Masada

We spent Shabbat (the sabbath) at Masada and the Dead Sea. This shot is of the kosher kiwi admiring the latter from the former.

Herod's fortress was an impregnable palace which was taken over, long after his death, by Jews fleeing the Roman response to the Jewish rebellion of A.D. 66-70. After Titus demolished the temple in Jerusalem, some Jews escaped to Masada, and lived there from 70-73, when the Romans finally caught up with them.

The site is an astonishing 18-acre complex of palace, baths, storehouses, aqueducts, deep cisterns and soldier barracks atop a cliff top 1400 feet high. We got up there by cable car. The Roman army got up there by moving tons of dirt and building a ramp. It took them 3 years. You can see the remains of the Roman encampment in the little square in this aerial shot.

When they were finally able to take the fortress, they found 960 bodies. Rather than submit to rape and slavery or death at the hands of the Romans, they chose to take their own lives. The men killed their wives and children first, then each other. Two widows with five children somehow escaped the process and were found hiding in a cistern. It is through them that the account came to Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian turned Roman army historian.

Our guide, who was in the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) told us he was a driver seconded to the production of Masada, which is not historically accurate in every respect, but which I can't wait to see. Actor Peter O'Toole once told him, "Get my boots!" "Get your own ___ boots," our guide told him.

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