It is spring again and as I am getting ready for Passover, the old stories come back to life. Stories that were passed to me as lessons that needed to be learned, stories that I was entrusted with to pass to my own children. Praising the heroes and denouncing those perceived to be cowards.
I roll them in my head over and over again, for some reason I have a need to search for loose threads and tug at them. In the end I end up at the same place. It’s the story teller more than the story, the man behind the tale that gets my curiosity flared up, trying to comprehend his choice in that vast battle field where so many had fallen.
So many, but not him, after all he was to become the one last standing and thus 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, unlike him, chose to die as a way to maintain their freedom.
“Masada shall not fall again”
Which part of all of this am I willing to take on as my own?
Is it the part in which six million weak Jews, did not know how to fend for themselves and perished, or the one where nine hundred and sixty extremists thought they can stand up to a force much bigger than themselves and at the end were defeated by natures’ whimsical behavior. The few opposing the many, live free or die, black and white, right and wrong, strength and weakness all so clearly defined.
Or perhaps, I wonder, there are more shades than one?
I close my eyes and I can see them clearly, the palaces and the remains of the fortified walls of Masada, almost a stone throw away from my home. I have been there many times and heard the story told time and time again like any kid in Israel.
Every year in late spring I went up the Roman ramp with yet another group of students as part of the symbolic passage from childhood to adulthood, strengthening the bond with the land reciting the promise .Numerous times I climbed up at dawn to see the sunrise over the Dead Sea and watch the young soldiers being sworn at the end of their basic training.
“Masada shall not fall again”
And yet we keep on falling in more ways than one.
Is it because death is not the only way to leave your life behind? Or maybe because those who make less favorable choices can, in the long run, generate a bigger difference, by telling the stories that never really die.
This is a hard nut to crack and maybe, like you told me once last year, some topics are just too big for a short essay and I should let it go.
ReplyDeleteReading what you said I realized how, strangely enough, I was not aware of all the possible layers, and symbols, and emotions, and that it might be way too big on me.
But just for the hell of it I gave it another try…
I'm not ready to comment on the revision yet (and I'll be away for a few days), but I can comment on your comment. Sometimes it's good for a writer to not know what the layers might be because a lack of awareness is another way of saying that she's drawing from deep and unconscious wells. That can mean that she's in a 'zone.'
ReplyDeleteWhat I would worry about is a writer working to a blueprint who knows everything in advance and who is consciously setting out 'layers' of symbols and such. That is usually writing that is dead on arrival--better to sense the writer searching than the writer self-satisfied.
I close my eyes and I can see them clearly, the palaces and the remains of the fortified walls of Masada, almost a stone throw away from my home. I have been there many times and heard the story told time and time again like any kid in Israel.
ReplyDeleteEvery year in late spring I went up the Roman ramp with yet another group of students as part of the symbolic passage from childhood to adulthood, strengthening the bond with the land reciting the promise .Numerous times I climbed up at dawn to see the sunrise over the Dead Sea and watch the young soldiers being sworn at the end of their basic training.
“Masada shall not fall again”
And yet we keep on falling in more ways than one.
To me this is the strongest part, the part where finally what feels like a series of feints in different directions finally gets some momentum and an idea of the goal of the writing.
I've been reading about Hungary's unique and unusual chapter in the history of the Holocaust and also about another Hungarian Jew successful in saving himself and others: George Soros's father.
One too many 'finally's...whoops!
ReplyDelete