Nathan Bistritzky (Agmon) (1896-1980) came to Palestine from Russia as a member of the third-Aliyah. As well as working for the Jewish National Fund, both at home and abroad, he was a prolific writer of (mostly) historical plays, and a…
Yitzhak Lamdan’s poem Masada (1927)
Yitzhak Lamdan (1899–1954), Hebrew poet, translator and editor, is remembered above all for his ‘epic’ poem Masada, written between 1923 and 1926. Lamdan was born in Mlinov, Ukraine, into an affluent family. He benefited from a private education, both Jewish…
Masada as Pilgrimage Site
The publication of Simchoni’s updated Hebrew translation of Josephus’s Jewish War in l923 and of the poem ‘Masada’ by Isaac Lamdan in l927, enhanced the impact of the Masada resistance and the defenders’ suicides as a model of heroism. The…
Josephus on Trial
Mock trials of Josephus, in which he faced accusations of treason, were held regularly between the 1920s and the 1970s in both schools and youth movements within the Zionist education system. The historian was prosecuted and defended, investigated and judged,…
Micha Josef Berdyczewski (bin Gorion) (1865-1921)
Hebrew novelist, essayist, scholar, and thinker Micha Josef Berdyczewski was a life-long admirer of Josephus. An autobiographical short story, Be-Derech Rehokah (On a Long and Winding Road), describes Micha Josef’s first encounter with Sefer Yosippon (Book of Yosippon) as a…
Emanuel bin Gorion (1903-1987)
Emanuel bin Gorion was a literary critic, translator, and anthologist. Son of the Hebrew novelist Micha Josef Berdyczewski (who later took on the name bin Gorion), bin Gorion inherited his father’s enthusiasm for Josephus’s legacy and for Josephus as a…
Models of the Temple at Jerusalem
Josephus’s descriptions have figured largely in twentieth-century attempts to reconstruct the Temple Mount in model form. They have been set beside both the archaeological findings and tannaitic rabbinic sources (primarily the mishnaic tractates Yoma and Tamid), from which they differ…