Word: masada
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Jonestown has even been rivaled as a mass suicide. The Jewish Zealots defending the fortress of Masada against besieging Roman legions in A.D. 73 chose self-slaughter rather than submission; 960 men, women and children died. The event occupies a place of some reverence in Jewish memory and is not really comparable to Jonestown; the Zealots faced the prospect of slaughter or slavery, and their choice therefore possessed a certain passionate rationality. In the 17th century, Russian Orthodox dissenters called the Old Believers refused to accept liturgical reforms. Over a period of years some 20,000 peasants in protest abandoned...
...soldiers encircle them. The situation was hopeless, they decided; even if they fought off this wave of soldiers another would come, and then another--as many as it would take--until the siege snuffed out the defenders. With all this in mind, the defenders of the embattled mountaintop called Masada decided that the only logical course was suicide. They debated the issue, and soon the decision was made. Early the following morning, as the Roman troops started to climb the rocky path towards the fortress, the men inside held their wives and children close, then killed them. When only...
Mass suicides are not common; certainly the ones we know about are rare enough so that until last week Masada stood out in history as the sole example. Men kill each other with great regularity and ever-increasing efficiency, and single suicides are frequent, but modern-day mass suicide remained unthinkable...
...question no one can answer is annoyingly simple: Why? Because the psychotic, power-mad and paranoid preacher they followed from California to South America told them the time had come? Because someone--apparently acting on Jones's orders--murdered a Congressman and a couple of journalists? When Masada's people did away with themselves, there was something approaching a good reason, but that essential motivation just cannot be found in the Jonesville case...
...ties on the most beautiful legs in the room: his wife's-a comment on male sexuality that says more than any behaviorist manual. Act of Faith, in which a Jewish soldier trades in a pistol to treat his Christian buddies to drinks, is an explanation of the Masada complex that remains undated. Mixed Doubles, the story of a couple whose on-court skirmishes reveal a betrayed trust, seems doubly acute in a time of Inner Tennis...