Massada

Waking up at 4am to climb Masada was an amazing experience that I will treasure for the rest of my life. I have always been considered a very competitive person in various aspects of life. For me and my competitive nature, getting to the top of Masada before everyone else would have been something that I would have done a few months ago. Over the past month of being here, I have realized that making friendships is more important than being the first to get to the top. Instead of going as fast as I could, I waited and instead hiked a bit slower than I usually would to be with a friend. I know this might not sound like a huge change, but to me, I considered this a huge step.

 

Along with the personal significance that just the climbing of Masada meant to me, learning the history behind the mountain was very important to me as well.  I think that the choice that the Zealots made to kill themselves instead of have the Romans kill them or be enslaved by them shows an enormous amount of bravery. I know that I would never have the courage to be the one that had to kill everyone else. I think that by leaving their food behind to show to the Romans that they were able to sustain a life without them showed some of the Hutspa (guts and sass) that the Jewish people have. While what happened at Masada was up there with some of the most tragic events in Jewish History, the courage displayed by the Jewish people was in a twisted way, amicable.