My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

  Masada is only 63 meters above sea level. But because the Dead Sea, to the east of it, is approximately 400 meters below sea level, the mesa of Masada rises to 460 meters above its heavy, salty waters. To the west is the Judean desert, to the south, Sodom, and to the north, Ein Gedi, Ein Feshcha, and Jericho. On a very clear day, the faint silhouette of Jerusalem rises in the distance.

  The slopes are steep, almost vertical. The summit is flat and rhomboid, 645 meters long and 315 meters across at its widest. The desert cliff is composed of layers of sedimentary rock topped by dolomite and limestone boulders. From afar, Masada has the appearance of a lonely desert castle, inspiring majesty and awe.

  The Hasmoneans were the first to erect a man-made fortress on the natural fort that is Masada. In the second century B.C., they built a castle that a hundred years later was described as the mightiest of all. But it was King Herod who turned Masada into an architectural wonder. In the years from 36 to 30 B.C. he surrounded the rock with a casemate wall, raised watchtowers and barracks, built magnificent houses and ample warehouses, carved cisterns in the stone, and capped it all with a breathtaking palace.

  When the great Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire began in A.D. 66, Masada was the first fortress the rebels overtook. In A.D. 70, the Romans crushed the revolt, conquered Jerusalem, and destroyed the Temple. In the following years, a small group of Jewish zealots made Masada the last fortress of the futile revolt. In A.D. 72, the 10th Roman Legion closed in on Masada, and in the spring of A.D. 73, the legion was poised to break into the fortress. On the night before the anticipated attack, the 960 men, women, and children of Masada took their own lives rather than submit to Roman rule.

  For centuries, Jewish history largely ignored Masada. The tale of its zealots was perceived as a tale of suicidal extremism, and the site of Masada was deserted for over a thousand years. The American travelers Edward Robinson and Eli Smith were the first modern men to identify Masada in 1838. In 1842, the America missionary Samuel W. Wolcott and the English painter W. Tipping were the first to climb up Masada. In 1875, the renowned English captain Claude Reignier Conder was the first to map Masada accurately. In 1932, the German scholar Adolf Schulten conducted a comprehensive archaeological dig around the ruins.

  In 1923 the only historical source of the story of Masada, Flavius Josephus’ The Jewish War (written around A.D. 75) was translated into Hebrew. In 1925, the Zionist historian Joseph Klausner wrote with great affection about the zealots of Masada. Two years later, Yitzhak Lamdan published his tragic poem “Masada.” As Jewish nationalism was revived, so was interest in the remote, forgotten site and all that it embodied. High school students from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem conducted several trips to Masada in the 1920s, until one trip led to a fatal accident. And yet, until the end of the Arab revolt and the beginning of World War II in 1939, Masada did not fully capture the minds of mainstream Zionism. Only nationalistic fringe groups admired its suicidal zealots.

  In January 1942, Shmaryahu Gutman is a thirty-three-year-old energetic, vigorous, and charismatic man. He is squat, but his body is agile and his movements are quick. There is no one to rival him in desert hiking and mountain climbing. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1909, Gutman immigrated with his family to Palestine when he was three and settled in Merhavia, on the outskirts of the Valley of Harod. In his teens he studied at the agricultural high school Mikveh Yisrael and emerged as one of the leaders of the working-youth movement. At twenty-one he founded Kibbutz Na’an. But as he was an amateur Orientalist, geographer, historian, and archaeologist, kibbutz life was not enough for the energetic young Zionist. He walked the land and led groups of youngsters on hikes. He was a pillar of the Yediat Haaretz (knowledge of the land) movement, whose ideology was studying the land, loving the land, and becoming one with the land. At the very same time, Gutman was also working closely with the leaders of Labor Zionism Berl Katznelson and Yitzhak Tabenkin. His best friend, Israel Galili, was the strategic mastermind of the military organization the Haganah.

  In the early 1940s, Gutman does not hold an official post, but in practice he is part of the inner circle of the Zionist leadership. An educator with outstanding moral authority, Gutman is privy to the innermost secrets of Zionism. He views his role as being to concentrate the minds of Hebrew youths on what lies ahead.

  In January 1942, Gutman decides to take the elite of the pioneer youth movement to Masada. The trip is no ordinary excursion. Gutman, himself a zealot, wants to change the collective psyche. He wants to unify the Hebrew youth around a powerful, concrete symbol, which he recognizes in Masada. In October 1941, he led a preliminary workshop of Masada studies in Tel Aviv and then chose the forty-six youth movement leaders he would take with him to Masada in January. As he sees it, these handpicked young agents of change will be the new missionaries of Masada. They will make Masada the new locus of Zionist identity.

  On Friday, January 23, 1942, Gutman and his forty-six disciples leave Jerusalem. In the early morning an Arab bus takes them to the Palestinian village of Yatta, south of Hebron. Tents, equipment, food, and water are loaded on three camels hired from local Palestinians. The guides are Palestinian Bedouins. The young men and women wear short trousers, tall boots, and rucksacks laden with rolled army blankets. Some carry walking sticks, some have tied Arab kaffiyehs around their necks, all have water canteens. When they descend the white hills into the desert of Judea, they sing loudly, with boundless enthusiasm.

  Gutman is more thoughtful than the young Sabras. In fact, he is almost somber. As he is to tell me fifty years later, he knows perfectly well why the seventeen-year-olds are upbeat. Recent years have been exceptionally good for the Jews of Palestine. Since the Arab revolt was crushed and the Arab national movement disintegrated, the country has been at peace. In the early 1940s the Jewish economy has leaped forward and the Jewish organizations have gathered power and authority. A substantial industrial revolution has been taking place. ATA Ltd. is now manufacturing uniforms for the soldiers of the British army, while Elite Ltd., Liber Ltd., and Z.D. Ltd. are manufacturing chocolate bars for them. Teva is producing medicine and medical equipment for His Majesty’s troops, Assis Ltd. is producing marmalade and jam, and the socialist conglomerate Solel Boneh is building bridges, railways, and military bases for the Crown in Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, and Iran. The citrus industry has fallen into crisis, but the diamond industry has replaced it as Palestine’s leading exporter. So now the Land of Israel exports not only Jaffa oranges but tents, ropes, camouflage nets, parachutes, boots, water canteens, cranes, heating ovens, shaving blades, tires, measuring equipment, plastic goods, optical equipment, medical supplies, dry ice, acetone, ether, beer, furs, telephone wire, electrical wire, and land mines. The number of Jewish employees in these industries has risen threefold in just three years. Industrial production has risen fivefold in five years. Exports have doubled in two years. The ratio between Jewish industrial production and Arab industrial production in Palestine is now six to one. Since there is full employment, wages have risen dramatically and factories are working around the clock, three shifts a day. Trade-union-owned corporations and privately held enterprises are prospering. Theaters are full, cafés are bustling. While Gutman leads his youngsters into the desert, Tel Aviv holds its fourth and most successful fashion week, which is celebrated in a glittering ball in the glamorous café Piltz. This is why the Israeli-born Sabras are so self-confident. They are the sons and daughters of a fantasy that is fulfilling itself. Their life experience is that of an astounding collective success, based on self-reliance and innovation.

  But Shmaryahu Gutman knows that Zionism is in trouble. Although it has fended off the Arab revolt of the 1930s and brought forth the economic miracle of the 1940s, history is closing in on the audacious Jewish national endeavor. The Arab threat has not vanished. It is clear to the Zionist leaders that when the Second World War ends, the brutal conflict over the fate of Palestine will be renewed.

  Yet the Arab threat is not the o
nly one. Rommel’s Afrika Korps has just managed to pummel the British defense line not far from Benghazi, Libya. While in the summer of 1941, it seemed the Germans might attack Palestine from the north, it now looks as if they are about to invade from the south. Faced with an Arab threat and a Nazi threat, it is clear that without the use of force, Zionism will not prevail. It will go down in history as yet another movement of false messianism. This is why the youth of Israel must be prepared. Only the sons and daughters of Zion can save Zionism from utter destruction.

  The Palestinian guides lose their way. The day turns to dusk. After two short stops at desert springs, the column arrives at the Bedouin camp it was supposed to have reached at noon. Some of the travelers want to stop for the night. The camels are exhausted and refuse to go on. Despite the setback, Gutman is determined to forge ahead. After all, this is the very reason he has brought these cadets to the desert: to steel them, to strengthen their resolve, to teach them not to recoil from adversity. When the sun goes down, the trek will continue by moonlight. If the camels refuse to carry the load, the young men will shoulder it themselves.

  Now the journey is totally altered. The navigation mistake, the delay, and suspicions regarding the Bedouins demoralize the hikers. They have been on the road since 3:00 A.M. The previous night they had not really slept. They experience anxiety and fatigue. Their eyes can hardly see in the pitch-black night. Their throats are parched because of the shortage of water. The straps of their heavy rucksacks cut into their shoulders. The air is salty. The desert is filled with chasms and ravines. There is no plant life, no animals or birds to be seen. There are just the heavy footsteps of a column marching on.

  Gutman, of course, does not know that on the previous Tuesday, January 20, 1942, fifteen representatives of the ministries of the Third Reich gathered in Berlin’s Wannsee Villa to formulate the Final Solution. He does not yet know that the deportation of Jews to the east has begun, or that within six weeks, in a small redbrick building in a remote camp named Auschwitz, a first gas chamber will begin to exterminate Jews. But Gutman does know that Zionism’s bleak forecast regarding the future of European Jewry is becoming reality. He knows that in every country they take, the Germans mark Jews, gather them, and concentrate them in ghettos.

  Because he has a profound understanding of history, Gutman realizes that for the Jewish people the current world war is going to be far more significant than the previous one. He sees that what is happening are not the customary anti-Jewish pogroms of typical European wars. Something is happening that has never happened before. Tens of thousands of Jews have already been murdered, and their numbers might soon rise to hundreds of thousands. If the Red Army does not block the Germans in the Crimea and Leningrad, disaster is imminent. So it is not only Zionism that is at stake. For the Jewish people, the year 1942 could turn out to be the worst year since the destruction of the Second Temple. It could turn out to be the most catastrophic year in the Jews’ catastrophic history.

  As Gutman watches the hikers, he understands how difficult the journey is for them. They are not adept at walking in the desert as he is, and they have little experience with thirst and fatigue. The slopes of Masada are frighteningly steep, and the ascent will be difficult. The sliver of moon that has just appeared above is too weak to light their way in the menacing dark. Many are soaked with sweat, their breathing labored. Some stumble, some fall. After sixteen hours of walking, the forty-six are not far from breaking. But they are made of stronger stuff than that. Those born in Palestine’s spartan twenties and shaped in Palestine’s violent thirties have grown to be rock hard. Brought up on the values of strength and fortitude that define the new Hebrew culture, the cadets are tough and determined. Even when their legs betray them, they continue to march. Even when they fall, they get up again. Gutman smiles as he looks at them. As he tells me in an interview conducted in the early 1990s, he finds in their shining eyes the determination he had hoped to find.

  Gutman is not naïve. Having grown up beside the malaria-infested marshes near the Valley of Harod, he has always known that Zionism is a struggle. Living under the hateful gaze of the valley’s Arabs, he has always known that at its core Zionism embodies conflict. Yet he has always believed in the desperate energy of Zionism. He believes that the essence of Zionism is momentum—never to retreat, never to rest, always to push forward. The new Hebrews must push the limits of what the Jews can do, of what any people can do. They must defy fate.

  But now Gutman feels that Zionism’s vector of energy is about to run into a wall. The forces closing in on the audacious national movement are just too strong: the Arab front, the German front, the collapse of European Jewry. The challenge facing his cadets is unprecedented. The thought of it actually makes Gutman shiver. Twenty years after it arrived in the valley, Zionism once again demands of its followers total mobilization and sacrifice. Coming from the valleys and the orange groves and Tel Aviv, the hiking youngsters do not realize that their very existence is in peril. They are bursting with the gaiety of Zionism’s decades of success. They are drunk with the experience of Hebrew renaissance and Hebrew creation and Hebrew triumph. But not long ago Gutman has heard Yitzhak Tabenkin say that “We are upon the abyss,” and Berl Katznelson say that “No man of words can express the horrors of these times, the great fear that engulfs us.” So Gutman knows that he has but a short time to transform these youths. It is his role to anoint them as the guardians who will stand at the gate when the time comes.

  Gutman’s choice of Masada has a personal dimension. At the age of sixteen, he collapsed while participating in an early Dead Sea trek and never made it to the summit. The young man made a vow to return. When he did, several years later, he nearly lost his life but managed to reach the top. The few hours he spent on Masada changed his life. He somehow felt tied to this terrible place. In the nine years that have passed, the mountainous fortress has not let him go. Often he dreams of it, and he has waking visions as well of the ancient site. He has come to believe that Masada is the true heart of the land, the crux of the Zionist story. But only in the past year has Gutman realized the opportunity to engrave Masada on the collective Jewish psyche just as it has been engraved on his own. After the early tour of October 1941, he sent an official proposition to the national leadership, and after much lobbying he raised the necessary funds. So now he can connect the different paths of his life; he can unite the educator with the historian with the amateur archaeologist. He can draw a direct line between the horrific act of A.D. 73 and the heroic challenge of 1942. He can bring Masada back to life and make it the formative site of New Zionism.

  Like the shadow of a hulking, sunken ship, the shadow of the mountain appears. Fatigue is forgotten, replaced by song. Suddenly walking is no longer difficult for the youth movement’s leaders as they approach the silhouette of the fortress of tragic Jewish sovereignty. A fire already dances at the foot of the mountain, lit by the front guard that arrived earlier. The rebels of the Second Temple used to signal to one another with such fires. Lamdan’s Masada poem is also replete with such fires. But here are the flames of the first fire of the new Masada. When they reach the fire, the forty-six hikers take off their rucksacks, unroll their blankets, and set up camp for the night.

  At dawn, Gutman warns his disciples that climbing Masada is dangerous. Some have climbed and died. From now on, each climber must take care of himself and must take care of the next climber as well. Danger lurks at every step. Gutman recites Lamdan’s poignant lines about the “remnant of slaughter” that climbs the tall wall of Masada.

  The youngsters standing at the foot of Masada are all too familiar with the morbid words of the canonical text now being read by their mentor. They were raised on these lines, they memorized them in school, and many still know them by heart. But now, under the mythological fortress itself, the words acquire new significance. They sound like the anthem of a desperate people coming to the desert to look for a last refuge.

  For several months n
ow, I have been studying Masada, the Masada ethos, and Gutman’s Masada journey. I have read all I could find in the relevant archives and libraries; I have interviewed anyone who could still be interviewed. I reread all of my notes from my lengthy interviews with Gutman, conducted shortly before he died. I assembled this historical puzzle piece by piece. And yet, even after all my research, it all seems inconceivable. Events that took place in the fourth decade of the twentieth century, undertaken in a rational and practical manner, are already steeped in the aura of mythology. The more I learn about them, the more distant they seem to me. In an era of criticism and cynicism and self-awareness I find it difficult to truly comprehend the cadets’ state of mind as they prepare to climb Masada for the very first time. Yet I realize that this paradox is exactly the essence of the Zionist Masada; it is a modern, secular icon that transcends modernity and secularism. It is an artificial symbol that transcends its artificiality. What Gutman is doing in bringing this young, idealistic group to this desert ruin is using the Hebrew past to give depth to the Hebrew present and enable it to face the Hebrew future. In order to achieve a concrete, realistic, and national goal, Gutman imbues the fortress with a man-made historically based mysticism.

  The ascent begins from the east. The long column of khaki-wearing youngsters climbs up the white rampart the Romans built to strike the fortified wall of the zealots’ fortress. When the column reaches the chasm between the rampart and the summit, the effort intensifies. The first five hikers strike the rock face with their picks, then hammer in pitons and tie ropes and drop them down for the others.