Were the Defenders of Masada Justified in Killing Themselves?

Sept. 12 2019

According to the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, Jewish rebels, besieged by Roman legionaries on the hilltop fortress of Masada in the year 73 CE, decided to commit suicide rather than surrender. Scholars still debate the accuracy of this account, while the Zionist movement decades ago embraced it as an example of Jewish heroism. But, notes Shlomo Brody, the Talmud makes no mention of the fall of Masada, and the rabbinic view of such acts of martyrdom is hardly straightforward:

[T]he talmudic sages may have believed that [the defenders’] decision to kill each other was a severe violation of Jewish law. Judaism prohibits suicide, and Jewish law has largely urged its adherents to practice rituals under political subjugation rather than choosing death.

The legitimacy of the warriors’ actions was debated by two leading Religious-Zionist rabbis during the 1960s. Rabbi Shlomo Goren, then the chief rabbi of the IDF, wrote an extensive defense of their decision. While suicide is broadly prohibited, there are a number of cases in which the talmudic sages justified it under extreme conditions. The Talmud, for example, records the story of a mother and seven children who jumped off a roof rather than commit idolatry, alongside another story of 400 boys and girls who leapt into the sea rather than being sold into slavery [by their Roman captors in the wake of the Great Revolt]. . . .

Perhaps most significantly, the ancient rabbis justified King Saul’s decision to fall on his sword rather than be captured by the Philistines (I Samuel 31). For Goren, this [last] case was a paradigm, demonstrating the preferability of suicide to allowing the [supposed] desecration of God’s name that occurs when an enemy kills Jews or gloatingly takes captives.

Goren’s claim about Masada was strongly criticized by several scholars, including Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria, who . . . argued that the operative halakhic principle is encompassed by the biblical verse “live by them [i.e., the commandments],” traditionally understood as an injunction to choose life in order to ensure the future of the Jewish people. If Jews throughout the generations had [chosen] death over political subjugation, the nation would never have survived. If the Masada fighters had surrendered, some would have been killed or enslaved, but others might have escaped and lived on. . . . [H]eroism means to know when to fight and when to stay alive.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Halakhah, King Saul, Masada, Suicide

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy