Masada Witnesses Completion of First Torah Since Roman Siege
As the sun began to set Dec. 8, hundreds of people pooled together at Masada’s Western Palace, a massive structure once used by Herod the Great, to watch a ritual scribe ink the final lines of the ancient mountaintop’s first Torah scroll in modern history.
The ancient synagogue atop the Judean desert fortress of Masada is by no means large. But on the eighth night of Chanukah last week, the rededicated space seemed to expand with revelers as they celebrated the completion of the first Torah scroll to be written on the historic mountaintop in 2,000 years.
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