Hamas mil­i­tants have abduct­ed Lior Samet, the grand­son of Israeli nation­al war hero Brigadier Gen­er­al Avig­dor Cohen, but the Israeli gov­ern­ment does not nego­ti­ate with ter­ror­ists. Cohen’s inner world is turned upside down as he does what he must to bring Lior home. Less than forty miles away, but more than two mil­len­nia ear­li­er, Alexan­der the Great descends upon Jerusalem, ready to attack, but after a high­ly charged con­fronta­tion with Simon the High Priest, he spares the town. As the con­tro­ver­sial sto­ry unfolds, the Mac­cabees, priest­ly mil­i­tant war­riors, are raised to fight off the Greek impe­ri­al­ists. Yamin Levy’s ambi­tious debut nov­el explores the inner-world of war­riors, reluc­tant sol­diers, zealots, and free­dom fight­ers. The par­al­lel sto­ry­lines describe both the ear­ly ori­gins and mod­ern ver­sions of Israeli nation­al­ism and mil­i­tary zeal and how the Kohen clan has left its mark on the spir­i­tu­al land­scape of the Jew­ish psy­che and on the bat­tle­field. Levy gives voice to a range of per­spec­tives asso­ci­at­ed with the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict and with Israeli society’s evolv­ing atti­tudes regard­ing their phys­i­cal, spir­i­tu­al and exis­ten­tial survival.