Chapter 13 ‘Flavius’ on Trial in Mandate Palestine, 1932–1945: Natan Bistritzky’s Hebrew Play and Lion Feuchtwanger’s German Trilogy

Yael S. Feldman

The powerful presence of the figure of Josephus in the ethos of pre-state Israel is usually attributed to two textual events: the publications of both Jacob Naftali Hertz Simchoni’s Hebrew translation of the Jewish War (1923)1 and Yitzḥak Lamdan’s dramatic poem Masada (1924–1926).2 Much ink, including my own,3 has been spilt over the impact of Masada as a symbol and a challenge for the new Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine before 1948, whose pioneers were eager for national myths of heroism unto death when necessary. Less dramatic but still substantial was the role played by Josephus’s work in the arduous but happy task of getting to know the land, its geography and history (yedi‘at ha-aretz). This impact had begun in fact already with the pioneers of the second wave of immigration from Eastern Europe, the Second Aliyah (1904–1914), whose ‘second bible’ and guide for exploring the old-new homeland was the Russian Josephus,4 as recorded in the writings and memoirs of Rachel Yana’it (later the wife of Yitzhak Ben Zvi, the second president of Israel), among others.5 It continued throughout the century with the well

1 Yosef ben Mattityahu, Toledot milḥemet ha-yehudim ‘im ha-roma’im [History of the Jews’ War with the Romans], trans. Jacob Naftali Simchoni (Warsaw, 1923). 2 Yitzḥak Lamdan, Masada: Po’ema (Tel Aviv, 1926); excerpts from this epic poem were published previously, during 1924–1926. 3 Yael S. Feldman, ‘“The Final Battle” or “A Burnt Offering”? Lamdan’s Masada Revisited’, AJS Perspectives (Spring 2009): 30–32; Yael S. Feldman, Glory and Agony: Isaac’s Sacrifice and National Narrative (Stanford, 2010), 118–24. 4 A Russian translation of the Jewish War had been published in 1900: Iudeiskaia voina, trans. Jacob Lebovitch Chertok (St. Petersburg, 1900). It was reissued in 1991. I am indebted to Rina Lapidus for this information. (Since the name Chertok was transcribed as Shertok in Hebrew, the translator is none other than Ya‘aqov Shertok, the pioneer of both First- and Second- Aliyah fame, and the father of the second Prime Minister of Israel and its long-time Foreign Affairs Minister, Moshe Sharett.) 5 See Rachel Yana’it-Ben Zvi’s memoirs Anu ‘olim [We Ascend (Migrate)], (Tel Aviv, 1959).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004393097_015 310 Feldman known archaeological discoveries from Masada and Gamla to Herodion and Ir David.6 When it comes to the period of the Second World War, scholarly attention usually shifts to the impact of the story of Masada, which reached its zenith during the war years as an emblem of Jewish resistance in both Europe and Palestine.7 As has been argued elsewhere, however, the application of this concept clearly followed the revised vision of the fall of Masada suggested in the medieval Second Temple history known as Sefer Yosippon.8 The anonymous Italian author of this Hebrew retelling of the Jewish War deviated from Josephus’s Masada narrative in two major ways: first, he returned the name of the place to its Hebrew derivation, naming it Metzada rather than Masada;9 and second, he rewrote the fate of the male Jews of Metzada, having them die as heroes in a ‘final battle’ – in contrast to Josephus’s original version of the Zealots’ mass suicide.10 As I have shown recently moreover, this mostly unacknowledged subtle shift of source apparently took place through the absorption of Lamdan’s poem – which was read avidly and even staged by the youth movements in the ghettos, thus fostering the ideal of fighting the Nazis ‘to the last man’.11 The impact of Sefer Yosippon’s and Lamdan’s vision of Masada can be detected also in the Yishuv’s 1942 desperate ‘secret’ plan (that never materialized) for a final-defense battle on Mount Carmel, which was named alternatively Metzada or Musa Dagh.12

6 Most famously, in the work of archaeologists Yigael Yadin (1917–1984), Shmarya Gutmann (1909–1996), and Ehud Netzer (1934–2010). 7 See Tamara Blauschild, ‘The Rise and Fall of Yitzḥak Lamdan’s Masada’ (Master’s thesis, Tel Aviv University, 1985), 21–25; Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago, 1995), ch. 11; Hannan Hever, ‘Between [Lamdan’s] Masada and Metzada’, in Paytanim u-biryonim: Tzmiḥat ha-shir ha-politi be-Eretz Yisra’el [Poets and Zealots: The Rise of Political Hebrew Poetry in Eretz Israel] (Jerusalem, 1994), 170–73. 8 Sefer Yosippon, ed. David Flusser, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1978–1980); Steven B. Bowman, ‘“Yosippon” and Jewish Nationalism’, PAAJR 61 (1995): 23–51; Yael Feldman and Steven Bowman, ‘“Let us not die as sheep led to the slaughter”: From the Hasmonean Revolt to Ghetto Vilna’, Haaretz Literary Supplement, 6 December 2007 (http://www.haaretz.com/ weekend/week-s-end/let-us-not-die-as-sheep-led-to-the-slaughter-1.234699). 9 The English name ‘Masada’ follows Josephus’s Greek pronunciation of the Hebrew Metzada, itself a derivation of the Hebrew noun metzudah (fortress). 10 Yael S. Feldman, ‘“Not as Sheep Led to Slaughter”?: On Trauma, Selective Memory, and the Making of Historical Consciousness’, JSS 19 (2013): 139–69; Steven Bowman, ‘Freedom and Death: The Jews and the Greek Andartiko’, in Jewish Histories of the Holocaust: New Transnational Perspectives, ed. Norman J. W. Goda (New York, 2014), 224–37. 11 See Feldman, ‘“The Final Battle”’. 12 See Yoav Gelber, Metzada – ha-haganah ‘al Eretz Yisra’el be-milḥemet ha-‘olam ha-sheniya [Metzada – Defending the Land of Israel in the Second World War] (Ramat-Gan, 1990). For a most dramatically rendered recent account see Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The