In the spring of the year 73, after Jerusalem had already fallen to Roman forces, 960 Jews atop a desert fortress chose death by their own hand rather than surrender. We know the story because of Josephus, the 1st-century Jewish historian and former rebel commander who turned chronicler of the very revolt he had once been a part of.
Yesterday was Tisha b’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the two Temples. Josephus records another catastrophe: Masada, the last stand of the Sicarii, the most militant faction of the Jewish rebels, against Rome, and a mass suicide that Jewish tradition has argued over ever since. Was it heroism? Was it madness? Should the Jews of Masada instead have followed in the path chosen by Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai and the sages at Yavneh—accommodating the enemy to preserve the Torah?
This week’s podcast is an episode of The Pillars, a series produced by the Lobel Center for Jewish Classical Education and hosted by Rabbi Mitchell Rocklin. In this episode, Rabbi Rocklin takes up Josephus’s account directly—what it asks of us, what the rabbis made of it, and what it has come to mean for the modern state of Israel. The episode first aired this past March, but its questions are the questions Jews are reflecting on during this week in the liturgical calendar, about the demands of Jewish sovereignty and God’s providence in history.