So as we rise from the floor this afternoon and begin to ease ourselves out of deep mourning for the Temple, I thought it would be an appropriate time to look to the future, and write about what it is that we are praying for and hoping for when we talk about rebuilding it.
Let’s start from the beginning: what does “messiah” mean? It comes from the Hebrew word משיח, meshiaḥ, which means “anointed.” Back in the days of the Bible, you didn’t “crown” a king, you “anointed” him with oil. King Saul, the first King of Israel, was anointed this way, as was King David. So the Messiah will be a king–a human king–from the line of King David, who will reestablish the Kingdom of Israel in the Holy Land.
The same prophets who predicted the destruction of the Temple (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isiah were the big three, but there were more) also foretold the coming of the Messiah. They described him as an individual with great wisdom and sensitivity, who will bring universal peace and justice. They described him rebuilding the Temple–one that will stand forever, and not be destroyed like the previous two. They described the Messiah ushering in a new era, where all of humankind will know God and be aware of Him, and recognize the Jews as His chosen people. The Messiah will facilitate an “ingathering of the exiles”; Jews from all over the world will return to our homeland to establish the renewed Kingdom of Israel. We will stop being a hated and persecuted minority we still are today, and will reestablish our role as a nation of priests, who will be teachers and spiritual leaders for the rest of humanity. And people from all over the world will come to see the Temple–“a house of prayer for all nations”–and serve God there. Some scholars believe that the redemption will come about through miraculous means; others, including Maimonides, believe that it will happen in accordance with the laws of nature. Humanity will be at a completely different spiritual level, and the near tangible presence of God will again be felt at the Temple, where the human and the Divine will embrace. Prophecy–which, according to Jewish belief, stopped existing after the destruction of the first Temple–will return, with the Messiah being the first new prophet. And the world will be a place of harmony, peace, and love.
Cue doves, rainbows, and laughing children.
Now, reading this description, it’s fairly clear why Jews did not accept Jesus as the Messiah. Simple: none of this happened. Not in his lifetime, and not in the 2,000 years since. He did not fulfill any of these prophesies. Now, Christian scholars would obviously disagree with me; they would interpret the same texts differently, and say that all this will come true when Jesus returns in a “second coming.” But none of the prophets mentioned anything about the Messiah dying and then disappearing for a few millennia before coming back and fulfilling the prophesies. And then y’all started with the Trinity business…. and the thing about him dying for our sins… and that stuff is totally off the map of Jewish beliefs, so… yeah. The Jewish Messiah is not supposed to be Divine. He’s supposed to be a human king and a prophet, just like David and Saul. And there is no connection between him and atonement. That all goes down on Yom Kippur. But we’ll be talking about repentance and atonement next month. 😉
Anyway. I think it is also fairly obvious from the above description why religious Zionists (such as myself) believe that the establishment of the State of Israel is a step along the way to the fulfillment of those prophesies. We have seen an “ingathering of the exiles”; we have seen the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel for the first time in 2,000 years; we have seen the miraculous reunification of the city of Jerusalem; we have seen the land turn from a desolate wasteland into a thriving, fertile land flowing with milk and honey. We have even seen the Hebrew language, once a stagnant, archaic language reserved mostly for Jewish scholarship (not unlike today’s Latin), turn into a living, breathing vernacular. These phenomena are baffling to historians, philosophers, and anthropologists. Nothing like this has ever happened before. It shouldn’t have happened. It’s impossible. And yet, it happened.
Still, going from the return of the Jews to their ancestral land–a phenomenon described as “spooky” by Nobel Prize laureate and physicist Leon Lederman–to a vision of all humanity living in peace and harmony and uniting around a single idea and belief in God is… quite a stretch.
Personally, I think of the Messianic Era as the culmination of everything we as humans are striving for… and towards which have already been advancing at breakneck pace, even though it may not feel like it. Because of how “plugged in” we are and how fast news spreads, violence, bloodshed and turmoil seem worse than ever before, but the fact is that they aren’t. There is actually much less violence in the world today than there was a hundred, certainly two hundred years ago. Though the Middle East is falling to pieces and some crazy stuff is going down, it’s a mere blip in the general trend, which is of a sharp decline in violence and oppression. We are so horrified by beheading and drowning videos, not because that type of cruelty is unprecedented, but because it has become so uncommon that we are not used to it. Think about it. Executions–beheadings, hangings, etc.–were a popular form of public entertainment less than two hundred years ago. And that’s without getting into the kinds of horrific things people used to do to each other in the Middle Ages and in the Roman Empire.
So, while we are very, very far from the “beating our swords into plowshares” thing, I don’t think it’s completely crazy to believe that sometime in the future, humanity will refine and improve itself to a point where the Messianic visions will no longer be visions, but reality. I believe that that’s why we are here. That God wants us to bring the world to that point through free choice and free will. And I believe that it is possible… and that we are on our way there.
I know it’s a pretty starry-eyed thing to be saying these days, especially from over here under the shadow of Daesh and a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. You know me… to my sorrow, I’m not the world’s most positive person, and sometimes (often) I despair, too. But if a nation could emerge from under the shadow of the Holocaust and turn this hunk of desert into a vibrant oasis of democracy and innovation after dreaming of Jerusalem for 2,000 years… who knows, Josep, who knows.
I mentioned before that the 17th of Tamuz marks the beginning of a period of symbolic mourning for the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem. Practically speaking, what this means is that we observe the same customs of symbolic mourning that we do during the first 33 days of the Omer: we don’t attend live concerts (and have varying customs on what kind of music we listen to), don’t buy new clothes, and don’t get haircuts (and men don’t shave their beards). In Hebrew, the period of the Three Weeks is called “Bein HaMetzarim.” This is could be cleverly translated into English as, “Between the Dire Straits.” (Since you are not a native English speaker, I want to make sure you understand this: “Meitzar” is both a “strait”, as in a channel connecting two bodies of water, and a flowery Biblical word for trouble or distress. “Dire straits” is an English expression that means “very serious trouble.” Google translates the phrase into Catalan as “dificultats.” Sounds like an understatement to me….) The Sages teach that this is a period during which “the Prosecutor speaks against us” (as in Satan; see my section on the Jewish concept of Satan in The Vagueries of the Jewish Afterlife), meaning that God judges us more harshly. So we try to kind of “lay low” during this period, avoiding important business interactions or other endeavors that require Divine assistance.
From the first day of the month of Av (or if you’re Sephardi–which, um, I guess you are! :P–from the Saturday night before Tisha B’Av), the symbolic mourning intensifies. Ashkenazim call this period “the Nine Days.” Sephardim call it, “hashavua sheḥal bo,” “the Week on Which It Falls.” We no longer bathe for pleasure or wash our clothes (unless it’s necessary for hygienic purposes), and we don’t eat meat or drink wine. (I guess you Catholics might call that “fasting.” 😛 ) We also do not build houses or move into new homes during this period.
“Tisha B’Av” means the Ninth of Av, and it is the saddest day in the Jewish year. On this day, the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians, and then, by Divine poetry (or bizarre coincidence, for those who believe in such things), the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans on the same date several hundred years later.
“The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under the Command of Titus, A.D. 70,” by David Roberts, 1850. {public domain}
It so happens that a number of other great calamities befell the Jews on this day on the Hebrew calendar, and during this period in general. The last Jew left the shores of Spain on Tisha B’Av in 1492. A number of disasters connected to failed attempts to restore Jewish sovereignty over Judea after the destruction of the Temple also happened on Tisha B’Av. So, too, with a number of critical events during the Holocaust. Heck, just last year, I was rudely awakened on the morning of Tisha B’Av by an air raid siren… :-/ Like I said. Not a good time for the Jews.
So as I elaborated in my letter about Jewish fasts, Tisha B’Av is a major fast day, meaning that we refrain from eating, drinking, washing for pleasure, wearing leather shoes, anointing ourselves with oil, and sexual relations, from sundown to nightfall the next day. We also sit on low stools, like mourners sitting shiva, for the first part of Tisha B’Av (until midday, at which point the Temple had already been destroyed); nor do we greet each other, because we are not allowed to greet mourners, and we are all mourning on this day. On the evening of Tisha B’Av, after the usual evening prayer service, the book of Eikha (Lamentations) is read in the synagogue while everybody sits on the floor. It was written by Jeremiah the Prophet and describes the desolation in Jerusalem after its conquest by Nebuchadnezzar. Then a series of Kinnot (poetic lamentations) are read.
Listening to Lamentations on Tisha B’Av evening at the Kotel. SAIMI [CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia CommonsAt midday on Tisha B’Av we begin a gradual process of emerging from mourning. We may sit on normal chairs from midday onward. After the fast ends at nightfall, we continue to observe the mourning customs of the Nine Days, until midday on the following day, the 10th of Av. The reason for this is that the Temple was still burning until midday on the 10th. Then we fully emerge from mourning. (This year, the 9th actually falls on Shabbat, and we are not allowed to fast on Shabbat, so the fast is observed on the 10th. That means that this year, we will fully emerge from mourning as soon as the fast ends.)
So. Obviously, this destruction-of-the-Temple business was seriously bad news for the Jews. One might ask: why? Why don’t we fast to commemorate other great disasters in Jewish history, like the Holocaust, or the Cossack massacres, or the Crusades, or the expulsion from Spain, or… sheesh, take your pick, we’d be fasting every day of the year! :-/
First of all, before you can understand why the destruction of the Temple was such a big deal, you have to understand why the Temple was such a big deal. I elaborate on this in my letter about the history and significance of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, so if you haven’t read that one yet, now is the time to do that.
In any case, in that entry, I wrote:
The Temple was the place where God and man embraced, where the limited physical reality of human existence touched the eternal. The very physical work that involved the service of the Temple–the sacrifices, the contributions, the incense, the rituals–were a way to tangibly connect with God. And that is why, originally, our entire religion, our entire service of God, centered around the Temple.
When God gave us the Torah, He had a vision for us. He would be our God, and we would be His people. The Holy Temple would serve as a meeting place between humanity and the Divine, not only for the Jewish people, but for the world in general. We were to serve as a model nation, showing the world what a society could look like if it follows God’s word. We were to be a “light unto the nations;” to spread morality and knowledge of God throughout the world. God promised us that if we kept His commandments and stayed loyal to Him, He would bless us and protect us, and make us a “nation of priests.” A majority of the book of Deuteronomy is a speech that Moses gives the nation of Israel in which he goes over the commandments again, along with God’s promise. But, God said, if we failed to keep the commandments, and strayed to worship other gods, He would curse us, and send us scattered from the land.
Basically, God presented us with an Ultimate Plan for the Redemption of the Universe. The plan was, we inhabit the land and set up a model kingdom right in the heart of the world, on the crossroads between Asia, Africa and Europe, where most world civilizations would have the chance to come in contact with us, and thus influence them to give up idolatry and immorality and embrace God and Godliness.
Unfortunately, we failed to create this model society. We succumbed to the temptations to be like other nations, to serve other gods, including our own “evil inclinations”, and eventually God had to fulfill His promise: He destroyed our kingdom and our Temple. We lost our direct connection to Him. According to Judaism, there has been no prophesy since the destruction of the First Temple. The last of our prophets was Malachi.
The rest… I’m going to step my current self aside and give my 20-year-old self the stage. This is an excerpt from a ridiculously long letter I wrote to you eight years ago on Tisha B’Av, July 24th, 2007.
So you see… it’s not really the destruction of a building I’m mourning as I sit here close to the floor with my face unwashed and my stomach empty. It’s the destruction of a certain kind of relationship. When we were in this land with our Temple, we were so close to God. We were living as a “light unto the nations”, a kingdom to shine as an example to the nations of the world and let them see how a fair and just society can look like. But we blew it.
My eyes fill with tears as I write this. We blew it. We failed. We broke the covenant. And God could not let us live here, together, any longer. He had to disperse us among the nations, where we would be hated and persecuted for two thousand years. Where we would be massacred and expelled and tortured and ridiculed throughout the centuries. Don’t you see?
The destruction of the Temple is the root of all Jewish suffering.
If we hadn’t ruined it, if we hadn’t been so stupid, none of that would have been necessary to teach our lessons to the world! We wouldn’t have needed to suffer so much to spread our ideas! All of it, all those coincidences on Tisha B’Av, and all those massacres during the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition, and the expulsions from everywhere, and the pogroms, and the Holocaust–all of it was part of the Divine Plan B, implemented after we messed up Plan A.
So what now? It seems that God is knocking on our door again, by some miracle giving us back the Promised Land and Jerusalem… but again, the world is poised against us. Will we mess it up again? Or will we somehow succeed in taking this chance to reestablish that role we’ve been missing for 2,000 years?
Right now I feel the urgency of this question as our government and our society slide downhill. God doesn’t need a Jewish people in its land with leaders who lie and cheat and sexually abuse.1 He doesn’t need a Jewish people in its land selfish and divided. I do believe, with all my heart, that bringing us back to Israel was the beginning of the process of redemption… but I’m so afraid of the shaky ground on which we stand. What if He has to destroy this process and go through it all over again?
So we fast and we pray and we hope that we are strong enough, that we are ready to be what He wanted us to be. The whole purpose of the Jewish faith is to hone us into a model society, one that is loving and helpful to all others, that supports those who need support, that trusts in the One God and believes only in Him. On Tisha B’Av we long to become that society… without more suffering. Without more slaughter and bloodshed and hatred. We mourn the days that we had the chance to be that way, and we pray for a second chance in the days to come.
And that, my dear friend, is the meaning of Tisha B’Av.
May we all merit to see the redemption of humanity soon–whatever you believe that may mean. (And if you’re wondering what I believe that means… stay tuned. 😉 )
Much love,
Daniella
1. A few weeks before I wrote the excerpted letter in 2007, then-president of Israel Moshe Katsav resigned from his presidency after being accused of rape and sexual harassment. He was eventually found guilty, and he is currently serving a maximum sentence of 49 years in prison.↩
The 28th of Iyar, 5727 (June 7th, 1967), was a historic day for the Jewish people. It was the day our eternal capital, Jerusalem, was reunited, and we regained access to our holiest site–the Temple Mount.
Yes, I said Temple Mount. Because while the Western Wall is generally known as being the holiest site in the world for Jews, that isn’t actually true. The Western Wall was just the retaining wall of the platform on which Herod’s renovated Second Temple stood two thousand years ago. What was so important to us was the Temple itself.
I keep mentioning this Temple, and it’s been many years since I explained to you what it was.
So in honor of Jerusalem Day, which we will celebrate this coming Sunday, let me tell you the story of the Temple and of Jerusalem.
HaMishkan (The Tabernacle)
After we received the Torah at Mt. Sinai–an event on which I will elaborate soon, as Shavuot is right on the heels of Jerusalem Day–God commanded the Israelites to build something called the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. (“Mishkan” means “dwelling place”.) It was a sort of portable structure that contained a courtyard and a tent (the Tent of Meeting).
The courtyard contained the Copper Altar, which was used for the ritual sacrifices that were made there regularly as part of our service of God, as well as the washstand (for ritually washing hands–that’s where our tradition of washing before eating bread comes from!).
The Tent of Meeting contained two chambers. The outermost chamber was called the “Kodesh” and contained the Menorah (elaboration in this entry), the Table with the 12 “showbread”, and the Golden Altar (for incense).
This model shows the “Kodesh”, the outer chamber, with the Menorah, the Golden Altar in the middle, and the Table. “Mishkan5 big” by Daniel Ventura – [1]. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.The innermost chamber was called the Holy of Holies, and as the name implies, it was the holiest place on earth for us, wherever it was at the time. Only Moses and Aaron were permitted to enter, and only at designated times; and after their deaths, only the High Priest could enter, and only on Yom Kippur at a specific time during the service. What was so special about this place? It contained the Ark of the Covenant, the gold-plated box that carried the original Tablets of the Covenant that Moses received at Mt. Sinai, upon which the Ten Commandments were inscribed.
The Ark of the Covenant, based on the model used by the filmmakers of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Beit HaMikdash (The Holy Temple)
We carried the Mishkan with us through the desert, and eventually, when we settled in the Land of Israel, the Mishkan was set up permanently, not in Jerusalem, but in Shilo. Shilo is a little town in Samaria, and recent excavations there are uncovering what may very well be the place where the Mishkan once stood. (This is one of Eitan’s favorite places to take tourists. It’s an amazing site.) Samuel the Prophet was conceived after his mother Hannah prayed at the Mishkan in Shilo, and he was raised there by the High Priest, Eli, until he became a prophet. (See the opening chapters of Samuel I.) Samuel was the prophet who crowned the first kings of Israel: Saul and David.
It was King David who first raised the idea of building a Temple, a permanent structure for the Mishkan. “See now,” he said to Nathan the Prophet in Samuel II 7:2, “I live in a house of cedar, and the Ark of the Lord dwells within curtains.” God, however, did not want David to build His house, and the Sages say that this is because David fought many wars and “his hands were stained with blood”. God wanted the Temple to be built in a time of peace. So He promised David that he would have a son who would continue his dynasty, and that son would build the Temple.
And that is what happened. King Solomon, son of David, built the First Temple in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount. Religious scholars place its construction at around 832 BCE.
A drawing of the First Temple based on descriptions from the Bible.
Why a Temple?
Let’s back up a second here. We’re talking about the world’s first monotheistic religion, the first religion to worship a single, omnipresent God who was not manifested in any physical object or person. So why would we center our worship of Him around a physical building, and the physical objects therein? Isn’t that a little too much like the idol worship we were supposed to be obliterating?
When instructing Moses on the construction of the Mishkan, God said, “They shall make for me a Temple, and I shall dwell within them” (Exodus 28:8). Notice that He didn’t say, “dwell within it“. The idea was not for God to manifest Himself in a physical object or place. He said “dwell within them“–the People of Israel. The Mishkan was not for Him, it was for us. It was meant to orient us towards Him and His service, so that awareness of Him would dwell within us. We never worshiped the building or its contents. They were tools that we used to worship God.
I heard a wonderful class by Rebbetzin Tzipora Heller about teaching one’s kids about the Temple and its importance. She suggests giving an explanation like this: “You know how sometimes, when you get home from school, you can tell that Mommy is already home, even if you don’t see her or hear her voice? Maybe you see her coat hanging in the hall, or you smell her perfume, or there’s just something about the way the house is different when Mommy is home. That’s like what it was with the ‘Shekhina’–God’s presence–at the Temple. We can’t see Him or hear His voice, and of course He is everywhere, all the time. But when we had the Temple, we could really feel His presence.”
The Temple was the place where God and man embraced, where the limited physical reality of human existence touched the eternal. The very physical work that involved the service of the Temple–the sacrifices, the contributions, the incense, the rituals–were a way to tangibly connect with God. And that is why, originally, our entire religion, our entire service of God, centered around the Temple.
Why Jerusalem?
The first mention of Jerusalem in the Bible, according to our tradition, is in Genesis 22–Mt. Moriah, where Abraham brought his son Isaac to be sacrificed. It came under Israelite control in the time of King David, who captured it from the Jebusites. The name Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the book of Joshua. The source of the name is unclear. Our Sages teach that it is a combination of the name Abraham gave the site of the (aborted) sacrifice of Isaac, “[Hashem] Yira’eh” (“God will show Himself”), and the town of “Shalem”. The root sh.l.m. (ש.ל.ם) means “peace” or “whole”.
King David made Jerusalem the capital of the tribe of Judah, and of the Kingdom of Israel. Aside from the mystical implications (Isaac’s sacrifice and Abraham declaring that spot a place where God will show Himself), this was a highly practical choice. It was a defensible mountain on the border of Judah and Benjamin, close to the center of the kingdom, with the necessary water sources and a good climate for agriculture.
Jerusalem is also known as Zion, Ir HaKodesh (“the Holy City”–or in Arabic, Al-Quds), and the City of David, among others.
A Portable Judaism
Here’s the thing, Josep. Judaism, as a religion, has undergone great changes in the thousands of years it has been around. And the biggest changes were a result of the destruction of the Temple, which forced us to shift from a service that centered around that physical space, to a “portable” service that we could carry with us throughout exile.
The significance of this shift, and the fact that it was able to happen at all, cannot be taken for granted. As I mentioned, when the Temple stood, our service of God looked very, very different from the way it looks now. Animal and produce sacrifices and contributions were made regularly and for varying reasons and purposes, some of which were burned on the (copper) Altar and some of which were consumed by the Priests (Cohanim) or the Levites. The three major holidays were characterized by a nationwide pilgrimage to Jerusalem. All men were required to make that pilgrimage at least three times a year. This is what the “original Judaism” looked like.
When the First Temple was destroyed, the leaders of the Jewish community had to figure out how to keep Judaism alive in Babylonia. It was then that the institution of the synagogue was first established. As I mentioned in the entry about the Jewish holy books, when we were granted permission to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple, the leaders Ezra and Nehemiah established a number of practices to keep Jews connected to the Torah and to the Hebrew language. The Second Temple was built under their leadership. It was that Temple that was defiled by the Greeks and rededicated by the Maccabees. The building was later expanded by King Herod under the Romans. Jesus was born while it still stood, and it was destroyed by the Romans 70 years after his birth.
The Second Temple after Herod’s renovations (from the Holyland Model of Jerusalem in the Israel Museum)
After the destruction of the Second Temple, Judaism encountered another huge crisis. The study and transmission of Jewish Law was forbidden under Roman law, and great teachers risked–and gave–their lives to continue teaching and passing on the tradition. The framework of halakha that we use today to apply the Law to current circumstances was solidified during this period. The Oral Law, which was originally not supposed to be written down, was nonetheless preserved in writing in what eventually became the Talmud. The global center of Jewish thought and development now shifted to Babylonia and the great schools of Sura and Pumbedita. Jews continued to live in the land of Israel wherever they were allowed until the modern era, but the ritual practice of Judaism had successfully adapted itself to exile.
Nonetheless, for two thousand years, we have continued to mourn the destruction of the Temple and to yearn for Zion. We have begged God to return us to our homeland and “renew our days as in the old times”. Our dream is to return to the original practice and closeness to God that we experienced when the Temples stood. For two thousand years, at the close of every Passover Seder and Yom Kippur fast, we have proclaimed: “Next year in rebuilt Jerusalem!” This, for us, is the Messianic vision. Zionist Jews such as myself believe that the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state in Israel is “atchalta d’geula“–“the beginning of the redemption” in Aramaic; a step on the way to the Messianic Era. (Unfortunately, we still seem to have a long way to go…)
The month after Shavuot, we will enter a period of mourning for the Temple that has been practiced and preserved throughout the Jewish diaspora. The Ninth of Av, the day the Temples were destroyed, is still the saddest day of the Jewish year, and a major fast day second only to Yom Kippur. For two millennia, Jews prayed and cried at the remaining wall of the Temple, which became known as the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall. In Israel, we simply call it “the Kotel”–“the Wall”.
Le mur des lamentations d’après, Alexandre Bida (1813-1895). A painting depicting Jews praying at the Wall around the year 1880.
During the War of Independence in 1948, the Jordanians took control of the Temple Mount and the Old City, so when the State of Israel was finally established, our most treasured parts of Jerusalem were not part of it. But on that fateful day in June, 1967, an emotional cry was heard over the army radio: “The Temple Mount is in our hands! The Temple Mount is in our hands!” When the fighting died down, throngs of Jews flooded to the Western Wall to pray and give thanks to God for returning our precious holy site to our hands–the first time in two thousand years that the Temple Mount was under Jewish sovereignty. To this day, we celebrate Jerusalem Day with a lively procession from the center of town to the Western Wall, where there is singing and dancing and great rejoicing. (Unfortunately, in the last few years, there have also been clashes and incidents of verbal and physical violence against Arabs in the Muslim quarter, which is despicable, and totally against the spirit of the day. I fervently pray that there will not be any such incident this year.)
A picture I took at the parade in 2004. You’ll notice the crowd is mostly comprised of dati leumi (religious Zionist) Jews.
But.
After the war, the Israeli government handed the keys to the Temple Mount over to the Waqf, the Muslim authority of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The idea was to maintain freedom of worship on the holy site, which is a given for any democratic country, and Israel is no exception. Muslims and Christians alike are granted free and unrestricted access to any holy site under Israeli jurisdiction. Unfortunately, the Waqf does not share this philosophy. Jews and Christians are only allowed to visit the Temple Mount through prearranged agreement, with organized groups and under careful supervision. We are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, nor to bring any written material, lest it be some kind of religious text. Theoretically, these rules apply to any non-Muslim, but practically, Jews are singled out for severe treatment. Jews are kept in a small, closely accompanied groups, and are continuously heckled by Muslims shouting at them wherever they go on the Mount. (Hamas actually pays people a decent monthly salary to stand around and harass the visiting Jews.) Numerous Jews have been detained for the “crime” of standing silently with their lips moving. A rabbi was recently forcibly removed from the premises for responding “Hashem hu ha’Elokim” (“The Lord is God”) to a man who shouted “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) at him.
The situation is completely absurd.
The Temple Mount is definitely not in our hands. 🙁
To me it is so ironic that what is actually the holiest and most important site for Judaism is the only place in Israel where the basic human right to religious freedom does not apply to Jews (or to Christians). And it is absolutely infuriating to me that this is the status quo and that this issue is not even part of the discussion about the Israeli-Arab conflict. The unrest that erupted in Jerusalem this past fall were partly due to a rumor spread among the Muslims of some kind of Jewish plot to take over the Temple Mount. We don’t want to take over the Temple Mount. We just want to be able to visit and pray there freely. The Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron is holy to Jews and Muslims alike, and there is a perfectly acceptable arrangement there that allows people of both religions to pray and worship there without incident–despite the fact that Hebron is also a focus of great political controversy. It is beyond me why a similar arrangement at the Temple Mount would be so offensive and threatening to Muslims.
Isiah prophecies that when the Messiah comes, “Also those sons of other nations that join the Lord to serve Him, and to love the Name of the Lord, and to be his servants… I shall bring them to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in the House of My Prayer… for My House shall be called a House of Prayer for All Peoples.” (Isiah 56:6-7)
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