Free To the Death by Peter R. Hall Page A

siege to the Roman garrison the Antonia and kill every Jew who will not fight for his freedom”.
    Joseph Ben Levi, an older man who had lost his entire family in the recent Roman action, intervened. “Hundreds of thousands of foreign Jews and their families are in the city for Passover. How will we care for them if we start a rebellion within the Holy City?”
    â€œWe won’t” said Menahem. “Now is the time to sort the wheat from the chaff. Those who will take up a sword and fight for their freedom are martyrs for God. Those who won’t are servants of Satan and must die”.
    At this death sentence on fellow Jews, many of the men looked down at their plates, unsure of whether they should intervene or not. Menahem, knowing better than anybody what was to come, said. “We will take the Holy City and, with Masada, hold it. Our action will cause other nationalist groups to strike. John, the son of Levi of Gischala, will attack in Galilee, though more” he added knowingly “for his own benefit than the cause of Jewish freedom. However, he will kill Romans and we can kill him when it suits us”.
    â€œThen there is Eleazar son of Ananias, leader of the Zealots,” interrupted Joseph Ben Levi. “He and his followers will fight to control the Temple and ultimately the Holy City, for they know this is where the nation’s centre of power and wealth lies”.
    Menahem nodded in agreement. “Eleazar and his Zealots are a problem. Initially we will offer an alliance. When this has served its purpose the Zealots, along with the Sadduccean priesthood, must die. We will rule the Temple, the City and Israel”.
    Loud cheers greeted this, but a few cooler heads wondered who precisely would rule and how. Did Menahem see himself as both priest and king?

7
    T he city’s most influential Jews were making their way to the Temple in sombre mood to listen to what their High Priest had to say. They clustered in groups according to their class or profession. Protected by bodyguards, many of the nationalist leaders who were rivals for the people’s support mingled with the steadily growing crowd.
    A hum of conversation rose as men discussed the recent outbreaks of violence.
    While they waited for the High Priest to appear, each man noted the other. Suspicion was everywhere. Nobody trusted the man they didn’t know. The nationalists, as well as scanning the crowd in general, took a special note of their rivals, wondering if the time had come for an alliance against the common enemy, Rome.
    Pharisees, whose religious doctrine distinguished them from the Sadducees, had swallowed their dislike of the High Priest who was a Sadducee, and turned out in numbers. They loathed the nationalists who stirred up fear and hatred with their sectarian murders. They dreaded a civil war that would pit Jew against Jew.
    They had stared into the abyss that was war with Rome and recoiled in horror. Along with wealthy landowners and other citizens of influence, they came to represent the interest of the ordinary citizen as well as their own. War with Rome represented total disaster. Somehow it had to be averted.
    There were a few among them who, though being Jews by birth, had little interest in religion. Who had decided, if there was a God, he took no interest in the affairs of men. They reasoned that men were born, lived and died like any other living thing, without rhyme or reason. They believed that ‘when you’re dead you’re done.’ These atheists wisely concealed their views and went through the motions. They attended the Temple and brought their children up as Jews. To them being Jewish was an accident of birth.
    Such a man was Samuel, who for the first time in his life had penetrated as far as the Temple’s inner courts. Samuel, a wealthy landowner who lived in northern Galilee, had come to Jerusalem for the festival of Passover . His being in the city coincided with