To the Editor:

Those who ask, as Robert Alter does [“The Masada Complex,” July], how Josephus could have fabricated the fiction of the mass suicide of Masada’s Sicarii, when several thousand Romans were eyewitnesses to the end of Masada, anachronistically transpose modern methods of news dissemination to antiquity, some fifteen centuries before the invention of movable type and some nineteen centuries before news reporting by wireless. Yet even today, news is being manipulated and distorted, and not only in dictatorships. Some years ago, during a brief stay in my native city of Frankfurt-am-Main (at the time of one of the Auschwitz trials), I engaged men, women, and children in conversation and asked them about the Nazi crimes against Jews. The stereotypical exclamation was: “We didn’t know what was happening.” Yet the Jews of Frankfurt were rounded up and deported to concentration camps within sight of multitudes, and surely the fires of the Kristallnacht which destroyed all Frankfurt’s synagogues were not invisible. . . .

Few, if any, of the Roman soldiers who besieged and took Masada returned to Rome. It was a time before the mass airlift of troops. As for the few officers who might have returned to Rome, they would not have disputed Josephus’s official version of the end of Masada which, I suggest, was intended to prove that the Sicarii were cowards who, when confronted with the necessity of meeting the Romans on the field of battle, were said to have “chickened out” and committed suicide. The fiction about mass suicide on Masada could not but be gratifying to Flavius Silva, commander of the siege force; it proved that the Sicarii’s three-year defiance was possible only because of the inaccessibility of Masada, until the Romans succeeded in building the assault ramp.

H. St. John Thackeray, the noted authority on Josephus, asserted that Eleazar ben Ya’ir’s speeches “were doubtless penned in the writer’s [Josephus’s] scriptorium in Rome.” It has also been noted by Josephus experts that this kind of speech could not have been made by a guerrilla leader, such as Eleazar. Yet, strange though it seems, Yigael Yadin took it for granted that this “fabricated” speech contained explicit information which he [Yadin] then “proved” to be authentic by means of his excavations on Masada.

In view of Yadin’s expertise and sophistication in identifying ancient artifacts and manuscripts, one may well wonder whether his “Masada complex” does not derive from what Freud termed the Thanatos instinct—the drive toward and fascination with death, which is vicariously being indulged in by those who enjoy melodrama that invariably ends in death. The Josephus version of Masada is the kind of sentimental kitsch melodrama the spuriousness of which is all too apparent. Certainly not one single find excavated on Masada can be taken as proof of the Josephus fiction of mass suicide on Masada.

Trude Weiss-Rosmarin
New York City

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To the Editor:

. . . Mr. Alter’s skepticism about Masada as described by Josephus seems based on two grounds: first, that is is not mentioned in rabbinic literature; and second, that suicide was regarded as an act of desperation, condemned by laymen and learned alike.

With regard to the silence in rabbinic literature on Masada, let us recall that other significant historic events also received little attention. For example, the Maccabean revolt against the Syrians is scarcely mentioned in rabbinic discourse. . . . It is worth noting that the celebration of Hannukah is reduced to the story of finding in the Temple a small vessel containing a quantity of oil which should have lasted only one day but instead lasted eight. . . .

Why were the defenders of Masada so resolved on self-annihilation? I would like to present my interpretation, previously set forth in an article, “The Tragic End of the Masada Warrior” (Die Zukunft, April 1970). On reading The Jewish Wars, I paused at the chapter giving the speech of the Masada rebel commander, Eleazar ben Ya’ir. Although that speech is attributed to one individual, it in fact reflects two quite disparate ideologies. One can almost hear the separate voices of two distinct ways of life, two distinct schools of thought—that is, of the Zealots and of the Essenes. To come to terms with the oration of Masada, then, it is important to understand that the Essenes were adamant in their hatred of subjugation to any oppressor, to any act of violence. Their capacity to withstand physical torture, to clench their teeth and not shed a tear when savage brutes excoriated their bodies, astonished the crudest of the cruel. . . .

Taking literary liberties, Josephus attempted to fuse the two orations into one, but he failed in this respect. Although the Essenean orator at Masada remained anonymous, his exhortation exercised an enormous effect on his audience. On the one hand, Eleazar, the Zealot, evoked the patriotic feelings of the combatants. He urged them to uphold the honor of the Jewish people, to maintain the glory gained during the long siege. He argued that by the loss of their lives they would poison the blood of the savage Romans, thus sealing the encounter with an unparalleled victory over the enemy. In contrast to the warrior Eleazar’s appeal, intended to arouse the feelings of all as a community, the anonymous Essene stirred the emotions of each as an individual. He described the joy and relief of freedom that each person acquires after death. While the Zealot repudiated the slavery of a people, the Essene portrayed life itself as slavery. He dealt not with the wars that people may wage against one another but with the more intensified struggle that goes on within each person; the constant battle that persists between body and spirit. The ultimate victory in that area is achieved after death. Although the Zealot and the Essene developed two different philosophies, both ultimately arrived at the same conclusion—that it would be better for the women to die than to be raped, defiled, and contaminated; better for the children to perish than to be traded as cattle; better for the men to depart from this life than to be tortured or to lose their lives to beasts in circuses to the delight of Roman onlookers.

Masada stands out as a beacon signaling the Jewish people’s passion for freedom. Atop this beacon a flag waves with the inscription: “In thy blood live” (Ezekiel, 16:6).

William Burstein
Rockville, Maryland

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To the Editor:

In “The Masada Complex” Robert Alter refers to the events at the fall of Jotapata in which Josephus, then the commanding general, “seems to have tricked thirty-nine fellow soldiers . . . into killing one another while he cunningly preserved his own life” and thinks that Josephus “might have had reason to repair his damaged public image by fabricating a large-scale suicide pact at Masada. . . .”

There are some problems in this view as there will always be with Josephus, the supreme turncoat, who lived to write the only eyewitness account of this period. . . . Both accounts were written long after the war. The Jewish nation had been destroyed and it is not clear therefore for what public Josephus’s image was tarnished. He was a favorite of both the emperors Vespasian and Titus, which would have made any expression of criticism rather dangerous. Also, apart from one other survivor—who also violated the pact—the affair was known to Josephus alone. Why, then, should he have written what, to us, seems such a damaging account? . . . But perhaps to Josephus’s reading public, Greeks and Romans of 100 C.E., cunning and treachery were considered tolerable and quite normal behavior. While simple soldiers were normally butchered, captured generals were dragged in chains through a Roman triumphal procession and beheaded at its termination. . . .

Josephus’s companions at Jotapata, we are told (by him, of course), were determined on suicide before capture. Josephus, having had a contrary vision, was not. Visions at this time had the same weight as facts with us. Josephus certainly believed his, and a few weeks later he had another which providentially saved him from being dispatched to Rome for one of Nero’s triumphs.

At this time Josephus was thirty years old. He was sixty before these events were finally recorded and published. He was present at Jotapata and absent at Masada, but . . . his accounts of both events . . . seem quite reasonable.

Hubert R. Catchpole
Chicago, Illinois

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To the Editor:

. . . Robert Alter treads on dangerous ground in questioning the “myth of Masada” as recounted by Josephus. The latter was proved to be remarkably accurate in many details by the archaeological findings of Yigael Yadin. Mr. Alter himself states that Josephus could hardly have invented the suicide story of the 960 defenders inasmuch as thousands of Romans had conquered the fortress and seen the victims. But he notes there are no other sources for this incredible saga, particularly in rabbinic literature. Mr. Alter fails to observe that the only witnesses to Masada, unlike the fall of Jerusalem three years earlier (in 70 C.E.), were the Romans themselves and two women and five children who escaped the self-immolation by hiding in underground caverns. Josephus was not a witness and must have received his information from either the Romans or Jewish survivors. Considering that a good deal of what Josephus wrote in his account is actually confirmed by Yadin’s findings, why should he not be believed on an issue which cannot be confirmed by the extant evidence? The fall of Masada marked the end of Jewish resistance to the downfall of independent Judea. It was not an event of religious importance like the fall of Jerusalem, which possibly explains its not being mentioned in rabbinic literature. As Mr. Alter himself observes, the Zealots were considered fanatic dissidents by mainstream Judaism and their ordeal at Masada would therefore have been ignored in rabbinic literature. The Romans themselves would have no interest in propagating the story of Masada. . . .

Mr. Alter makes unflattering references to the fact that the 960 Zealots, or Sicarii, preferred suicide to surrender to the Roman legions besieging Masada. “Unlike the 960 under the command of ben Ya’ir, the Warsaw Ghetto fighters knew that every one of them faced certain extinction, and yet their response was to fight to the end of their lives, not to seek to deprive the enemy of his satisfaction in that all-too-Roman gesture of self-slaughter.” I do not mean to belittle the heroism of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters, who deserve the greatest commendation, but Mr. Alter’s deprecatory reference to the Masada resistance fighters is a complete distortion of what did happen. It was not a question of choosing between death and life as Mr. Alter claims. There was really no choice at all. The Romans had besieged Masada with a large force of perhaps 15,000 men under their commander, Flavius Silva, and once inside the fortress the troops would have certainly killed most of the defenders anyhow and carried the few survivors of the bloodbath off to Rome as slaves. The fate that would have befallen ben Ya’ir’s courageous band, had they surrendered, was well known to them. The Romans had already slaughtered hundreds of thousands of their countrymen in their campaign throughout Judea to quell the Jewish revolt which had flared in the year 66 C.E. The last resisting rebels could not expect to fare much better, especially at the hands of Roman troops and mercenaries hungry for spoil.

Mr. Alter does not seem to be aware of the fact that the Masada defenders did offer strong resistance to Silva’s legions. It took a long, strenuous effort and a favorable wind spreading fire to breach the fortress. The Zealots defended the fortress to the very end. It was only when the situation became hopeless that they preferred suicide to a surrender which in reality would have meant death. . . .

Howard Grief
Montreal, Canada

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To the Editor:

“The Masada Complex” may well assist the Israelis in meeting an immediate and dangerous external threat to their existence. There is, however, another important lesson to be learned from the Masada experience. . . . Eleazar ben Ya’ir escaped to Masada with a band of Zealots who survived the slaughter which followed the death of the Zealot leader Menahem at the hands of the priestly party. He and his group played virtually no further role in the Great Revolt until, following the reduction of Jerusalem, the Romans moved on Masada. Masada was doomed by the decision of Eleazar to isolate himself from the main effort of the Revolt in Jerusalem. . . . One may marvel at the nobility of a decision to commit mass suicide rather than submit to the yoke of Rome. It was, though, a direct consequence of the ideological differences, factional strife, and internal dissension which plagued the Great Revolt and contributed so heavily to its failure. Modern Israel would do well to ponder that sobering aspect of an episode in the history of the Jewish people of which the fall of Masada was but one minor part.

Jules Harris
Ottawa, Canada

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To the Editor:

In “The Masada Complex” Robert Alter performs a delicate tightrope walk. On the one hand, he sympathizes with Stewart Alsop in the latter’s recent rugged exchange with Golda Meir concerning the Masada complex; at the same time, he seeks to avoid the pitfalls of the intellectuals’ “even-handed” appeal for peace in the Middle East, published recently in the New York Review of Books, and he quite correctly points to the distortions of recent history committed by this “distinguished international group of intellectuals.”

Without taking the space here to follow the tortuous path of Mr. Alter’s reasoning, let us simply indicate that whatever may be the cause of his malaise, it leads him not to the misrepresentation of the facts about past events (which is an important topic in his theme), but to a falsification of the account of present political realities in the Middle East. Thus, he says, “one sympathizes with Alsop when he questions the long-term wisdom of [Israel’s] repeatedly rejecting out of hand the possibility of negotiation because of mistrust, however the mistrust may have been conditioned by recurrent historical trauma.” Now what is the basis for this fantastical notion of Israel’s rejection of the possibility of negotiation? It is Alsop’s not too amazing revelation (in his News-week column) that early this year “Anwar Sadat conveyed to Nixon and Kissinger, through his foreign affairs adviser, Hafez Ismail, an expression of willingness to enter an interim agreement involving the reopening of the Suez Canal provided Israel would agree to discuss evacuation of the whole Sinai.”

Now really this is old stuff. Long before Ismail came to Washington, it was Egypt’s announced position that she would not negotiate an interim agreement unless Israel committed herself in advance to an eventual withdrawal from all of occupied Sinai and Gaza. And Israel’s position has been, rightly or wrongly, that to commit herself to complete withdrawal would leave nothing for negotiation. There was no occasion for Golda Meir “to respond suspiciously to this admittedly limited overture.” For Israel’s response has been on the record for a long time—the extent of withdrawal is the very topic of negotiation, and no withdrawal (partial or total) before negotiation means (in part) no withdrawal before acceptance of her existence.

Ismail’s message to Washington was no “limited overture.” It begged the whole question of the “impasse” that exists in the Middle East, despite the soft phraseology as reported (or dreamed up) by Alsop. For Israel to “agree to discuss evacuation of the whole Sinai” means for her to commit herself in advance to total withdrawal, which even the celebrated UN Resolution 242 does not require. . . .

Joseph Neyer
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey

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To the Editor:

As an admirer of Robert Alter’s writing on modern Hebrew literature, I would like to register certain observations with regard to his reading of Yitzhak Lamdan’s epic poem, Masada. . . . First of all, the reader of Mr. Alter’s “The Masada Complex” might be led to believe that the mood of the poem is all bleak. This is not so. The entire third section is a triumphant life-affirming proclamation, which reaches its thrilling climax in a hora that also simultaneously summons forth imagery of the Hasidic dance. If the new dance, as well as the old, is on “the edge of a precipice,” I still feel it is one of unmistakable optimism, a kind of “fiddler-on-the-roof” mentality now transferred to the rugged Palestine setting. Mr. Alter quotes only from the first section of the poem. The third is entirely different, as indeed are the concluding sections of the poem. . . . The greatness of Lamdan’s Masada lies in its ability to capture all the moods of the pioneering generation (primarily of the Third Aliyah), not only the mood of the desperate escapee from pogroms, although this mood is certainly prominent in the poem (and I think not yet obsolescent even as a mirror of today’s reality).

This leads me to the second point. The reader should be aware that the “last-ditch fight” in Lamdan’s Masada is not against hostile Arab neighbors, nor is it a specifically military fight in any way. (There are only fleeting, totally unmilitaristic references to Eleazar ben Ya’ir and Trumpeldor.) The “fight” is mainly with the environment and with oneself. Masada is first and foremost a pioneering poem and a poem about pioneers. . . .

Stanley Nash
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York

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To the Editor:

. . . Robert Alter’s article is a provocative statement about the distorting impact of the poetic imagination on politics, made somewhat more interesting by the very fact that he is from the literary culture. I agree with Mr. Alter about the “Masada Complex.” However, I do think that, because he does not sufficiently qualify his principle at the beginning, he gets into a little trouble at the end. After suggesting that myths distort the political process, Mr. Alter recognizes that Israel owes its very existence to the driving power of myth. He calls this a “paradox.” Presumably, there is a “paradox” because he does not believe that Israel is a distortion. But if one gives his basic argument its broadest sweep, the paradox disappears: given its origins, Israel itself must be seen as a distortion in the Middle East, and the turmoil which followed Israel’s founding must be viewed as another example of the havoc that comes when myths improperly intrude upon political realities.

The “paradox” can be eliminated more happily by qualifying the basic principle that the poetic imagination distorts the political process. (Mr. Alter may be suggesting this in his last paragraph.) While the poetic imagination can badly distort the political life, it can also give politics direction. Literature and the poetic imagination can help to meet the classic problem of how to infuse ideals and values into the “rigorously empirical” universe of politics. In the last decade, especially in the area of foreign policy, we have had enough of the politician as technician—a Bundy or McNamara who “nonchalant[ly]” “search[es] out” events for their “qualifying components” and proposes “practical options of responding to them.” One need not believe that the poets should take over the government to believe that the technocrat lacking vision and ideals is also ill-suited for political leadership. . . .

Paul D. Gewirtz
Washington, D.C.

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Robert Alter writes:

As to the historical issue, the very multiplicity of views in the letters on this question suggests precisely what I was contending—that we don’t really know what happened at Masada. William Burstein, Hubert Catchpole, Howard Grief, and Jules Harris offer a variety of interesting assertions ranging from dubious to undemonstrable. If Trude Weiss-Rosmarin’s objections to Yadin are not entirely unanswerable, they surely have not been answered here, least of all by Mr. Grief, who believes implicitly in all of Yadin’s leaps of inference.

On the political issue, I was careful in my article not to presume to know whether Hafez Ismail’s visit to Washington had really opened any small chink toward the possibility of meaningful negotiations. My argument, Joseph Neyer must surely see, was a more general one, that Israel’s overall diplomatic posture has not reflected any substantial attempt to move beyond the status quo. This has been even more evident vis-à-vis Hussein, who has evinced some readiness to make concessions, than vis-à-vis Sadat. Again, criticism within Israel itself has repeatedly noted just this point.

As to the literary issue, Stanley Nash is of course correct that I did not mention the affirmation in the concluding lines of Lamdan’s poem, but I think that what was really relevant to the argument of my article was the atmosphere of apocalyptic crisis that surely pervades the poem. Mr. Nash aptly describes the dance in the poem as a hora on the brink of a precipice, but that very description makes his notion of a “fiddler-on-the-roof” mentality in Lamdan’s work patently absurd. Some contemporary critics of the poem in Palestine of the 20’s (like Shlomo Tzemah) objected to it precisely because of its bleakness, because it did not adequately represent “all the moods” of the pioneers. Also, it seems to me a little facile to explain the imagery of desperate siege solely as the symbol of a pacific struggle of the halutz with his own nature and with the new environment. After all, the poem repeatedly invokes the murderous events of recent Jewish history as the urgent background of the flight to Masada; it was written after the first great wave of pogroms carried out against the Zionists by Palestinian Arabs; and it is suffused with imagery of blood, wounds, and violence.

I am grateful to Paul D. Gewirtz for the thoughtfulness of his proposed qualification to my thesis. I hope I am right in assuming he uses “distortion” in a neutral, not pejorative, sense when he describes Israel as a “distortion in the Middle East,” though in any case the term would require some complicated historical explanation.