Some will say it’s about treason and betrayal of the worst kind, but in the end we might all agree that it’s about leaving your mark on history by telling a good story.
It’s also about the story teller.
In fact it’s the story of the story teller that gets my curiosity flared up and my mind to stretch to its limits, trying to comprehend one persons’ choice in that vast battle field where so many had fallen.
So many but not him, after all, he was the story teller, the one last standing and able to deliver the testimony. All the gory details, the frustration when all hope was lost, the sheer heroism and the glory of those who chose to die as a way to maintain their freedom.
Had he fallen too, in more ways than one? Or perhaps death, as it turned out, is not the only way to leave your life behind.
Betraying his heritage of nobility and priesthood he acted as a collaborator. An army leader, who in the midst of a battle deceived his own people and topped this act of disloyalty by defecting to the enemy’s camp. To his people he was a dead man, as he should have been had he not convinced his closest comrades to kill themselves and then walked away unharmed.
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Titus Flavius Josephus, also known as Joseph ben Matityahu in his former life, refused to die, or disappear. He reinvented himself, with a different name and a pen instead of a sword. He owes big part of his claim to stardom to his account of what happened on the last night, on top of Masada. Familiar, from his own personal experience, with the act of group suicide, he was the best men for the job.
Ironically his new occupation, documenting the big events of his time, granted him eternal life.
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Every spring no matter where I am, as I am getting ready for Passover, the old stories are coming back to life. Stories that were passed to me as lessons that needed to be learned, praising the heroes and denouncing those perceived to be cowards, black and white, right and wrong, strength and weakness being defined.
But in the background are those who might make less favorable choices and perhaps generate a bigger difference. I think of them too. Once the dust settles and we can look around once again, we might be thankful for them for the story told. For the memories kept alive.
This last one was hard to write as I did not know if it will be clear to a reader who is completely unknowledgeable of the historic background. And yet going into the whole Masada story, and its implications, seemed too much and maybe irrelevant to the story of the specific person which was my main goal.
ReplyDeleteNot sure.
Also not sure about using history this way, as part of a non-fiction writing.
Too much Passover? This shall soon pass :-)
I haven't read this piece yet, but I'm up on Josephus and Masada. Josephus gave us one of the first non-Christian references to Jesus in his Antiquities. I'll get to it soon, probably before the end of Passover, certainly by Easter.
ReplyDeleteYou already know that a piece like this is one I will grump about. For me, it's only in the next to last graf in the last vignette where it starts to breathe.
ReplyDeleteI mean, here you are--an emigre from your native land, like Josephus; there your father was, another emigre, another man concerned with his own survival (but, in contrast to Josephus, not at the expense of the death of others); here you are a writer, like Josephus, telling stories from memory; here you are a Jew, and like any Jew (and like Josephus) necessarily concerned with history and its tragedies and ironies--but very little of any of that is in the vignettes you give us.