Photo of the Day

Yo,

This is a nice picture of Carl and Eva, the Boodmans, watching an absolutely spectacular sunrise of top of Mt. Masada. Masada is a very interesting place in Israel. Its packed with mythos. The story goes as such:

The Romans decide to forcefully put down the rebellions of the Jews around 100 AD. A group of extremists, known as the zealots, keep a few strongholds throughout Israel. One of them is an old mountain fortress atop Mt. Masada. Its high up and easily defensible. The Romans arrive and lay siege to the fortress (you can still see the encampments and the siege ramp). After days of fruitless fighting, the zealots decide rather than losing to the evil Roman conquerors, they would rather kill themselves. Thus they drew lots, and one poor family had to murder all the others and then kill themselves (there are still rocks with family names on them).

These zealots are unequivocally seen as national heroes in Israel. Their courage in the face of certain failure is considered admirable. A famous saying in Israel is, "It's good to die for your land." But I find this myth is problematic in modern times. Consider this: a group of extremists, a fringe group to be sure, decides they'd rather die than live under a conquerors control. For their decision they are now praised as martyrs. This is disturbingly similar to the modern day where Israel is "the Romans" and Hamas is "the zealots". Israelis don't like to have their national myths challenged though.

Anyway, its an interesting myth with interesting modern moral repercussions. And this picture is really nice.