it was on a bus through the desert but with no less a
diverse group of folks from round the world. We were led intelligently by a
wonderful little sage, our guide, Uri, who tirelessly kept our curiosity at the
ready with his wonderful explanations of practically every crevice in every
mountainside as the bus roared through the Judean Desert. And there is plenty
of desert. It may seem trite to say also plenty of history. It stretches as
long as the rocky, arid landscape. How lucky are we that sages of days of yore
hid their papaya manuscripts within the cavities of the very mountains we spied
from our bus window? I think, plenty. Thank goodness for all these scribes. I
thought of this whilst on the journey toward our ultimate destination, a place
alive thanks to the remembrance of history: Masada. For those possibly familiar
with the name—and may be even the film of the same name---but not so much a
geographical grasp, Masada is a large, mountain plateau in the eastern part of
the country standing at the lip of the Judean Desert. It is the very desert we
traveled. It is also along the Dead Sea, just a stones throw away. And stones
do abound. If you’ve ever wondered why, in that ‘good’ book, stones are often a
prescriptive tool for sponsored assassination, go to the desert. Stones are
aplenty.
Our destination, our large “stone,” Masada, reaches skyward
about 1300 feet above the Dead Sea where the peak of the mountain does in fact
plateau flat like a mesa. It’s a very large, stony tabletop. Mercifully,
tourists like us could be lifted to the top mechanically thereby saving the
body from an excruciating hike up the side of the mountain on foot which, too,
can be done. One can hike either side of the mountain. On my visit one of my
fellow pilgrims, the young strapping lad of the group, forewent the cable car
and bravely hiked the side. When eventually reunited with the rest of us at the
top his face bore such a deep, anguished red as to look to my eyes like a soft
black. His own eyes were like slightly lit
pieces of coal. I don’t know if I ever saw in those embers such exhaustion. At
least, I think so. This, too, is hazy as
the sun altered my vision and brain. Everything seemed a hot, white electric buzz. Yes.
There is no hiding from it. Make this pilgrimage in the summer in any form and
you are doing it under a hot white sun that is equally blistering and
unforgiving. Masada, it has been pointed out as a prescriptive more than once,
should only really feasibly be done in the morning. Any later would be
excruciating. This point will make the history all the more incomprehensible.
Historically, and put rather too simply, Masada was to be the
final destination for contumacious Israelites on the run. Rather than fleeing
this same seeming unceasing sun they moved closer to it in order to escape the
equally sweltering oppression of Roman persecution and rule. And it was this
large, flat, dusty expanse which became both settlement and fortification for
rebellious Israelites demanding emancipation from on high. The Romans of course,
having none of this, lay siege spending their time at the foot of the mountain devising
ways to penetrate the mountain, or at least hoping to wait them out. I recall
Uri explaining how a bridge was built by the Romans through the use of those Israelite
slaves with nary the luck to have escaped. This bit of engineering was
implemented in hopes of, as it were, bridging the gap between them, the Romans,
and their target. That target, of course, being the new inhabitants of the top
of that plateau. It is a story that emanates and still rings loudly. If you are
there walking the terrain it rings louder still.
Anyone at the top of this plateau today worries about nothing
less than staying hydrated or keeping dust from a camera lens. He also does not
have Centurions waiting to shackle at the bottom of the rock. We are free to roam what was once the
existence of a small society. As you do mingle in and out of each room or
crevice, you get the feeling of a kind of ‘tough comfort’ domesticity. The
place, naturally, is only a pale, wind driven ghost of itself, but with enough
imagination one can still place hewn brick and mortar, and colour in to it. It
may be much like knowing the Parthenon only as we can know it today, as a
skeletal but beautiful ruin. However, when a clever graphics expert ably
recreates it in all its former glory, we then see the vivid impact of the
original and so different than the ruin we know and love.
There are, for example, the baths, now bereft of any water,
with the small columns still rigidly rising out of the dusty bottom. These
columns presumably would hold tiles where the bathers could sit above the steam
coming from the water below. With the tiles since gone, the columns are
exposed. They still hold their rounded features with a flat top though time has
reduced these tops to unequal sizes resembling often used erasers at the end of
pencils. There are the small dusty rooms, proof of domesticity, some of which
still carry proof of breathtaking design. In a few you will find the beautiful
and complicated remnants of a mosaic pattern in the floor and walls. It is
enough to make one smile to think that among all the practicality that comes
with desperation, these inhabitants still found the need to decorate for the
sake of aesthetics. One must constantly pass through small arch top passage
ways to get to these enclosed rooms which, in my own emotional appeal, added an
almost ‘sacred’ element to every entrance and exit.
Outside in the open air, one finds walls and mazes that lead to steps and
brings one to all different aspects and levels of the plateau. It was out here that Uri, beads of sweat
dotting his sweet bald pate, explained in proud, almost nationalistic explanations,
how the Israeli’s bravely and single-mindedly defied the Romans. They not only demanded
freedom, we now know they would rather have not lived than to be bound by
others than themselves. Uri described all this in is more than charming Israeli
accent as we all stood just over a slightly vaster than usual smooth decline
that led to a lower level of the mountain. It was this
scene that turned Uri’s description of the bravery and single-mindedness of
defying the Romans to the more practical need of collecting water. He described
how they would make the small trek down this particular decline of the mountain
in order to collect the so very necessary rain water caught within one of the
very ingenious aqueducts. Upon describing this, I could not help but notice
that the trek down the mountain toward the all-important water system brought
one dangerously close to where a portion of the Roman army purported to have
staked them out. This captured my curiosity. I asked in the simplest way
possible of Uri, who exactly owned the arduous task of fetching and bringing
this water to the rest of the community? With not a hint of irony Uri turned to
me and in that same accent that transfixed me to every syllable, and said so
very matter of factly, “Their slaves.”
Is
73 A.D. just too far in the distant past to create a causal argument they did
good with their sacrifice? Can we say it made a palpable difference today? Because
of this distance, I believe, it is too hard to tell. I hope this does not make
me sound nihilistic in my approach toward doing anything in hopes of affecting
the future. Could what I do today affect circumstances fifty years from now? I
think it’s safe to say it is a possibility. But, what of 5,000 years from now?
The prospects become as vague and hazy as the heated Judean dessert. But, they
did make history. Of course they did as we still talk about them today. And
this is an extension of learning. We are learning through history. We’re still visiting their chalky and arenose
ghost town at the top of a mountain. What is left is a weather worn former
community and ghosts of history.
Uri’s
explanation about slaves fetching the water reminded me that even a King
resided on that mountain. It also reminded me of philosopher Walter Benjamin’s
notion that what drives revolt and the need for progress is not “dreams of
liberated grandchildren” but rather “memories of enslaved ancestors.” It might
be important to remember even this enslavement was by degrees. The great
equalizer is that Israeli king and Israeli servant alike, their Roman
oppressors, and the leader of that army, are now mere spectres. They do not walk the rocky grounds and earthy
rooms of Masada. No. They just flitter in our imagination as we attempt to
cover them in bones and sinew, and imagine the workings of iron age brains, as we
try to place them in that setting of rocky ground and earthy rooms, the same ones
that, no matter how weathered with time and wind, outlasted them. But, not in our minds.
