Melnikov said, “Take me to him.”

They went to Abu Tintan and found a big cat, like a lion, who roared like a leopard.  Melnikov bought the cat and starved him.  The cat roared and roared until Melnikov finished making a statue of the lion.  And anyone who doesn’t believe can go to Tel Hai and see if the lion there doesn’t resemble a cat roaring like a leopard.

Joseph Trumpeldor was a pioneer and soldier who was killed in an Arab attack at Tel Hai in the upper Galilee in 1920.  It is said that his last words before he died from his wounds were, “It is good to die for our country.”  Trumpeldor stood for everything the Palmach stood for: self-defense, pioneering, sacrifice.  He was a symbol of the new Jew that would rebuild the Jewish homeland.  Avraham Melnikov was commissioned to sculpt the monument for the grave of Trumpeldor and the other defenders of Tel Hai.  Erected in 1934, Melnikov’s stylized roaring lion was one of the first pieces of modern sculpture in Palestine.

The chizbat relates a fictional account of how Melnikov came to fashion the lion on the monument.  Melnikov looks for a real lion to serve as a model, but none are to be found in the country.  He must go to Cairo.  Even here, only caged lions are available, and his access to them is barred by Levantine bureaucracy.  When Melnikov finally does get to the lions in the Cairo zoo, they don’t roar.  Ultimately, Melnikov must settle for a ferocious housecat.  Thus the symbol of Jewish pioneering and heroism is not really a lion, but only a pussycat made to look like a lion.

Thus the image that is created belies the reality that exists beneath.  Indeed, this is perhaps the most basic “truth” of the chizbat.   The image that the Palmach created for themselves did not represent their actual identity.  There was no way that they could create identity.  There was no way that they could create an authentic image that simply ignored two thousand years of history.  They had indeed created a new kind of Jew, but deep down, they also knew the ties to the old were deep and unseverable.

In 1948, the brigades of the Palmach were absorbed into Zahal, the newly created Israeli army.  Although the brigades continued to serve throughout the War of Independence, the Palmach had been dismantled as an independent military force.