The new book by Yishai Sarid, "The Third," begins and ends with catastrophes. It starts with two bombs that obliterate Tel Aviv and Haifa and a regional war in the Middle East that the Jews win, after which they re-establish the temple. It ends with complete destruction: Twenty-five years after that, on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), the “Amalek” enemy, a code name in the book for the Arab world, has already conquered most of Israel and nearly reaches Jerusalem. “The Temple Mount court was a bloodbath and the shelling continued mercilessly … bodies piled up everywhere … rockets fell in the court … and then a terrible sound was heard, louder than all the noises that preceded it … soldiers jumped from the walls and turned into fiery torches,” Sarid wrote.
The military disaster arrives alongside a moral disaster. At that very moment, the High Priest and the Jewish people are one step away from sacrificing a human being at the temple.
