Revelation at Masada
By Saul Tobin
Two millennia ago when the Second Temple still stood, a group of razing, fresh Jewish zealots, called "sicarii" or daggers by the Romans, silently scaled Masada’s shear cliffs. Ambushing the fortress, for three years they defied Rome’s legions; a citadel of resistance lodged in the tiger’s throat. The Judean ramparts finally fell. Taking the sin of suicide on himself Elazar ben Ya’ir instructed the Zealots to slay each other in turn, rather than surrender the Sabbath to the shame of slavery.
Zionism resurrects the flag of Judaism with sovereignty. Israel’s soldiers, as a final step before the fateful action, often scaled the sicarii cliff, yelling in unison atop the mesa’s south face, “Mitzada! Sheni! Lo! Tipol!” – Masada will not fall again.
Finite bits of clay compose a cereal bowl, but the bowl contains infinite space
and possibilities for contents. Maimonides taught that Torah, like any finite matter, delineates what G-d is not, thereby leaving infinite room for what G-d is. G-d is an ocean, waves are His
attributes. In an unbound ocean, all waves equally resonate through the flat water. In contrast, the cereal bowl produces standing waves according to its constricting shape: the crests of which reach
sublime heights, the troughs profound depths. Thus by restricting behavior, Torah enables ecstatic spiritual fulfillment.
My parents raised me by the cereal bowl, unconcerned about my brand of Judaism as long as I was decisively Jewish. I became Bar Mitzvah with passionate spirituality, but shallow understanding. Adopting the philosophy of my parents and my community, I explained the Torah as purely metaphorical, replacing piety with social action. I felt zero connection to Israel.
I stumbled blind out of David Ben-Gurion Airport last June, hands outstretched, grasping for spiritual connection. Searching the horizon from my spiritual rowboat, I struggled to reconcile Moresha and the City of David with my moral and spiritual relativism. The Western Wall pitted my innate demand for philosophical consistency against my fixed metaphorical theology.
I awoke with my fellow pilgrims at three A.M. to scale Masada. We climbed in pitch black, achieving the summit at five, sunrise. I was swimming in the Divine ocean, alert for a spiritual landmark. As the sun rose above the bifurcated Dead Sea, silhouetting the Israeli flag among the ruddy ruins, a sliver of land appeared on the horizon.
On the same dust as stood Elazar ben Yair, we shouted, “Mitzada! Sheni! Lo! Tipol!” The wave of voices surged toward the distant island Zion, propelling me upward like a muscular hand. The sicarii’s voices echoed from the rock face, and stabbed me, daggers. Water surpassed me, engulfing me. The words became a mantra, an oath that I, personally, swore to defend Israel as a Jewish State. No religion without nation. I struggled for the surface. No nation without state. My parents were receding toward the ocean’s cereal bowl edge. No Jewish state without religion. I fought for flat water, relativism. Sunlight shone through the breaking waves. A light to the nations.
I breathed in desert air. I felt assailing an unaccustomed contentment, a sense of home, of true moral purpose. Israel filled my cereal bowl.
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