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Rating: 
Summary: Agree in general with the Ahessel review ...but also...
Review: ...but also concerning, - Ahessel writes concerning:
"what really happened". The problem (the crux of the matter) is nothing confirmable "really" happened. You see the only record of "what happened" are the translated writing (from Aramaic to Greek) writings by Josephus. Jesephus's original Aramaic text has not been found. It is generally agreed that Roman translators (and concerning translation in general then) would not be critical about not letting their own interpretation play a roll. The contemporary Masada legend of a heroic last stand by the zealots (or sicarii) does n o t correspond to the translated writings of Josephus. In order to understand Nachmans books it is necessary to understand this banal and very basic issue: the Masada legend promoted by Yadin & Shmaria Gutman are falsification vis-a-vis Josephus's writings; these falsifications are interpretations justified by the thought that Josephus or his translatorsm were biased. In order to realise this basic point (and if the readers of this review know it already, they need not read this review) is to conduct the exercise that Nachman writes on page 5 of his book:
On a saturday in 1984 following the reading the previous day of an article by David Rapaport concerning (among other things) a group of Jewish assasins, masada's "Zealot Sicarii", Nachman tried to controvert Rapaports tenant. That saturday Nachman did something like this: he looked up the words 'Masada' & 'Sicarii' in the works of Josephus (The reader can try the Wm. Winston translation; it's easy enough. And reconfirm it in the Thackeray translation). And after doing this, Saturday night, Nachman "knew that Rapoport was write and I was wrong". I appologise to the hand-holding of this review, as many viewers had previously voted this review unhelpful, and I surmised that this was due to some lack of background knowledge. You see I had participated on the trecks and sojourns to Masada, and seen (in the 70's) how history classes, youth groups, (and the like) reconstructed the last hours of the Sicarii and Eleazars epic speach and how the students were made to be put in the Sicarii's place and vote themselves on "how they would act in that situation". So the myth had utility and it's construction as narrated by Nachman is facinating. Nachmans account of his interviews with the originators of the Masada legend are exceptional. When meeting Nachman (a few years ago) I asked him why he didn't write his book in Hebrew ... his simple answer was that "it wasn't interesting" (to do so). Of course the Eleazar speach in Josephus's work is epic: He is proposed to say: "We were the very first that revolted from them, and we are the last that fight against them..." (ie the Romans). But statments like this do not necessarily hint at any sort of national (in the modern or a n y sense) unity. As the modern Masada myth might lead one to believe. Through the modern myth this and other statements are allowed the meaning as if the revolt was an homogeneous jewish revolt agaist the Romans. Evidence, especially in the case of the sicarii, has it, that it was not so. In the same speach Eleazar is proposed to say:
Concerning their misfortune at the Romans burning of their fortifications the day before their capture (and collective suicide), "...this was the effect of God's anger against us for our manifold sins, which we have been guilty of in a most insolent and extravagant manner with regard to our own countrymen." Hopefully the readers of this review will realize the edifying benefit of Nachmans thoughtful work on people who know the myth from close hand, but also in itself a most facinating case on the construction of (identity giving) knowledge.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting lesson in how history is written
Review: Starting from the little that is known of Masada from the writings of Josephus and the archeological excavations which have taken place at the site, Nachman ben-Yehuda traces the development of the "history" of Masada over the course of the twentieth century and the use to which this history has been put in the building of Israeli national identity. Recognizing that little may be certain as to who was actually at Masada (patriots or thugs) and what actually happened there (suicides or murders), he traces the development of the Masada story into a "never again" national saga. Very interesting reading for anyone interested in the development of historical truth, and how loosely it might relate to what really happened. The book is well written, although somewhat repetitive in places, and (for example, in showing how various youth groups in Palestine and later Israel dealt with Masada) sometimes tells us more than we need to know about the subject. Recommended reading
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